The robot vacuum that couldn’t

The $400 Moneual Rydis H67 Pro is a robot floor cleaner designed to vacuum and wet or dry mop via disposable Swiffer-style pads. I tested this bot on mid-pile carpet, low-pile carpet, hardwood, vinyl, and ceramic tile and experienced significant inconsistencies in the form of frequent error messages, unexplained mid-cycle stalling, and imprecise docking. Overall, this robot cleaner demanded way too much hands-on attention to make it a worthwhile purchase. If you’re shopping in the $400-range, I’d suggest the $400 Neato XV Signature; it has fewer features, but the ones it has work well.

Moneual Rydis H67 Pro Hybrid Robot Vacuum Cleaner (pictures)
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The Moneual Rydis H67 Pro has a very simple glossy black finish with an understated display panel. The main cleaning modes are vacuum, mop (using an attachable mop plate and disposable wet and dry cleaning pads), and hybrid (a combo of vacuum and mop). You can access these options either from the remote control or directly on the bot using the “M” (mode) button.

The H67 Pro also offers custom cleaning options designed to work with the various vacuum, mop, and hybrid modes. These include: intensive (3-foot by 3-foot spot cleaning), shadow (targets low-light areas, like under beds or sofas), manual (use the remote to self-steer), reservation (schedule to clean the same time every day), turbo (default setting, which can be disabled to increase cleaning time), threshold (to help the bot “climb” over 0.4-inch obstacles such as hardwood-to-carpet transition strips), and double cleaning (performs two cleaning sessions in a row).

The display itself looks fairly straightforward, but I had trouble getting it to work consistently. Occasionally when I pressed the mode button, it wouldn’t respond. Other times it was very responsive. The same goes for selecting the start/stop or power on/off buttons. I accidentally initiated several cleaning cycles while trying to change the mode or power the robot cleaner off. The remote control, however, worked very well. And since several of the custom cleaning options are only accessible on the remote, I’d suggest skipping the bot display and making your cleaning selections from the remote instead.

The H67 Pro is 13.7 inches (34.8 cm) in diameter, 3.4 inches (8.6 cm) tall and 5.9 pounds (2.7kg). The dust bin capacity is 20 ounces (0.57kg) and it takes roughly 2 hours to charge for about an hour and a half of run time in the default turbo mode (deselect turbo and it will last for closer to 2 hours). In mop mode it can run for up to 5 hours on a single charge.

In addition to the robot, you also get a power cord, a charging station, a remote control with 2 AAA batteries, three wet and three dry disposable mop pads (when you run out you can use Swiffer pads or other Swiffer-style pads), a cleaning brush, and two side brushes (like the $600 Neato BotVac 85). It runs on a lithium iron phosphate 12.8-volt battery. Unlike the $500 Moneual Rydis H68 Pro, this model doesn’t come with a reservoir for distributing water on the floor like a traditional mop. Since it doesn’t have a reservoir, it’s closer to the $500 Yujin Robot iClebo Arte in terms of features.

Like the iClebo Arte, the H67 Pro uses various sensors to navigate around a room. Unlike the Arte, this bot doesn’t have a ceiling-facing camera that helps it follow a systematic cleaning pattern. Instead, it follows a seemingly random trajectory, bouncing into obstacles, turning around, and heading back the other direction. According to Moneual, the robot is designed to clean as long as it continues to sense debris or until its battery is low. However, I never once saw it return to the dock without first hearing a low battery prompt from the voice guidance feature.

The voice guidance feature is designed to alert you to various errors that you may encounter during cleaning, such as “Please check the main brush.” It also lets you know when it’s starting a cleaning cycle: “The Rydis H67 Pro will start mop cleaning.” This feature is useful, but only if you’re in the room to hear it.

The robot also had a very difficult time returning to its dock to charge. That was true whether I pressed the charging button myself or if it had a low battery and decided to return to the dock on its own. It often took so long to find the dock (10-plus minutes at times) that I regularly gave up and moved it to the charger myself. Frustratingly, it often got within an inch or two of docking, only to stop and turn back toward the cleaning pen. It would also be nice to have a wall barrier to section off of a room for custom cleaning.