SwitchBot Mini Robot Vacuum K10+ Review: More Reach, Less Volume

Price When Reviewed

$499.99

Best Prices Today: SwitchBot Mini Robot Vacuum K10+

$499.99

Let’s say you have a small apartment or the rooms in your house are quite cosy. You look at a standard robot vacuum and think: that’s bigger than my coffee table and I have nowhere to put it. What do you do?

It’s this predicament that has led SwitchBot, the exuberant company that makes with aplomb all manner of ingenious smart gadgets, to launch the K10+. It’s smaller than a dinner plate and not only vacuums but mops as well – although not at the same time.

Alex Greenwood / Foundry

Add to that the 2500Pa suction, a quiet 48dB operational noise, an auto-empty dock that promises up to 70 days of hands-free cleaning, and LiDAR navigation that plots out your rooms and shows obstacles on the floor, and the K10+ might very well be the answer to the small space problem.   

Design & Build

• Robot 50% smaller than standard models
• Compact auto-empty station
• Comes with spare filter and dust bag
• Uses disposable mop cloths

In the box is an auto-empty station, the mini robot vacuum and mop, a bag with a spare filter, dust bag and a packet of disposable mop cloths, a quick start guide and a user manual.

The auto-empty station is made of hard, white plastic, with a power cable and integrated plug. The top lid opens to reveal the dust bag compartment with the mop plate conveniently clipped into the underside of the lid, and there’s a small cleaning tool fixed into the chamber that has a brush at one end and a scalpel edge at the other.

Standing at 32cm, we found the station was roughly level with the top of a standard UK power socket, so there’s capacity to place it under a desk or high console table. At 26cm wide and 21cm deep, the station itself is compact and doesn’t overwhelm a small room; however, when the robot is charging, the footprint extends outwards into the room to roughly 38cm, so bear that in mind if space is at a premium.

The K10+ is around 50% smaller than standard models, and this is apparent as soon as you unbox the glossy white robot itself. It’s chunkier than rivals and seems to have a personality right from the off. You just feel rather fond of it: it’s got the cute factor.

It charges on the station via metallic contacts and the top plate of the robot vacuum lifts off to reveal the on/off slider switch. There’s a Home button on top of the robot vacuum, which sends the vac back to the station for recharging or to pause cleaning, and the Clean button, which enables you to turn the vac on and off or start or pause cleaning.

Switchbot also provides a spare dust bag, filter and a pack of thirty wet disposable cloths for the mopping plate.

Set up & App

• Simple set-up
• App controls whole SwitchBot universe
• Good LiDAR mapping

After unpacking, set up the auto-empty station in a viable spot with good Wi-Fi coverage with 0.5m clearance on each side and 1.5m clearance in front. Plug in the station, wrap the cord neatly at the back, and install the edge sweeping brush. Then remove the top plate, slide the power switch on, and place the robot next to the charging points on the station and the light ring will illuminate – on contact, the robot vacuum should play an ident and tell you that it’s charging.

Then, download the SwitchBot app. The app controls everything in the SwitchBot universe, so you can connect any SwitchBot smart device through it, which means you can create scenes that start processes when another SwitchBot product is activated: say, a contact sensor that triggers when you close your front door can then activate the robot vacuum to start cleaning.

Switchbot supplies a QR code to the app in the user manual for both Apple and Android. Once the app has installed, add the device, start the Wi-Fi configuration by pressing the Clean and Home buttons on the robot vacuum and then you’ll get a prompt for your Wi-Fi password to pair the device.

The next step is to set the vacuum to map the space you wish to clean.    

The K10+ seems to map very quickly. We set it to map two rooms with an interlocking hallway, and the LiDAR navigation managed to partially map three rooms beyond a sunk staircase landing some ten feet or more away. The rooms will be picked out in different colours, although you’ll probably have to edit the map to precisely designate room parameters.

Alex Greenwood / Foundry

Performance & Features

• Four suction modes
• Scheduled cleans
• Vacuums in places others can’t reach

To vacuum, simply open the app, press ‘Clean’ or ‘More’, which will bring up the map, and then press ‘Clean’.

You can choose to clean by room, whole house, or area, and to clean once or twice over, and there are four suction levels: quiet, standard, strong and max.    

Quiet mode seems to be around 30-40 decibels, and we found it quieter than an average desktop PC. Maximum is a typical vacuum cleaner noise level, and you can feel the air outlet from the filter from about a foot or more away.

