Cheapest place to buy a robot vacuum in the UK
The base station costs more than the robot in a surprising number of cases.
The dock is the product
Robot vacuums are increasingly sold as a robot plus a base station, and the station is where the money and the differences sit: self-emptying, mop washing, water refilling, drying. The robot itself may be identical between a mid-priced model and an expensive one.
That makes the comparison unusually clean once you see it. Decide which station functions you want, then compare only models offering those, and the field narrows quickly.
Pricing here is genuinely volatile
This category discounts harder and more often than almost any other, with frequent large reductions outside the usual sale periods. A price today is a weak guide to a price next week, in both directions.
That volatility is the reason to check at the moment of buying rather than to rely on any list of recommendations, however recent.
What actually drives the price
- Base station capability. The dominant factor by a distance.
- Navigation. Laser mapping versus camera versus random. This decides whether the machine is useful or annoying.
- Mopping. Present on most models, genuinely effective on fewer.
- Consumables. Bags, brushes, filters and mop pads, which together add a meaningful ongoing cost.
Before you buy
- Decide which dock functions you want. That is the real specification.
- Check the navigation type rather than the marketing name for it.
- Price the consumables for a year and add them in.
- Check the model against its own recent price, since this category swings hard.
- Confirm what is in the box — spare pads and brushes are sometimes included and sometimes not.