The Eureka J15 Pro Ultra Is a Cheaper Flagship Robovac That Mostly Hits the Right Notes

A small tower, but a chonky robot

A slightly smaller tower that tucks into smaller places Credit: Amanda Blum

There's nothing revolutionary about the J15's tower design. Standing 18-inches tall, it bears a slightly smaller footprint than other premium robovac towers, but it has the same features. The water tank holds just short of two gallons of clean water, and Eureka promises the vacuum bag will last 75 days without changing. For what it's worth, this is on par with other vacuums I've tried. What's missing is a slot on the tower for cleaning fluid, so you'll need to add it yourself to the clean water each time you refill it, but that's not a dealbreaker for me given the price, and while most premium models now have this feature, not all of them do.

What is a concern, though, is the robot design. The J15 is square with rounded corners (rather than wholly circular), which gives it some unnecessary bulk that can hamper cleaning. Eureka seems to understand this, because the J20 was even more square, and the corners have become far more rounded in the J15, but the new design still doesn't change enough for me. Eureka is also still relying on LiDAR (light based laser technology), so the robot has that familiar circular sensor array up top, which makes it a bit taller. This is while many robots are moving away from LiDAR in favor or onboard cameras and AI recognition, like Roborock's Saros line. In some cases, newer LiDAR towers can retract to better help the robot slide under objects, but this isn't the case with the J15. That's bad news, because even without the tower, the J15 is taller than many other robots I've tested, which I can only attribute to Eureka being new to the game.

On the plus side, Eureka went with two spinning mop pads here, which has become popular, and one extending sweeping brush, which in theory should help counteract the size. But at over 4.5-inches tall and with that bulky body, the robot still feels chonky. While other robots are continually getting slimmer to slide under more furniture, the J15 feels a bit stuck in the past, and as I'll get into in a second, that does affect its performance.

The Eureka app is a step above

The Eureka app Credit: Amanda Blum

Worth a round of applause is an app experience that feels easier to use than most I've tried recently. I've criticized Narwal and Dreame for making it hard to explore and discover all of their robots' features by hiding them in dozens of layered sub tabs, but Eureka's app is linear, and you're never more than a click or two away from the main dashboard. From a main settings panel, you can see all your options in a long list, and my favorite features, like "find my robot" (where the robot chimes for you) and remote control are all there. While most apps feature some form of a "history" of your robots activities, Eureka also goes a step beyond by formatting this into a genuinely useful report that gives you information about what might have been missed on a run. I found the same experience on the map editor, which all robots have, but it was nice to see it summed up as a list, too. Swapping furniture came easily, and while I've struggled with this feature in other apps, I could even set up virtual walls and designate thresholds as needed, letting the J15 know how to handle them. Nothing was buried in this app, and everything was easy to tap through.

Overall, I found the process of setting up the J15 and pairing it to be painless. The robot came fully charged, and within a few minutes, it was paired and ready to go on its first mission. Once the Eureka left the dock for the first time, it made a pretty thorough sweep of the room, and mapped it with the accuracy I've come to expect from robots that combine LiDAR and AI, as Eureka does. 

Inconsistent vacuuming

The sweeper did a good job digging under the threshold to get out dirt, but the robot rolled over it without vacuuming it up. Credit: Amanda Blum

As always, I think about household debris in terms being fine particles like dirt, medium sized ones like cereal, or large ones like pet toy floof. How a vacuum deals with each is fairly important based on the kind of dirt your family generates. Normally, vacuums have little trouble with fine and medium particles, but might struggle with larger ones, which could tie up the rollers, or be viewed as an obstacle by the AI and avoided altogether. Over the three weeks of testing I did for this review, I spent more time than usual studying how the J15 cleaned these, because it was inconsistent.

