(Image credit: Future)

I've been in the fortunate position to have reviewed a veritable tranche of very decent home appliances this year for both TechRadar and its sister publication T3 this year, but the Roborock F25 Ultra hard floor cleaner is the product that has impressed me the most.

At this juncture you might be wondering what a hard floor cleaner actually is. And you wouldn't be alone, because even the manufacturers of this particular household product don't really know what to call it. Some manufacturers ill-advisedly describe it as a 'wet & dry mop' – which it arguably isn't because the mop it uses is never dry – while others have settled on the more realistically acceptable but less glamorous moniker of 'hard floor cleaner'.

(Image credit: Future)

You'll also see things like this referred to as a 'wet and dry vacuum' (TechRadar's preferred term), although some similar models don't have suction, which confuses the matter slightly.

For the uninitiated, a hard floor cleaner is a battery-powered upright floor-cleaning system designed for wet mopping hard floors of all types, bar some more delicate materials like thin wooden laminates, polished concrete and marble. Think of it as a liquid-swallowing vacuum cleaner and convenient replacement for a conventional mop and bucket, and you're halfway there.

However, do note that while it will collect dry debris during its wet cleaning regime like a normal cordless stick vac, it is absolutely not a replacement for a vacuum cleaner which, of course, is designed for sucking dry debris and dust off hard floors and especially carpets.

Strangely satisfying

There's a plethora of hard floor cleaning models out there from the likes of Tineco (one of the first companies to introduce a system like this), Vax and Bissell but, for my money, robot vac stalwart Roborock smashed it out of the park with the recently introduced F25 Ultra.

Sleek, efficient and practical, the F25 Ultra takes cordless hard floor mopping to a whole new echelon by including a raft of new features and functions that make the unenviable act of mopping a strangely satisfying task.

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Say you've just spilled a bowl of porridge or cereal or, heaven forfend, the new puppy has just relieved itself on your kitchen floor. With this product you simply remove it from its charging plinth, wheel it over to the offending chaos, turn it on and gently push the unit towards the mess. Then watch with a combination of awe – and possible revulsion – as the quagmire is quite literally sucked into the F25 Ultra's 24.3oz (0.72 liter) dirty water tank, leaving no trace whatsoever of the offending spill.