It wasn’t too long ago that I was testing Eureka’s decked-out J15 Pro Ultra robot vacuum cleaner, which I absolutely loved. Now, I’ve been playing around with the more affordable Eureka J15 Ultra and found that despite its $300 discount, it’s a strong contender for the best robot vacuum around.
The Eureka J15 Ultra has an MSRP of $699 but can often be purchased for less than $600 (see it on Amazon), which is great for our collective wallets.
Design and Build
- Elegant black and white combo
- No-tangle brush
- Fairly large base station
The Eureka J15 Ultra is rather similar to the J15 Pro Ultra in that the bases are pretty much identical. The robot is equipped with loads of sensors to map your home, navigate the space, and avoid obstacles you leave behind.
The station will take over quite a bit of space in your home as it’s not a compact model. But that’s because it has room for two water tanks for clean and dirty water. The dust bag is tucked behind a panel on the front.
Gabriela Vatu
The base station takes as many jobs off your hands as possible, collecting the dust and debris from the robot vac, refilling the vacuum with clean water and draining the dirty water compartment, washing and drying the mop, and charging the device.
The J15 Pro Ultra cleans its own base tray but this model does not, so you’ll have to take on that job yourself. Thankfully, removing the tray is extremely easy, and cleaning only requires a bit of rinsing and scrubbing if you’ve ignored it for a bit.
Performance & Features
- Powerful: 19,000 Pa
- Cuts hair to prevent tangles
- Washes and dries mop pads
Pairing the Eureka robot with the app only takes a couple of minutes. You’ll need to pair the robot to your Wi-Fi network, wait a few minutes to update the device, and then send it off on its first task which is mapping your home. Once that’s done, you can edit the map to name the rooms it didn’t get right for instance, more accurately split rooms and hallways, and so on.
There are multiple cleaning modes to choose from before each job. If you only want the robot to vacuum the house, you can definitely do that, but you can also have it vacuum and then mop the areas, adjusting the suction level and path preferences. There’s also a Tic Tac Toe mode you can enable, in which the robot will perform crisscross sweeping and mopping while cleaning twice so it ensures that it’s picking up everything.
Gabriela Vatu
The Eureka app can easily be integrated with your go-to smart assistant, whether that’s Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri, so you can issue voice commands.
The new Eureka J15 Ultra comes with 19,000 Pa suction power, which is actually more than the previous flagship, so it delivers amazing results across the house, no matter which surface it cleans. It picked up dirt, food crumbs, pet hair, and everything in between like a pro. It performed well even with stubborn pet hair from the spot on the carpet where one of my dogs likes to sleep. I haven’t noticed any hair wrapped around the roller either, and that’s thanks to the FlexiRazor system, which cuts the hair as it picks it up.
The Eureka J15 Ultra does a good job at navigating the home and avoiding pets and various items on the ground, although it will sometimes eat up a sock if it’s dark in the room. In that case, it will scream for help to untangle it.
Mopping is also an area in which this robot vacuum excels. Equipped with two rotating mops, one of which extends to better reach baseboards and corners, it leaves floors looking just about perfect. Even when it encountered stubborn stains, it made several passes to get the floor perfectly clean. When encountering carpets, the mops lift enough to avoid wetting them, which is always handy because no one wants soggy carpets.
Gabriela Vatu
Every now and then the robot returns to the station to clean the mops which ensures it won’t streak dirt everywhere. When the job is complete, it parks itself, empties the bin again, washes the mops, and empties the dirty water compartment. Then, the station begins air drying the mops, which takes a few hours to complete. Still, that’s a good thing because it stops the mops from smelling horrible from all the bacteria buildup.
The app allows you to choose how frequently you want the mops to be washed, how hot you want the water to be when it washes them, and whether you want it to use cool or hot air to dry them. There are about a million settings to fiddle with if you want, but I found that leaving them at their default values worked well.
You’ll get notifications on your phone when you need to refill the water tank or empty the dirty one when the robot is stuck somewhere, and so on.
Price & Availability
The Eureka J15 Ultra is available at Amazon for $699.99 but at the time of writing, it’s on sale for $599.99. That’s a lot less than the previous J15 Ultra Pro. Despite the price difference, there aren’t that many differences between the two versions. Aside from the fact that this one doesn’t clean its own base tray and doesn’t lift the roller brush, they’re pretty much the same. In fact, the budget-friendly J15 Ultra actually delivers more suction power, which was unexpected.
Are there models from other brands you could get for less? Yes. Will they deliver the same number of features? Not quite. Frankly, at this price, the Eureka J15 Ultra is an absolute bargain and should definitely be on your shortlist.
Should you buy the Eureka J15 Ultra?
If you want a robot vacuum cleaner that can do just about everything for a great price, then the Eureka J15 Ultra is one you should consider. If you can find it on sale, even better! In my opinion, it takes enough jobs off your chore list that it’s worth the investment.
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Specifications
- Model: J15 Ultra
- Manufacturer: Eureka
- Battery: 5,200 mAh
- Suction power: Up to 19,00Pa
- Dust container: 3L
- Hepa filter: yes
- Mapping: Laser (Lidar) + RGB camera + Line Laser
- Communication: Wi-Fi
- Associated app: Yes
- Map function: Yes
- With room division: Yes
- Compatible with Google Assistant/Amazon Alexa/Apple Siri: Yes/Yes/Yes
- Other: Cleans both mops and floors with hot water, FlexiRazor hair-cutting technology
- Base station dimensions: 458 × 395 × 468mm
