Why one of the best robot vacuums for pets is from a brand you’ve never heard of

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• The Eureka J15 Pro Ultra is available for $1,000.
• With 16,200Pa of suction power, this robot vacuum and mop is fully automatic and smart enough to detect debris and wet messes on your floor.
• Admittedly, the Eureka J15 Pro Ultra isn’t the best robot vacuum I’ve tested for the price, and it had some initial connectivity issues, but it works hard to get your floors clean.

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If you have furry pets at home, you’re likely all too familiar with finding pet hair all over your floors. We all love our pets, but I don’t think I’ve met a single owner who feels the same way about pet hair. In my experience, a robot vacuum is the best way to keep it at bay: it runs autonomously and covers your entire living area, even spots you may miss during a regular cleaning, like under the couch.

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The J15 Pro Ultra is the second Eureka robot vacuum I’ve tested, and I was looking forward to seeing how it performed against pet hair. With a powerful 16,200Pa of suction power, an extendable side brush, a roller brush with blades to cut hair, a self-emptying dustbin, and self-washing mop pads, this robot seems to have it all.  

Unfortunately, the Eureka J15 Pro Ultra is probably the vacuum I’ve taken the longest to test, due to some initial hiccups. 

I test a lot of robot vacuums; most do pretty well, others don’t do well enough that I’d recommend them wholeheartedly. After seeing the J15 Pro Ultra at CES in January, I really wanted to give it a fair shot, so I pushed through the setup issues I experienced.

Out of the box, the Eureka J15 Pro Ultra is impressive. It’s large, sure, but it boasts a lot of features and makes a lot of great promises, so I was excited to test it. After setting it up at my house’s drop zone and filling its tank with clean water, I set off to add it to the Eureka app. 

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No matter how much I tried, my phone couldn’t connect to the robot. After at least 12 tries, I became frustrated and put it all away. When I tried again a week later, I had the same issue — and then again a couple of weeks after that. If it wasn’t an issue with the app not finding the Wi-Fi, then it was kicking me out in the last phase of setup. It took multiple tries for the app to finally connect to the J15 Pro Ultra, and for me to begin testing. 

Overall, this Eureka robot vacuum and mop delivers pretty well on most of its promises. It did outstandingly on my hard floors, rarely leaving anything behind. In my controlled tests on suction power, the J15 Pro Ultra picked up about 84% of debris from hard floors but only 49% on carpet. It accurately avoided small obstacles, like rolled-up tissues and small toys, about 64% of the time. 

This performance was similar to my tests of the older Dreame L40 Ultra, one of the best Dreame robot vacuums available. However, the Eureka has stronger suction power, the FlexiRazor brush that cuts tangled hair as it spins 400 times per minute, and the ability to differentiate dry debris from wet spills to know when to vacuum or mop. 

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That last point is important as the vast majority of robot vacuums on the market can’t do that. I had a Roomba vacuum over dog vomit and then spread it around half the downstairs area before I caught it, which resulted in me having to thoroughly clean and disinfect many tiny parts of the robot vacuum to get rid of it. 

While I’d rather not have my robot vacuum mess with dog vomit, at least the Eureka J15 Pro Ultra can mop up other wet messes, like spilled water or juice, without moisture creeping into the vacuum’s mechanism. 

Unfortunately, the thing that I loved most about the first Eureka I tested is missing in the J15 Pro Ultra: a bagless dust canister. This is difficult to achieve in a robot vacuum and mop combination, but I really liked that the E20 Plus empties itself into a plastic canister that you can empty out every few weeks. This eliminates the extra cost of dust bags and means you don’t have to reorder them constantly. 

To be fair, a dust bag is the most common method self-emptying robot vacuum manufacturers use, especially in premium models. 

ZDNET’s buying advice

The Eureka J15 Pro Ultra is a good option for pet parents, especially those familiar with the Eureka brand, but it’s not the best robot vacuum and mop you can buy for the price. I experienced a lot of initial connectivity issues, which initially soured my opinion of this robot, but it redeemed itself after testing it. 

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The J15 Pro Ultra efficiently and swiftly cleaned all the different types of hard floors in my home, and did well avoiding most small obstacles. The tangle-free brush stays mostly free of pet hair, which was nice to see with a dog that leaves clumps of hair wherever he goes.

However, it didn’t perform as well on carpets as it did on hard floors. This makes me believe that this is the right robot vacuum for pet parents who have tile, hardwood, and vinyl planks, instead of mostly carpeted areas.

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