A mopping dock washes the pad so you don't have to

The gap between a robot that mops and a robot that really mops comes down to what happens after the cleaning is done. Without a mopping dock, the robot finishes its run, and you take a wet, dirty mop pad off the bottom and wash it by hand. If you run the robot daily, that means daily pad washing — which is precisely the sort of chore a robot vacuum is supposed to eliminate.

A mopping dock changes the equation. When the robot returns, the dock washes the mop pad with clean water, scrubs it, and then dries it so nothing gets musty between uses. You might refill the clean water tank and empty the dirty water every few days, but you never touch a soiled pad.

If you mop occasionally — once a week or less — the manual pad washing isn’t a big deal. If you want daily mopping without daily pad handling, a mopping dock makes the difference between a feature you use and a feature you avoid.