The Matic Robot Vacuum Is the Cutest and Most Useful Home Cleaner

The vacuum has six RGB infrared cameras on the front, top, and back, which means that it can see in color and in darkness—you don’t have to have all the lights on for it to work, unlike a robot vacuum that uses basic optical sensors. It took a few minutes to map my home. The app is incredible. It’s a weirdly accurate 3D rendering of my home, differentiating not only the floor surfaces but also furniture and items several feet up.

The app has several buttons that you can toggle. You can change the rendering style to make the map less visually cluttered; you can use a joystick to control the vacuum manually; you can switch to an “airplane mode” to “fly” through your house at eye level, instead of at floor level; and you can record video if you have errors to send to Matic’s team.

The Matic uses what it calls long-term SLAM, or absolute mapping, which is in contrast to most vacuums that navigate via relative mapping, involving a variety of sensors and navigation systems to place walls and obstacles relative to each other. But Matic sees pretty much like a person and makes a mental map. Just like how a visitor to your home can enter through the back door, exit, and then come through the kitchen door, without becoming utterly baffled, Matic doesn’t get confused.

You can even pick the Matic up and place it anywhere you like in your house, and it will know where it is and how to get to the dock. You can see it flying in the dock while it’s being carried, if you’re watching in the app while your husband is doing it. Also, all the mapping data and analysis is streamed locally from your app to the vacuum and is confined to your devices, so you won’t see pictures of your butt on Facebook.

Speaking of husbands, you can also click Add Another User in the settings to easily add a family member to the app and vacuum. No more getting texts while I’m away at a work conference to please run the vacuum in the kitchen!

Marco, Polo

The joystick in the app is fine, but it’s not as responsive as a gaming joystick—I just bash the vacuum into things when I try to use it. Instead, I prefer to use my finger to zoom and draw on the map. For example, my husband spilled a bunch of Campari on the floor in the kitchen. I just opened the map, clicked on Clean Area, then Mop. The Matic went straight for it.