One on hand, the J15 tackled large particles without issue most of the time, even large floof. On bare patches of flooring, where the robot didn't encounter obstacles, it also got most of the small, medium and large debris on an initial pass. And I was quite impressed at how effective the extending sweeper was in actually digging into thresholds and around edges. However, in more crowded areas, even with the sweeping arm moving debris out into the open, the robot would run over it and not pick it up.

This could be fixed with subsequent runs, and the J15 isn't the only robot I've tried that requires a second pass to completely clean an area. In fact, most robots have the option of running up to three passes on vacuum or mopping for this reason, but I found it perplexing. Usually, when a robot misses debris, it's a mapping issue. I've never had a robot have debris right in its path, roll over it and leave it behind. While you can make additional passes with your robot, you shouldn't have to in this case. I rarely have to with premium Roborock models.

More annoying was that the large, square design of the robot wouldn't allow it to get under as many objects as the competition, or into the same tight spaces a round machine might. Sure, it could get up close to walls if there was nothing around them, but that's not the reality of most homes. Most people have fans and speakers and other items on their floor, plugged into the wall. The have plant stands and coffee tables, and the Eureka struggled to get between and under the same items that other robots I've tested have sailed through and under. For instance, every robot I've tested in the last year has gone easily under my living room's air purifier, but the J15 could not. This has the effect of making your floor still look dirty, even after you've just cleaned, since dust and debris is allowed to collect under objects that the robot can't reach.

In the robot's favor, I absolutely loved one feature: hair cutting. On most floor robots, the bottom of the robot features rollers. These rollers have evolved over time so they don't often get caught up on hair, but hair used to decimate Roomba rollers at a frightening pace. Eureka uses razors to cut hair off of its rollers, and this translated to a robot that got stuck less often, and had clean rollers most of the time. This feature is still rare on the competition, so it's a nice value-add here, especially because Dreame's equivalent hair-cutting rollers actually require you to buy them separately, and they aren't cheap.

A better mop experience

You can see a clear delineation between the area the J15 has mopped (top) and the ground in dirt where it hasn't mopped yet (bottom) Credit: Amanda Blum

While the same issue of fitting into tight spaces or under objects also applied to mopping, it was a far better experience. The mop effectively got most stains, whether simple liquid on the floor, or cooking oil, or mud on a first pass (my dog runs in from the doggie door leaving pawprints a few times a day, and I am a terror in the kitchen), and I often saw the spinning mop pads extending out beyond the robot to catch stains that needed an extra lift. Like a number of robots I've recently tested, the J15 mop heads can also be thrown in the washing machine for a deep clean, but the tower will clean them on every return, and occasionally mid run if the robot senses it needs it, which translates to a cleaner floor. I have a lot of confidence in the mop based on my experience, and you should, too, regardless of what kind of messes are on your floor.

I also appreciated that the mop was conservative in water use. I was able to get three whole house moppings done before I had to change the water. Some robots, like Narwal's, require you to change the water constantly.

A quiet robot, but not that quiet

Something I noted over the course of my testing was how peaceful running the Eureka is. It has become so common for robots to constantly squawk about their activity that I've become immune to it. But the Eureka is soft spoken by comparison. Even when running, the robot is appreciably quiet. You're not going to want to take a Zoom call while it's cleaning, but it certainly puts out fewer decibels than most that I test.

An image from the J15's point of view Credit: Amanda Blum

Eureka actually thinks the J15 is quiet enough to act as a kind of security robot, although I'm not sure I agree. Most robots now come with onboard video, with is mostly for the AI, but also to help you see where your robot is if it's lost or stuck. Eureka promotes a side use for this video as a way to monitor pets, and so I turned on the video a few times to get an idea of what it would look like. If your pet is dodgy around robots, this one unfortunately isn't fast or quiet enough to catch up to Rover. But noise aside, there's still issues. My dog, who regards robots as roommates, eventually came into view of the robot as it patrolled the house, but it took about thirty minutes, and I had to watch it the whole time. It takes me a few seconds to locate her over the pet cams in my home, so that seems like a better solution to me.