In recent years, machine vision has played an important role in product surface quality detection. The promotion and use of this technology have largely avoided the subjectivity caused by human detection and improved detection efficiency and accuracy. Different from the image data commonly used in machine vision, point cloud can describe the spatial structure of an object, provide more information than image data, and have the ability to expand the data to build multi-dimensional data models. Due to the strong anti-interference ability of point cloud sensors and the high accuracy of three-dimensional positioning information point cloud, nondestructive testing technology based on point cloud has received more and more attention. This paper summarizes the research progress of product surface quality detection methods based on 3D point cloud in recent years. According to different data processing methods, the detection research is divided into five categories: based on point cloud contour, based on local geometric feature, based on template matching, based on multimodal point cloud, and based on deep learning. The five methods are reviewed and summarized respectively. Finally, the key problems of each detection method and the future trend of product surface quality detection technology based on 3D point cloud are discussed.