The market is absolutely flooded with robot vacuums from budget to premium models, but while they can now tackle everything from deep-pile carpets to mopping corners, there’s one obstacle they still struggle with – stairs.
Dreame thinks it has the answer. At a launch event in Paris last week, the company unveiled the Cyber X, a stair-climbing robot designed to carry compatible robot vacuums between floors so they can keep cleaning without you having to lug them up the stairs yourself.
At the moment, you generally have to buy a robot vacuum cleaner for each floor of your home. This can be quite a pricey endeavour if you want to kick your feet up and let the robots do all the housework for you.
The Cyber X uses four tracked climbing arms that unfold when it reaches a staircase, gripping each step to carry the robot vacuum up and down floors. According to Dreame, the Cyber X can tackle straight, spiral and open-riser staircases, as well as carpeted stairs.
Read more: The best vacuum cleaners, tried and tested
The company says it can climb slopes of up to 42 degrees and climb over obstacles up to 35cm high.
The Independent‘s deputy IndyBest editor Sabrina Sahota saw the machine in action at Dreame’s launch event in Paris. “I was very sceptical when I first heard about Dreame’s stair-climbing robot vacuum, but I was impressed when I saw how well it coped with an incline,” she said.
The Cyber X was announced alongside Dreame’s new X60 pro series robot vacuums. The flagship X60 pro ultra complete costs £1,299 and will launch in July. It features a new robotic arm that can extend its side brush and mop pad under furniture and into corners. There are also new upgraded AI cameras that can identify more than 320 different types of objects around the home. Dreame claims the X60 pro ultra complete boasts 42,000Pa of suction power and a hot-water mop cleaning system.
The company also announced the £1,399 X60 pro master and £1,499 X60 pro ultra matrix, the latter featuring an automated dock that can swap between different mop types depending on the room it’s cleaning.
While the Cyber X isn’t a robot vacuum in its own right, it acts as a transport system for the X60 range, carrying compatible models between floors so they can continue cleaning without any human assistance.
It can also do a small amount of cleaning as it descends each step, using a pair of brush arms to sweep debris from the staircase. “It’s quite bulky so won’t suit small staircases,” Sabrina added. “But it moved smoothly up and down the stairs and the brushes that clean each step worked efficiently.”
UK pricing has yet to be confirmed, but based on European pricing, the Cyber X won’t come cheap. It’s expected to cost €1,199 when it launches in September, making it almost as expensive as the robot vacuums it’s designed to carry around the house.
It’s not the only stair-climbing robot vacuum in the works. At CES earlier this year, Roborock announced the saros rover, a stair-climbing robot vacuum cleaner that can climb up stairs independently.
For more, we’ve rounded up the best robot vacuums
