Here’s my verdict on the Nvidia GPU powered robot vacuum cleaner I let clean my house for weeks

Pioneer’s devices face the unique challenge of reinventing a wheel. They reimagine a popular and referential product to provide a new alternative for common user problems. The The Matic robot is a robot vacuum cleaner that does exactly this.

I’ve also tested dozens robot vacuums. These are the three robot vacuums I recommend the most to my family and friends.

While testing robot vacuums can be a lot of fun, many have become a bit stagnant in their innovation. The Matic redefines the robot cleaner and does so well that it surpasses many more expensive competitors.

When you first see the Matic, its shape will catch your attention. It looks more like a robot, with its rectangular brush roller at the front. The 8-inch-high body houses the robot’s water tank and debris bag.

The brush roller is located in the rectangular portion on the front, not in the middle like a round robot. This allows it to reach corners better than a cordless or traditional vacuum. The mop roller is located behind the brush, but does not touch the floor until it’s mopping time. The Matic lowers its rollers for cleaning and tilts the front up to mop.

This robot is intelligent enough to see stubborn messes and go over them accordingly. If you spill liquids, the robot will mop them up rather than vacuum over them, spreading them around.

To do this, the Matic is equipped with five RGB cameras that continuously monitor its surroundings. Inside, an Nvidia GPU powers its AI capabilities, including 3D mapping, image recognition, and real-time decision-making.

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During testing, I tossed many obstacles on my floors and was rewarded with an efficient, intelligent robot vacuum unlike anything I’ve ever seen. For example, I put a plastic cup on the ground, and the Matic saw it immediately and avoided it. The cup was marked as an obstacle on the Matic app’s map within a few seconds.

The Matic is so intelligent that it can make real-time decisions to adjust its cleaning settings and redirect the robot. I put cords of various colors and thicknesses on my floors, and the Matic never suctioned them up. The Matic recognizes the obstacles even if they appear after it begins cleaning, and it doesn’t hiccup to redirect itself like other robots do.

The Matic returns to charge sporadically during a cleaning session. On a day when my kids left a mess of art supplies in a room while the Matic was cleaning, I watched it return to charge and weave around various objects on the floor that hadn’t been there minutes prior, including the glue gun’s cord. It does it without even slowing down to assess its surroundings.

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This robot always knows where it is in your home. It uses the cameras to create a 3D map, which was a bit unnerving to see for the first time. The robot scans your home with the cameras to create the map, letting you see your different floor types and even the patterns of your rugs on the virtual map in the app.

I moved the Matic multiple times during testing to take photos, and the robot almost immediately updated its location on the app’s virtual map. Because it knows where it is, it can always find its dock when it’s done cleaning or recharging. And it can also make decisions according to its location, like taking another route to its dock when something temporarily blocks the shorter one.

But a robot scanning your entire house like this begs the question of how secure it is. The Matic team is adamant that the data processing is all done locally on the robot, not on the cloud. The company tells me it doesn’t collect video or audio data, unless you authorize it in specific instances.

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The Matic app lets you choose whether you want to be able to control your robot remotely. If you do, the robot transmits data through an encrypted cloud connection. You can always opt out of remote usage if you’d prefer.

Even the Matic’s dustbin is completely reimagined. Instead of a hard plastic dustbin, this robot has a soft, clear bag that holds all the waste — even the dirty water. The bag has diaper salts to absorb liquids and a built-in HEPA filter so that you get a fresh one each time you get a new bag. Each bag lasts about a week, though your mileage may vary, and costs around $2.

But never having to throw out a robot vacuum’s dirty water tank after it’s seemingly curdled at the dock is priceless.

The makers of Matic created the robot to focus more on efficiency and longevity than on having the strongest suction on the market. As a result, the robot is efficient and follows a unique checkerboard cleaning pattern to cover areas, followed by edge cleaning.

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This is the fastest-moving robot vacuum I’ve tested, but it’s meant to be more of a household companion that can clean and maintain your floors. It navigates quickly, but it takes its time to clean, often five times as long as other robot vacuums. An area of my home that takes other robots about 90 minutes to vacuum and mop takes Matic about five hours. But it’s quiet enough to run at night, so I just run it overnight to wake up to a clean home.

ZDNET’s buying advice

The The future of Matic is perhaps its most impressive feature. It is a robot for the home that can mop and vacuum, powered by an Nvidia GPU. The Matic team is constantly improving its software. They add features like edge cleaning and the new Android application, as well as future promises such voice and gesture controls.

There’s no need to worry about purchasing the latest and greatest robotic vacuum every year. You can trust the Matic will continue to improve and gain new capabilities.

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The devices that revolutionize the status-quo can either be hits, such as Apple’s touchscreen iPhone or misses like Microsoft’s failed attempt at a tablet in the early 2000s. Most misses fail because the public doesn’t want them, not because the manufacturer is to blame. Matic was a success as a robot vacuum.