About Bristle & Bot

Bristle & Bot exists because of a gap that is easy to describe. Search for a robot vacuum and you will find dozens of ranked lists. Search for the thing that is actually stopping you buying — a 30mm door sill, a shedding dog, a rug the last robot ate — and you will find that problem demoted to a subheading inside a ranked list.

So this site is organized the other way round. Six floor problems at the top level, each one a real page with its own picks, and underneath them the cross-brand tables that let you check a manufacturer’s claim against its rivals’.

What we do not do

We do not test robot vacuums. We have never owned or handled one of the machines on this site. There is no lab, no floor rig, no shelf of purchased units, and there is not going to be.

That is worth saying at the top rather than in a disclaimer, because the rest of the field says the opposite. Anyone telling you they lab-tested twenty robot vacuums this year either has a lab or is not telling you the truth. We have neither the lab nor the appetite for the second option.

What we do instead

We read the manufacturers’ own published material, pull the specifications into one place, and link every individual figure to the page it came from. As of the last full pass on 2026-09-01 that is 115 sourced figures across 23 models and 34 articles.

The genuinely useful part turned out to be the gaps. Two of the six brands here publish no suction figure and no threshold climb height for any model we cover, while marketing hardware aimed squarely at the problems those figures describe. We record that as “not published” rather than filling it in from a review site, and the pattern of what each maker will and will not state is one of the more informative things on the site.

The method is written out in full, in enough detail that you could repeat it, on how we pick.

Three numbers where zero is the good answer

• Units we claim to have tested: 0. Everyone in this category claims a test lab. We do not have one and we do not pretend to.
• Sponsored placements: 0. No manufacturer has paid for inclusion or position here, and none has been offered the chance.
• Free units accepted: 0. We do not take manufacturer samples, which is the cheapest way to keep the second number at zero.

The obvious question those raise is why you would trust a site with no lab. The answer is that every number here is a link. Click one, check it against the manufacturer’s page, and if it does not match, tell us and we will correct it with a date on the change. That offer is the entire basis of the arrangement.

Who writes this

Scooter M. — an enthusiast who is genuinely into this stuff. I do not have a test lab and I have not run these machines through my house. What I do is read the manuals, pull the published specs into one table, do the arithmetic, and link every number back to where it came from. No lab coat.

There is no editorial team, no panel of experts and no certification behind any of this, because inventing one would be the same category of lie as inventing a test result. What there is, is a method you can check.

How this is funded

Affiliate commission. When you buy through a link here we earn a percentage at no extra cost to you, as an Amazon Associate. Commission does not affect what we recommend or in what order, and the structure is what stops it: criteria are published before products are chosen, every figure is linked to its source, and every roundup names a pick to skip. The full statement is on the affiliate disclosure.

Who publishes this

Bristle & Bot is published by Slate Mill Group. It is a national US publication with no storefront, no premises and no service area — the products are bought from retailers, not from us.

Corrections, questions and complaints all go to the same place: info@bristleandbot.com. We read everything and reply to most messages within a few days.