CES 2025: Eufy's New 'Three-in-One' Robot Vacuum Left Me Scratching My Head
Today at CES, Eufy announced a new robot vacuum with a twist: it is also a stick and a hand vacuum. It’s not only the first “three-in-one” robot, it is also the winner of a CES Best of Innovation award. Having said that, I’ve had my hands on E20 the last week or so, and I have found it to be a bit confounding and underwhelming.
Eufy has made some of my favorite security cameras in the last few years—however, when it comes to vacuums, I’m often left unimpressed. Much was made of the Omni S1 last year when I tested it, and while the design was interesting and it performed well enough, I felt it was overpriced. The most complimentary I’ve ever been to Eufy was towards the X10 Pro Omni, which I said was “pretty good” for the price point.
I was excited about the E20 from the jump. It came in a delightfully small, light box, which may not seem exciting but most robot vacuums arrive in hulking, heavy boxes. Once I unpacked the box, I kept digging back through looking for the missing lid to the robot. I soon realized there wasn’t one. The robot has an exposed face, showing the handled, removable part of the stick vacuum. To me, it looks unfinished. When you remove the handle from the robot, it is unbalanced enough that the robot struggles to remain docked. I also found it odd that there is no place to dock the stick and attachments when not in use, which feels like a real missed opportunity.
Once I got it up and running, the E20 did a good job of mapping the space. However, it struggled to navigate it. Something about the weight of the handle makes the robot awkwardly balanced, and so it got stuck a number of times.
As a stick vacuum, the E20 worked fine. It is a little short and since I’ve spent a lot of the last year testing stick vacuums with computer displays from Dyson, Samsung, and Narwal, it was almost quaint to have such a simplistic stick in my hand. A drawback I noticed immediately was the E20's tiny capacity. The tower is tiny, too. I had to return to the dock multiple times vacuuming the main floor of my very small house, and each time you have to take the vacuum apart, dock the head of it, wait for it to empty and then reattach it.
The handheld is simply the handle and any attachment without the stick. It performs about the same. There is a multitool, which is my favorite attachment, but I’d rather have a handheld nearby that I could quickly grab and put back than to deal with the E20.
More curious, at a time when every robot vacuum practically bursts with pride boasting about astronomical suction power (we saw it as high as 22,000Pa this week), the E20 only has 8,000 Pa. What’s odd is that the stick vacuum has 30,000Pa. So, the robot and the stick don’t share a motor, which seems to mean the robot is merely a place to store the handle. It makes very little sense to me.
What the E20 has going for it is price. It’s only $540 and will be available for presale starting Jan. 6, for $50 off retail. Still, since it is merely a vacuum and not a robot vacuum/mop combo, I think there are better options at this price point, like the Switchbot K10+.