Eight of the 13 robot vacuums we track have never sold at their crossed-out price

Nearly every robot vacuum on Amazon AU carries a crossed-out price next to the one you pay. We have taken one snapshot a day of every machine in our top 7 since 16 June, which is 85 daily checks across 14 vacuums, and here is what those crossed-out numbers are worth: on 8 of the 13 machines that showed one, we never once recorded the listing selling anywhere near that figure. The five that did reach their own crossed-out price were sitting there on 48 of 338 observed days between them. About one day in seven.

We look once a day and we cannot see what a listing did before June, so this is what we observed rather than the whole history of the listing. It is still enough to say that the strike-through is no guide to whether today is a good day to buy. What works instead is each machine's own floor - the price it keeps coming back to. Our robot vacuum rankings carry today's number on every pick; below is the three months of prices underneath them.

The picks

Roborock Qrevo L ProA$849Check Price →

What our data shows

Prices and availability observed by top7.au from Amazon AU, as of 15 September 2026. They change; the live listing is the source of truth.

Eight listings, and not one day at the crossed-out price

The Roborock Qrevo L Pro is the cleanest example. It has shown a crossed-out A$1,699 for the entire time we have tracked it. Across 59 observed days its price has never been above A$849, and it spent 21 of those days at A$649 or A$648.99. The gap between the two numbers is A$850 and, as far as three months of daily checks can tell, nothing has ever changed hands at the higher one.

It is not alone. Seven other machines in the category showed the same pattern: a crossed-out figure between A$699 and A$2,299, and an observed price that never came close. One budget model carried a crossed-out A$749 while trading between A$284 and A$358.98. Another showed A$1,599 against a flat A$679.

The ACCC's guidance on two-price advertising is that the higher number has to be a price the goods were genuinely sold at for a reasonable period before the comparison runs. We cannot see a seller's own sales records, so we are not calling any particular listing a breach. We can only report that in 85 daily checks we never saw those prices.

The five that did charge full price, and for how long

Five machines did hit their crossed-out number at some point in our window, and it is worth knowing how briefly. One sat at A$1,999 for 11 straight days from 22 June to 2 July, then dropped to A$899 and then to about A$640, where it stayed every time we looked between 7 July and 4 September. Another touched A$2,199 on exactly one day, 19 July, out of 60 observed days. A third reached A$1,999 on two days out of 83.

So the crossed-out price is not always fiction. It is more often a price that existed for a few days in one month and has not been seen since. Either way it is useless as a benchmark for what you should pay today.

The sawtooth: what A$2,499 really means

Dreame L50 Ultra CECheck Price →

The Dreame L50 Ultra CE is the one to study, because it has the longest run in our data and the most obvious cycle. Over 84 observed days its price flipped between roughly A$1,300 and A$2,499 eight separate times. It spent 27 days at A$2,499 and the other 57 between A$1,299.99 and A$1,499. The longest full-price stretch was nine days, 28 June to 6 July. The longest discounted stretch was 11 days.

Read that the way a shopper should. The discount is the resting state of this listing and full price is the exception that turns up for a few days at a time, so the percentage on the banner is not telling you anything about scarcity. It has been down at A$1,299.99 twice, 7 to 13 July and again from 24 August to 5 September. It is A$1,499 today, which is A$199 above its floor and A$99 above its own three-month median.

The useful consequence: if you miss a run at the floor on a machine like this, the next one has never been more than about three weeks away in our data. There is no reason to rush a A$1,500 purchase because a timer says so.

What to do this fortnight

Mid-September looks like a flat patch. Both machines above are sitting over their own 90-day low, and so is most of the rest of the category. If your old vacuum has died and you need one now, the Dreame L50 Ultra CE at A$1,499 is only A$199 off its best observed price, which is a reasonable place to buy. The Roborock Qrevo L Pro at A$849 is not - it has spent 21 of the past 59 days we checked at A$649 or below, and paying A$200 more this week buys you nothing.

If you can wait, write the floors down and watch for them: A$648.99 on the Qrevo L Pro and A$1,299.99 on the L50 Ultra CE. Those are prices these machines have actually sold at over the past three months. The crossed-out ones, mostly, are not.

More on this category: our current robot vacuum rankings update daily with live Amazon AU prices, the robot vacuum buying guide covers which features are worth paying for, and robot vacuums under A$500 is the budget end of the same market. For the same argument applied to sales generally, see what is worth buying in the big sale events and what is not.