Eufy is a company that generally makes products that I really like. They make some of the best security cameras in the industry, enough so that after testing many brands I installed Eufy’s Solocams in my home. Anker, their parent company, makes some of my favorite power banks, and I’m very happy with my Eufy doorbell. Like many companies that make smart tech, they also make vacuum cleaners.

The Eufy Robot Vacuum Omni S1 Pro is interesting in a few ways. While Eufy is an established brand that has produced and launched many products, including other robot vacuums, they went back to Kickstarter for this model, where their goal was blown within hours. Secondly, instead of opting for the compact tower design that almost every company has opted for in robot vacuums lately, the S1 has a gigantic retro tower look. However, despite my brand loyalty, the interesting design, and the vacuum’s decent performance, I still think the Omni S1 Pro is not a good buy: there is a disconnect between the robot Eufy thinks it has built and the one I tested. The S1 currently costs $999 on Kickstarter, but should be available in stores later this spring or early summer for a much higher price.

Typically, robot vacuums and mops these days come with a dock and tower that fills with clean water, empties with dirty water, vacuums, and cleans the mop. These towers are impossible to ignore because of their size, but brands generally try to make them generic enough that they blend into the landscape of the room around them. Eufy took a different approach with the S1. The tower is tall enough to be mistaken for a stick vacuum, and it sports the word “MACH” on the front, which is also the name of the app. Made of molded transparent black plastic, the contents of the tower are obscured, but only barely. While it’s likely made of the same materials as other brands that also use molded plastic, the transparent plastic does occasionally look cheap. Despite its vertical size, the tower also doesn’t take up much less horizontal space than other robots. Its footprint is about the same, but you won’t be able to tuck it under tables and counters as easily.

The robot itself is much like many other modern robot vacuums, with a roller, rotating sweeping brushes, and a mopping brush. Eufy ships the S1 Pro with many replacement parts, including extra rollers, brushes, and filters. But Eufy has marketed this robot as a premium floor cleaning robot, with a premium price. In the marketing for the robot, you’ll routinely see words like “groundbreaking.” In fact, the marketing materials read, “World’s first floor cleaning robot vacuum with an all-in-one station,” until I asked what made it different from other floor cleaning robots, since those are pretty common now. The language has disappeared from Kickstarter, but it still appears on Eufy’s website . The problem is, it’s not groundbreaking: While this robot was being developed, floor cleaning robots were becoming commonplace, and the technology had outpaced what this robot had to offer, with other brands offering extendable brushes and mops, built-in video, voice assistants, and direct connection to plumbing. While the S1 has a lot of features that I like in other robots, like a built-in solution storage space in the tower and an easy way to divide and merge rooms in the app, most other premium robots have these too.