Switchbot K10 Plus Combo Review: 1 Robot Vacuum, 1 Stick Vacuum, Halfway There

Throughout my career, I have reviewed my fair share of vacuums. Some of them were the robot variety, while others were of the stick variety. This is the first time I've had the opportunity to review both in one device. The Switchbot K10+ Pro Combo is a sort of two-in-one combo that is a delightful space saver and can handle most of your cleaning needs in one. At least, that's the theory of it.

In reality, some of these functions work better than others. It brings to mind the phrase, "jack of all trades, master of none." This vacuum combo tries to do a lot of things, but it's really only good at one or two of them. But of course the dream is to have a combo that will clean up your home when you're not there, and allows you to clean the bigger messes when you need to. Again, in theory, this combo will do that, but we wanted to find out how well. I've been using a Switchbot K10+ Pro Combo for about four weeks, and this is my full review.

The Switchbot K10+ Pro Combo has three parts to it. First, you get a stick vacuum which is relatively lightweight and has good battery life and can make cleaning your stairs a lot easier. Then, there's the robot vacuum, which is a bit smaller than your typical robot vacuum. Finally, you have the base station which serves as a charging station, and an auto-empty device for both vacuums — that part is really nice.

Both vacuums release their dirt into a bag that is supposed to last for about 70 days before needing to be refilled. That part seems to add up, although I have not tested the vacuum for 70 days as of yet. If I'd stuck with the original plan I'd had for testing, I probably would have gone a lot longer. Winter is here however, and that required a change which we'll get into later.

This is not the first upright stick vacuum I have reviewed, but this one solves a few pain points that the last one had. Most notably, the place you hang up the stick vacuum also charges it. You cannot disconnect the battery and charge it separately, but that's a good thing overall.

The stick vacuum weighs just under four pounds and uses one of four interchangeable heads. There is a long tube section between the dustbin and where you attach the head. That tube is removable, so if you're working in smaller confines, you can make the vacuum even more portable.

The stick vacuum is capable of up to 20,000 Pa of suction, which is generally going to be enough to get everything off the floor. I tested with general floor dirt, snow-melting salt (it is winter after all) and dog food, and it sucked up all of them with no problem. I found the normal vacuum setting didn't quite grab everything. The stick vacuum has a boost button which allows you to increase the suction (and make more noise) and that did the trick every time.

Like other stick vacuums, this vacuum isn't for cleaning all kinds of messes. Stick vacuums (and robot vacuums in general) require a constant maintenance pattern to keep things as clean as, say, a normal upright vacuum. If you want to go with a stick vacuum in lieu of an upright, you can, but plan to vacuum twice or three times as often to keep up with the accumulation of dirt — at least that's what it takes in my house with two parents, two kids, and two dogs. Your mileage may vary.

I also enjoyed using the stick vacuum to suck up messes from the stove for example. Obviously in those cases, I removed the extension tube. The stick vacuum is a tad unwieldy in that scenario. The vacuum is designed to be held by the stick at the top and if you're not doing that for whatever reason, things fall apart fast.

Regardless, the surety of walking up and grabbing the fully changed stick vacuum whenever you need it is reassuring. Pieces are easy to swap out as well. It would be nice to include a place on the base to keep those other parts. As it is, there's only a bracket that you set on top of the auto-emptying bin, but it's not hard to accidentally knock it over.

Then you get to the star of our show — the robot vacuum — and unfortunately this is where things are not so great. They're not bad, per se, but they're not great. But before we get to that, we need to talk about robot vacuums in general.

Put simply, robot vacuums are a lot of work, which is ironic considering their core function is to reduce the amount of work you have to do. Robot vacuums work best when they have a clear, open area to work in. They can detect and work around obstacles, but then you have portions of your floor that simply don't get cleaned.

Every night, you need to ask yourself, "is the floor clean enough for the robot vacuum to do its job?" You can't leave things lying on the floor, which again can be challenging when you have two parents, two kids, and two dogs — all of which like to leave things lying around.

None of these problems are the fault of Switchbot or any other robot vacuum company. It's just the reality of how they work. They're very convenient, but they're also a bit of a pain.

