Robot Vacuums Ranked by Cost Per Cleaned Week — Not by Spec Sheet

Spec sheets rank robot vacuums by suction. Your life ranks them by how many weeks pass without touching the thing. Price the machines that way — dollars per hands-free week over three years — and the $1,599 flagship stops being the obvious pick.

The feature that actually changes your week

It is the dock. A robot that empties itself runs daily and asks nothing of you for a month. A robot without one asks for its bin emptied every second run — which is a chore that reminds you of the chore it replaced. Self-emptying now starts at $549 with the Eufy Omni C28 class of machine, and that is the line under which we would not buy.

What the extra $1,000 buys

• Obstacle recognition that spares cables and pet accidents. Genuinely better on the Roborock Saros 10R tier. Worth it if your floors are unpredictable.
• Hot-water mop washing and drying. Matters in big hard-floor homes; irrelevant in a carpeted flat.
• Lower-profile bodies that fit under furniture the cheap ones bump.

The cost-per-week math

Assume three years of service. The $549 self-emptying machine costs about $3.50 per week of cleaning. The $999 ECOVACS-class omni dock lands near $6.40. The $1,599 flagship: over $10 a week — a cleaner visiting monthly costs comparably in many cities. The flagship is the right buy for large, complex, pet-filled homes. For a typical flat, the mid-tier does 90% of the job at 40% of the cost per week.