As someone who reviews robot vacuums, I honestly thought I'd seen it all, especially after the launch of the Roborock Saros Z70 with a mechanical arm. But the3i S10 Ultra came along to keep me humble.
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This isn't even a brand-new robot vacuum and mop -- it was launched six months ago in November 2024, but I hadn't heard of it until recently. And when I learned of its WaterRecycle system for the mopping feature, I knew I had to test it. Yet when the robot arrived, I was even more surprised at how different an experience it offered.
The 3i S10 Ultra is a robot vacuum and mop that recycles the dock wastewater and extracts water from the air, so it never runs out of water.
I've come to know robot vacuums inside and out. I'm a fan of these smart devices and have seen them evolve greatly over the years. I set up at least a handful of them in my house each month, so very few of them are able to stump me. The 3i S10 did just that.
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For starters, the 3i S10 Ultra is the biggest robot vacuum I've seen. Most top-tier robot vacuums delivered to my home weigh between 30 and 49 pounds, but the S10 Ultra is a hefty 80 pounds. The charging dock is like a fancy mini-fridge, and it is an appliance in its own right. 3i packs a ton of technology within the station.
When you set up the robot vacuum and charging station, you fill the clean water tank and add the detergent bottle to a separate compartment. The robot then navigates your home for a few minutes to create a virtual map of it.
The robot has 13,000Pa of suction power, so it vacuums quite well. It can also detect rugs and carpets to increase suction automatically, and it adapts its cleaning settings in real time as it goes. For mopping, the robot has a real-time self-cleaning mop roller that extends almost two inches out to clean along the edges of walls and furniture. The mop roller spins 330 times per minute and puts 12N of downward pressure for effective cleaning.
The S10 Ultra robot vacuum has great obstacle avoidance. It can avoid cords, socks, shoes, and other small items -- it only struggled with flat papers, which is common even for top performers.
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But back to the elephant in the room: the WaterRecycle system. The 3i S10 Ultra gets clean water from the very first, and probably only, time you fill the water tank. The clean water cycles from the dock into the robot's clean water tank. This water and the detergent you added during setup are sprayed by 12 outlets onto the mop roller as it cleans. A squeegee scrubs away the dirt simultaneously, which is kept in a separate dirty water tank within the robot.
The 3i S10 Ultra robot vacuum and mop is tall, which means it can't reach under low furniture. For me, that means it gets stuck trying to clean under my couch.
When the robot returns to the dock, it empties its dirty water into a tank at the base station, and the mop roller is washed and dried. The dirty water then rises to about 194