I just tested the ‘world’s smallest robot vacuum’ — here's my verdict

SwitchBot's robot vacuums have consistently just felt shy of greatness as of late. With every smart feature and solid performance comes a slight caveat, one that wouldn't put me entirely off them but does sour an otherwise pretty solid outing.

Still, the SwitchBot K11+, with its smaller base, cleaner aesthetic, and stronger suction force, elevated my hopes when it arrived at my door.

What a shame, then, that while the K11+ takes a few steps forward from the SwitchBot K10+ Pro, it manages to lag behind its predecessor in one too many areas.

On one hand, the K11+ benefits from a bit of a design refresh: its base not only looks more aesthetically pleasing thanks to the clean wood finish on top, but it has a slightly smaller footprint.

However, the improved suction capacity doesn’t actually translate to much of an increase in performance. In fact, the narrower gap in the anti-tangle brush actually presents greater difficulty when trying to suction up larger debris. Here's how the SwitchBot K11+ fared in our tests.

SwitchBot K11+ Robot Vacuum Review: Price and availability

The SwitchBot K11+ retails for $399, but as is the case with previous SwitchBot models, you can more or less entirely disregard that MSRP. This is because the vacuum regularly goes for as little as $269 on Amazon. The black variant, in particular, has been sitting at this price for a few weeks now.

Alternatively, SwitchBot offers plenty of coupons and sales on its site. At time of writing, you could pick up the SwitchBot K11+ for 37% off preorders, bringing the price tag down to $252. With this discount, that positions the K11+ somewhere between the Shark IQ and the iLife V3s in terms of cost.

SwitchBot's recurring habit of putting its devices on sale makes me hesitant to suggest you go and pick up the K11+ at full price.

Once the K11+ is on sale, it’s a more attractive option. And given that (at time of writing), the K10+ Pro is listed for $237.99 on Amazon and offers more consistent performance than the K11+, the earlier model feels like an obvious contender.

SwitchBot K11+ Robot Vacuum Review: Setup

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With both the packaging the vacuum comes in and the size of the vacuum itself, the SwitchBot K11+ is economical with space. It's well packed, with clean, easy-to-parse sections of cardboard, and it even comes with a dust bag pre-installed.

Once taken out of its packaging, you simply have to unpack the accessories, which are stored inside the base of the charging station, plug in the base and pop the robot vacuum on charge. The instruction manual is well laid out and easy to understand, though the vacuum is easy to set up, even without it.

You can click the 'on' button on the robot vacuum, and it will automatically map out your house for future cleans (plus it will do some vacuuming as it maps).

In theory, this mapping system is very intuitive, though I don't usually think it's all that necessary, as previous SwitchBot models I’ve tested regularly find their way into rooms that aren't in its mapping.

The K11+ surprised me in just how much trouble it had with mapping its surroundings. The auto-mapping function created a layout that was an almost entirely inaccurate representation of my flat, and when I prompted the robot vacuum to clean, it rolled around the same 3 feet or so a couple of times before declaring that it had invalid map data.

Usually, this is where the Switchbot app comes in. Here, you can perform a host of tweaks to your vacuum’s cleaning path, including blocking off certain rooms or avoiding particular obstacles.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow you to add to any collected map data, so the only solution for fixing inconsistencies in mapping is to send the bot around the space again and hope it does a better job this time around. So, while mapping with the K10+ Pro was a one-and-done affair, the K11+ required about four tries before it perfected it.

SwitchBot K11+ Robot Vacuum Review: Design

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The SwitchBot K11+ is a small robot vacuum and includes a charging base / self-emptying station. The base station is a little smaller than the base station of the SwitchBot K10+ Pro, but the robot vacuum itself is the exact same size.

This time around, it comes with a wooden top, which looks rather dashing in a room, and the cute stature of the base makes it easy to place in most environments without dominating too much space. The only requirement is that it needs to be placed against a wall, and have a small runway in front of the base to get out, and back in to charge.

On paper, the SwitchBot K11+ is basically the K10+ Pro but a little better in many ways. It has double the suction power at 6000Pa and, despite the base station being smaller, it has the same size 4L antibacterial dust bag. The robot vacuum can go back to its base when it's done and will auto-empty when it gets back.

