There was a moment about three days into this review that I thought the Switchbot S10 was not going to come out of the process well. I’m not sure what it was that pushed me over the edge exactly. Maybe it was having to pick up the robot for the 10th time in an hour to see what had clogged the seemingly supersensitive “anti-clog” roller. (For the record, a small piece of thin cardboard, an almond and a bead were variously to blame. Anti-tangle my eye.) Perhaps it was the twee “Oops!” every time it jammed up. Or could it have been its attempts to ignore obstacles and try to power on through (see point one)?
Either way, this “hands-free cleaner” came perilously close to being ejected from my house, at an altitude it wasn’t expecting.
And then it suddenly started behaving itself.
The Switchbot S10 is what you might describe as a substantial. An absolute unit, if you will. It is chunkier than many other robot cleaners that have been through my hands – and there have been a few – which means it is a little too bulky to fit in some smaller spaces such as under the sofa without getting stuck. But it comes with 6,500pa of suction and the ability to just set it and forget it – as long as you’ve cleared its way of obstacles and persisted with a frustrating set-up.
There is one good reason to like the S10: when you finally get everything working correctly, it does a decent job of keeping your floors clean, with very little intervention from you. That covers both vacuuming and mopping; the S10 will link in with your wastewater and fresh water system to fill and empty itself when needed. However, since I didn’t fancy taking my kitchen apart to facilitate access, I used the external water tank instead. That means more bulk, though, and you will have to remember to occasionally fill and empty.
That was fine, as long as I could ignore the slow but persistent leak of water from the connection linking the tank and water refill station. I have yet to figure out exactly what is going on, but a quick wipe every now and again kept it in check.
When its wastewater tank is full, or it has depleted the clean water, the robot will return to the water station, the location of which you have marked on the map of your home that the Switchbot device has compiled on its first nose around the house.
At least, that is how it is intended to work. It took four tries before the S10 not only allowed me to identify and save the location of the water station on the map, but also could find it and successfully do a water changeover. Every time I tried, the device told me it couldn’t locate the water station and sat in the middle of the floor, waiting patiently for me to sort it out. If there is a way to manually fill the water tank, I’ve yet to find it. You can, however, empty the waste water yourself.
There is no option to only mop either, although you can set the vacuum to quiet mode. That is fine if you need both done, but occasionally I just wanted to mop up some muddy prints. The whole thing can be quite noisy too, from the vacuum itself – fully expected – to the mopping, which was not. The cat isn’t the better for it all – we had to wait for her to leave the room before setting off her nemesis or risk some form of retaliation later on.
When it came to vacuuming, it did a good job of dealing with pet hair and stray food, although anything bigger than half a peanut seemed to push it into an officially sanctioned work stoppage. I can honestly say that I have seen more of the underside of the S10 than any other cleaner I’ve tested, thanks to its frequent objection to sucking up anything bigger than dust and hair.
Good
Overall, this does a decent job of cleaning. The roller mop function may not be perfect but it gets more grime off your floor than you would expect. And the vacuum has a few options if you don’t need full power every time.
It is relatively hands-free – it fills and empties its own water tanks, cleans the roller and empties the dust tank, and it dries the roller after use, so you don’t have to deal with musty, damp cloths.
Bad
Although it can give you more options on placement, the separate water and auto empty/charging stations are a little inconvenient. You can’t charge without the larger auto-empty station, and you can’t mop without the water station, so removing one isn’t an option if you are stuck for space.
It is noisy. The water filling and emptying is audible, and when it is wetting the roller mop, it all gets a bit loud.
Obstacle avoidance isn’t as good as I expected either. A couple of times I couldn’t figure what was blocking it at all.
Everything else
You can add the detergent – Switchbot approved – to the tank so you aren’t just mopping with a damp cloth. It will also avoid carpets altogether or raise the mop when it detects carpeted floor, which avoids rolling the mop over your carpet.
In the app, you can also set up no-go areas, split maps into rooms and mark things such as door sills to help the cleaner navigate your home.
Verdict
The Switchbot promises a lot, but it takes a bit of persistence to get everything working correctly. Still, for the price you pay, the obstacle avoidance could be better, and I’d appreciate fewer distress calls because of a stray peanut.
