My pick is the Dreame D20 Pro Plus — which does technically ship with a mop. The mop isn’t any good, so don’t install it. Run it as a straight vacuum and you get better engineering than most true vacuum-only models give you.

Why the vacuum-only shelf is thin

This is the most-asked question I get, and it’s a completely fair one. A mop means another tank to fill, another pad to wash, and another component that can fail. Plenty of people have all hard floors, or all carpet, or they just want the machine to do one job well.

The problem is that manufacturers stopped putting their best engineering into vacuum-only models years ago. The money and the R&D went to combo units, so the true vacuum-only shelf is mostly older platforms with older navigation and simpler docks. You end up paying for simplicity with worse performance, which isn’t a trade I like recommending.

So buy the combo and leave the mop in the box

That’s why my answer is the Dreame D20 Pro Plus. I’m not going to pretend its mop is good, because it isn’t. But the vacuum side, the navigation and the dock are all better than what you’d get from a comparable vacuum-only unit, and you are under no obligation to ever install the mop pad.

Set the app to vacuum-only mode, leave the pad in the box, and it behaves like a straight vacuum for its entire life. It never asks for water and it never gets your floors wet. I’d rather tell you that plainly than dress up a weaker robot as the “vacuum-only pick.”

Dad’s Take

Don’t buy a worse robot just because the box doesn’t say mop. Buy the better one and skip the feature you don’t want.