And yes, because it is so small, the K10+ can reach everywhere. It even managed to vacuum under a baby doll’s toy cot. The auto-empty is loud though – as this feature always is – so be prepared to experience what sounds like a small jet engine firing up in your home. On the plus side, you can schedule this dust collection so that it doesn’t occur at an inopportune time.

As with most robot vacuums, the K10+ can’t climb a step higher than 2cm, which is tricky if you have an uneven floor surface, but one slightly unusual feature is that through the app, you can also remote control the robot vacuum on a direct basis, moving it in all directions like a drone.

Again, you can schedule cleans and generate reports. The app will also tell you the status of the filter, side brush, brush roll, dust bag and whether you need to wipe the sensors. You can also set a do not disturb period and a child lock. 

In our tests, the K10+ cleaned 8m² in about 11 minutes. One thing we noticed is that the K10+ will attempt to vacuum under pretty much underneath anything, so it does nudge light furniture a bit – a child’s wicker rocking chair was always at a bit of an angle afterwards.         

If you want to mop, then the process is a little more involved. The mop plate is housed on the underside of the auto-empty station lid, and you need to fit a wet wipe cloth to the mop plate – SwitchBot supplies you with a pack of 30 or you can use your own – by wrapping it around the plate and securing it with both the integral Velcro and hooks.

We must admit that we got this wrong at first and had to reposition the wipe, and because it’s a wet wipe, it lost some moisture before we managed to get it on the plate. That said, once you fit the plate over the top of the brush, the K10+ goes immediately into mop mode, which we thought was rather impressive, and when you set it to clean, it mops your floor.

Now this is not mopping as most people would define it. Instead, it is more of a damp dust. What the K10+ is doing is wiping a wet wipe across your hard floor. So it can’t remove ground-in dirt or bring up your tiles when what they really need is hot water, sugar soap and vigorous scrub with a brush that resembles a hedgehog.

But for damp dusting, we thought it was rather good. And it didn’t leave a streak on our tiles.

In our test, we mopped two rooms and found the wipe lasted about 20 minutes before it really dried out. It picked up quite a bit of general fluff. It’s not something that can remove a puddle of spilt juice though. It’s more of a dust removal and buffing process.

The K10+ works with Alexa, Google Home, Siri shortcuts, IFTTT, and SmartThings for all you Samsung bods.  

At present, a replacement kit for a year’s use, which includes two new edge sweeping brushes, five bin filters, five more dust bags, eight packs of thirty mopping cloths and a new cleaning tool costs $59.99/ £59.99, although there’s currently a deal for 20% off. You can see the discount code on the page.

Price & Availability

The SwitchBot Mini K10+ is available in the US for $499.99. There’s currently a $100 off voucher deal on Amazon, and it’s available at full price direct from SwitchBot.

In the UK, it’s priced at £499.99, with the same buying options available. Again, at the time of writing, the place to buy is Amazon, which is offering £100 off with a voucher code on the page. You can also buy from the SwitchBot website.

Particularly with the discount, and taking into account the self-emptying station, this makes the K10+ a really good value option for anyone looking for a smaller robot vacuum. For more options across a range of price points, have a look at our round-up of the best robot vacuums we’ve tested.

Incidentally, SwitchBot is about to launch the S10, which is the next level in automated floor cleaning and is at least double the price of the K10+ ($1,199.99/£999.99 and available for pre-order). Not only does this robot vacuum and mop have 6500Pa suction, a roller mop and an auto-empty and dry station, it also comes with an auto-fill and drain water station that you plumb into your water supply and wastewater pipe, and the S10 has the ability to refill humidifiers and empty de-humidifiers to boot.    

At this point, it’s all getting a bit like the Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat – or SARAH for short – that Jack Carter found himself living in when he became sheriff of Eureka. SwitchBot also makes smart hubs, locks, keypads, motion sensors, contact sensors, indoor cams, bulbs, plugs, meters, curtain openers and the famous, original “bot” that will turn on a basic light switch.

The scene programming possibilities within this gadget universe are endless. At some point, someone will make a film that echoes Home Alone, only it won’t be a little boy called Kevin repelling a duo of dastardly burglars, it will be a SwitchBot mini hub instead.  

Should you buy the the Switchbot Mini Robot Vacuum K10+?

We like the K10+. It’s dinky and cute, and handles small spaces well, albeit slightly erratically because it gets into places other robot vacuums can’t. It’s also not a dominating presence so can sit in a small room easily and no one is going to use the auto-empty station as a surrogate stool.

If you have a small living space, and you want a robot vacuum to keep the dust under control, we’d say the K10+ could very well be for you.