At CES 2025, I lost my mind over the Eufy E20. Robot vacuum design has stagnated over the past few years, but this was something I’d never seen before—an adorable robot vacuum that had three functions in one! Run it as a regular robot vacuum to map and pick up your home. When it’s done, unclip it from its housing and use it as a cordless stick vacuum or a hand vacuum.
There are so many things to like about the Eufy E20. It has a remarkably compact footprint, the price is reasonable, and the design problems that it solves are very impressive. After several weeks of testing, I can acknowledge its ingenuity while also conceding that this is a device that’s only designed for light cleaning. It just doesn’t work as well as a dedicated, heavy-duty robot vacuum or Dyson stick vacuum. And that’s fine.
Petite Perfection
Photograph: Adrienne So
The first thing you’ll notice is that, in contrast to other home docking stations, the E20 is remarkably tiny. I measured it at 14 inches tall, 17 inches long, and 15 inches wide, barely bigger than the robot vacuum itself. The base is a simple self-emptying dustbin, not a gigantic station housing clean and dirty water tanks like higher-end models have. It was refreshingly easy to unbox, set up, and turn on.
The robot vacuum connects to the Eufy Clean app (iOS, Android). To start using it as a robot vacuum, connect it to the app and then set it off on a mapping run around your house. It uses a laser guidance system, so no AI-enabled cameras are wandering around taking pictures of your butt and sending them to Mexico or storing them on device.
Screenshots courtesy of Adrienne So
On the other hand, a laser-guided navigation system is not quite as accurate as some of the other navigation systems that I’ve tested, like camera navigation or simultaneous localization and mapping. It avoided obstacles adroitly and mapped my rooms relatively accurately, but when I tasked it with cleaning only one room at a time, the E20 sometimes left a little trail of grime on the room’s borders. It also took the vacuum several tries to figure out that I’d made a no-go zone.
