6 On Your Side: Consumer Confidence, robotic mops and more

(ABC 6 News) – No one wants dirty floors, but few of us like cleaning them either.

It may look like a robotic vacuum, but it’s actually a robotic mop.

Never heard of a robomop? Consumer Reports, Tyler Ivester, explains what they are.

“Robotic mops range from basic models that are operated by remote control to sophisticated hybrid ones that mop and vacuum and are controlled by a remote or an app,” Ivester said.

Robotic mops are designed to clean hard surface floors like tile, vinyl, or some hardwood, not carpet.

To test how well a robotic mop can actually mop, CR’s testers spill espresso and V8 juice on ceramic tile and vinyl flooring and then let it dry.

The best robomops tackle the stains and leave a clean floor behind. Hint: models with spinning mop heads did the best job.

“In our navigation test, we see how well a mop can avoid obstacles, we see how well they steer around furniture as well as how they interact with both cords and carpet fringe,” Ivester said.

In CR’s tests, the pricey hybrid model from Narwal came out on top and it has an auto-clean function that will wash the spinning mop heads as well.

For much less, the basic Samsung mop matched the Narwal test for test but it won’t clean itself. As a bonus, it can also be used as a handheld scrubber for surfaces like your shower. One downside of the Samsung, it’s more than five inches tall, which means it may not fit under some furniture or the toe kick of your kitchen cabinets. If that’s an issue for you, the moderately-priced Bissell Spinwave also did well in CR’s tests and is less than three and a half inches tall.