Ultenic T10 Pro review: Pro vacuum, amateur mop

Ultenic may not have the household recognition of Roomba or the sheer volume of products like Ecovacs or Roborock, but its T10 Pro is no slouch when it comes to automated cleaning. This midrange robovac packs a few of the modern conveniences you’d expect — a self-emptying dustbin, mopping mode, and smart mapping — but makes a few key compromises to avoid a premium price point.

Price and availability

An affordable option

The T10 Pro is available now, though the price is a little murky. The vacuum is listed on Amazon for $450, but Ultenic’s own online store claims an MSRP of $600 — though, in fact, it sells it for a much lower $400, even cheaper than Amazon.

That’s at the lower end of modern robot vacuums, which can start for a couple hundred bucks but climb to well over a grand at the top end, making this a relatively affordable option.

What’s good about the Ultenic T10 Pro?

It nails the basics

Compared to rivals around the $400 mark, the T10 Pro does a great job when it comes to actual vacuuming. It’s small (albeit not quite as small as the SwitchBot K10+), so it can fit under furniture and into small spaces. Its 4,000Pa suction power is solid, and together with the floating bristled brush, there’s plenty of power to pick dirt and pet hair out of thinner carpets, though I’d worry about it on thicker pile.

Speaking of, carpet detection tech means that when the vacuum moves from a hard floor to something softer it will boost suction power to make sure it can cope. That’s been enough to keep two cats’ worth of loose fur in check in my apartment, which is no mean feat.

Ultenic says that the 5,200mAh battery is enough to keep the T10 Pro running for 200 minutes — so a little over three hours. My dinky London apartment doesn’t have anywhere near the floor plan to really put that claim to the test, but based on how slowly the vacuum’s battery drains, the company probably isn’t far off. It’s also smart enough to return to base and recharge, then pick up where it left off if the battery does run out.

Emptying is also easy: the vacuum will automatically self-empty into the docking station (the only bit of the process that’s genuinely loud; the vacuum itself is relatively discreet), which houses a 3.3L dust bag. You should only need to empty them once every couple of months, though that may depend on how fluffy your cats are. I do wish it used a washable dustbin rather than bags, which require ongoing expenditure and are worse for the environment.

As you’d expect, the Ultenic app can be used to manage the machine. It uses LiDAR to map out your floor plan, and if you have a multi-story house, it can even manage up to five floors, though you’ll have to handle the stairs yourself. You can use the map to choose custom settings for specific rooms, set no-go areas, and send the robot out to spot-clean dirty areas when you’ve had a single spill but don’t need the whole place cleaned. Of course, you can also set it to clean on a schedule.

Smart assistant support means you can also use voice controls to get it going, with support for Google Assistant, Alexa, or Siri. There’s also an included remote control, and a couple of buttons on the vacuum itself for the basics.

Lastly, Ultenic is generous with what’s included in the box. You get two dust bags for the docking station, along with spare brushes and mop heads. That should be enough to keep you going for at least a few months without having to buy additional accessories. The app also has a handy screen that lets you know how close the various parts are to needing replacement or a proper cleaning.

What’s bad about the Ultenic T10 Pro?

Mopping is more manual

So what about the bad? For one, I wouldn’t want to overly rely on the T10 Pro for its mopping. There’s no tank for cleaning fluid, so it’s only really spraying water around the place rather than doing a deeper clean. It’ll give the floor a little sparkle, but not much more.

More in line with the basic price point, mopping isn’t entirely automatic, especially if you have any carpets or rugs at home. You won’t want the T10 Pro to mop those, and fortunately, you can set no-mop zones in the app’s map. Unfortunately, all that means is that when the mop pads are attached, the vacuum will avoid those zones entirely since it cannot retract the mops and vacuum alone. So, if you want it to clean those areas, you’ll have to manually remove the mops and set it on another cycle to vacuum. Seamless, it is not.

Then again, you’d want to remove the mop pads manually quite frequently anyway, as unlike more expensive models like the DreameBot X30 Ultra, these aren’t self-cleaning, and Ultenic recommends you wash the mop after every use. That means you should expect to spend a lot of time removing and replacing the mop pads, not to mention refilling the rather small water tank.

I’ve also had a few issues with the robot’s mapping and object detection. Like most cheaper robot vacs, it’s not great at avoiding things and gets stuck on shoelaces, cables, or cat toys at least once every cleaning cycle, despite my best efforts at setting no-go zones.

More damningly, every now and then, it gets itself lost, usually on its way back to the base, meaning it either stops in its tracks or meanders aimlessly. Worse still, once, it got so lost that it decided its map must be the problem. It promptly deleted all the map data and started from scratch — removing all of my room names, no-go zones, and no-mop areas.

Should you buy it?

The T10 Pro is a good buy if you want a basic, fairly reliable robot vacuum that you don’t have to drop a grand on.

If your priority is vacuuming, this is a great option for the price, with good suction, long battery life, and an app that’s feature-rich and easy to use when it works. You’ll probably have to put a bit of work in upfront to set no-go areas around cables or shoelaces, but this is mostly set-and-forget unless you get as unlucky as me and the map decides to delete itself.

I wouldn’t put too much stock in the mopping side of life, though. Without cleaning fluid, this is never going to really clean tough stains or spills, and the regular work of filling the water tank, replacing the mop heads, and removing them when you need the carpets done feels like enough work that you might as well just get the mop out yourself and have done with it.