SwitchBot advertises that the K11+ has a mop function, but, like the previous version, it's not really a mop mode.

It's instead a wet wipe that you attach to the bottom, before sending the vacuum around. You will need to make sure it's only going on a moppable floor, and the box comes with 30 mop wipes, which should give you a little over half a year's worth if you mop once a week.

Mopping is an area that really benefits from good old human elbow grease, so I’m not impressed by the mere ‘swiping of a wet wipe’ approach that the SwitchBot K11+ takes. Obviously, mopping isn’t this product’s main selling point, but it would be nice if this feature delivered more of a punch.

SwitchBot K11+ Robot Vacuum Review: Performance

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The 6000 PA of suction power from the K11+ doesn't convert to a super loud sound in action, which is pretty great. However, despite being more powerful than SwitchBot's previous model, it comes with its own unique weaknesses.

Both models look alike and seemingly perform alike in regular vacuuming tasks. Unfortunately, another thing they have in common is that they both did a dreadful job of conquering a scattering of Cheerios.

The vast majority of these little rings of cereal just couldn't quite get past the narrow gap between the brush underneath, and on multiple occasions, they became entirely squished into my carpet.

Cheerios crushed on harder flooring isn't too bad, as it could just sweep up the remains, but the body of the robot vacuum is more likely to drag them along and drop them off than pick them up. This is a bit of a disappointment as it means that any debris larger than about half an inch needs to be dealt with using another vacuuming solution.

With hair, the K11+ offers a slightly better performance. It does manage to pick up most of it, but other bits of hair are instead dragged around and pushed into the carpet. Again, it performs better here on hardwood but still regularly gets caught in the sides of the robo-vac and the front.

With kitty litter, the K11+ delivers its best showing yet and manages to pick up every last bit of debris both on hardwood and carpet, so that's pretty positive (or pawsitive?) for cat owners who like to keep their space clean.

When it comes to battery life, the SwitchBot K11+ knocks it out of the park. It can last over two hours on quiet mode, but honestly, in my time using it, I haven’t experienced a single instance where the bot ran out of charge before completing its full cleaning task.

My living space is pretty compact, but I imagine that anyone with a moderately-sized home won’t have any problems with battery longevity.

Day-to-day maintenance is pretty minimal thanks to the vacuum’s self-emptying process, but you do have to step in every now and then to clean out the anti-tangle brush.

The frequency with which you’ll need to do that will depend on how hairy you (and your pets) are, as hair is one of the biggest culprits for clogging up the mechanism in the brush. The included cleaning tool makes combating this a lot easier (though unfortunately, there’s nothing it can do to make it any less unpleasant).

A single dust bag can hold about two months' worth of dust and debris. Meaning, for the most part, you’ll have to do very little other than leave your vacuum to complete its cleaning routine to the best of its ability.

With everything being so automated, it can be easy to forget about but thankfully, the SwitchBot app offers a helpful suite of reminders to change out your dust bag, dustbin filter, anti-tangle brush, and side brush when maintenance is needed.

Noise levels

I regularly measure around 50 dB in action, which is less than the average handheld vacuum, and even lower than the K10+ Pro I tested prior.

The emptying mechanism is fairly unpleasant to the ears (the SwitchBot app even warns you as such), but thankfully, the K11+ dials down this noise somewhat, too

Battery life

Battery life is decent, at around an hour, with it never going dead while running around my apartment. Low suction measures up to two hours, but it's rare that the K11+ stays on low for an entire clean.

SwitchBot K11+ Robot Vacuum Review: Verdict

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Appearances can be deceiving, and none more so than in this case, where what seemed to be an upgrade from SwitchBot’s previous robot vacuum model actually wound up falling at a lot of the same hurdles (and some new ones too).

It’s a swanky-looking cleaning solution that certainly looks the part, and offers all the convenience you’d expect of a robotic vacuum.

However, the issues with inconsistent mapping and regular clogs in the anti-tangle brush add unwelcome extra labour to what should be a foolproof, automated experience.

Battery life and noise output have both seen an improvement in the K11+, but these are some of the only reasons I’d recommend picking up the K11+ instead of the more affordable K10+ Pro.