One thing that's missing that I absolutely can blame Switchbot for is the lack of pet waste detection. I will spare you the details as to how I discovered this is a major problem, but needless to say, I discovered it. Pet waste detection is quickly becoming table stakes in this sector, and with very good reason. Again, I will spare you the details, but just imagine a robot trolling along not realizing there's a big problem, and you'll get the idea. Unfortunately for Switchbot, this incident occurred on the morning I filed this review.

I don't know how water resistant the robot vacuum is, but I will find out in about 24-48 hours. Let's just say that I have rescheduled all cleanings until after 9:00am when I typically wake up, so that this will never happen again. But it shouldn't be an issue in the first place, and it's something that Switchbot need to fix going forward. All that being said, pet waste detection is decidedly not present, so if you have pets, proceed with caution.

The Switchbot robot vacuum is smaller than typical vacuums and that's one of the things you'll like about it. The size of the robot makes it easy to maneuver around a floor — even one as busy as a kitchen floor. A kitchen will often have a table and chairs set around it. This robot can navigate very smoothly through those tablets and chairs with aplomb.

Indeed, from a navigation standpoint, this robot is remarkable. I often marveled at how well it maneuvered in between the 28 legs that make up our table and six chairs. It barely misses a beat, and that's fun.

The robot maps the floor as it runs, and you can see the robot running in the app including near-real time updates of its position. Once it has the map of where it'll be working, it stores that in memory and can zip over to a designated position and start vacuuming with no problem whatsoever, except for one particular place.

My kitchen and living room floor are separated by a threshold, or a piece of wood transitioning from the tile kitchen floor to the wood living room floor. This threshold is no more than half an inch high, and yet, the vacuum only crosses that threshold successfully about 25% of the time. More often than not, it gets stuck, which is a little annoying. At IFA 2024, we saw robot vacuums that could climb stairs (up to about an inch and a half in height) and this robot has trouble navigating one third of that.

Of course, the robot is also pretty decent at getting itself unstuck. About 75% of the times it gets stuck, it can eventually right itself and continue back to where it was coming from or where it was going to vacuum. That's good, but the robot will often ask for help before it manages to right itself. I would like the vacuum to remember problem spots it runs into so it can better compensate for them in the future. For example, if the robot knows it gets stuck when attempting to climb this threshold straight on, I'd like to see it try hitting it at an angle next time.

Overall, I can't complain too much about the vacuum and the Threshold of Doom. But it is an annoying constant to deal with.

The other frustrating part about the robot vacuum is it doesn't really get everything that's on the floor. More than once, I've seen the vacuum roll over a rug by our front door and leave behind many bits of rock salt. I've tried to mitigate that of late by running the vacuum in front of our front door several times per day (which will likely shorten our dustbin bag's lifespan as noted earlier), but then we run into the threshold of doom many times per day. The vacuum is capable of 3,000 pa, which in the world of robot vacuums is not bad, but it should be better at cleaning.

Then there are the several instances where I would get a notification on my phone that literally said "anti-tangle brush is tangled." I'll leave it to you to decipher how silly that is. It's possible that more frequent passes at the floor might resolve the first issue of leaving stuff behind. I'm not sure how to resolve the second part though.

Overall, I would call the robot vacuum good, but not great. There are a few fundamental tasks where the robot falls short, even as it excels in other areas.

The Switchbot K10+ Pro Combo is available from its website and Amazon for $799.99. As a whole package, I don't hate that price, but I don't love it either. It's not a bad price for a robot vacuum overall, and the fact that you get the stick vacuum as well is a nice bonus. Still, for that price, I'd want the robot's floor cleaning capabilities to be better. A robot vacuum should never leave anything behind.

Meanwhile, the stick vacuum and the auto-emptying capabilities are quite nice — I like them a lot and they both do a good job at what they're trying to do. Even the robot itself is adept at scanning, mapping, and navigation, all of which can be points of failure for other vacuums.

As long as you know going in that this will not be your everything solution, but rather your "most things" solution, this is a good pickup. If you want a robot vacuum that does a more comprehensive job, you may want to look elsewhere.