When it comes to household chores, windows cleaning ranks right up there with, well, window cleaning. There's a reason many people who clean homes for a living tell you they don't do windows, and if they do, you can expect to pay extra for the work.
Enter the brand-new Winbot W710 ($350) and Winbot W730 ($400). These 4.5-pound robots are supposed to let you "clean your windows, glass doors, mirrors and more with just the touch of a button." In one pass, the Winbots run a pad dampened with cleaning solution over glass, squeegee it, and then dry it. The devices hold on by suction and use two antislip treads to move around. You can direct the devices with a remote control. The W710 works on only framed surfaces; the W730 can handle framed and frameless.
During our tests*, we ran the Winbots on windows of different sizes, on a frameless glass door, on a whiteboard where we'd drawn a grid, and on tilted windows that mimicked a skylight.
Bottom line. The Winbots do windows, albeit not perfectly. They cleaned fingerprints, dust, and streaks, but they didn't handle heavy stains, and sometimes missed a spot. The Winbots cannot clean nonvertical surfaces such as glass tables and tilted windows. The W730 cleaned frameless edges well, but on similar surfaces the W710 lost suction and fell off.
The Winbots will save you work but not necessarily time: These robots averaged nearly 30 seconds per square foot of window cleaned; it took us about 8 seconds with a little elbow grease.
If you're a gadget junkie or if you have high windows that are hard to clean safely, a Winbot could make sense. Otherwise grab some window cleaner and paper towels.
