We also fully disassembled some popular bots to get a sense for the build quality and how straightforward they might be to repair. The Roborock S4 Max has a single, relatively small brush roll , so it’s not as effective on carpets as Roomba’s dual-roll design. Then I sprinkle a 2-ounce mixture of cat litter and bissell crosswave cordless coffee grounds around my dining room, which has a mix of bare wood and a low-pile rug as well as a big table with three dinner chairs and a bench underneath it. I run each bot for 25 minutes or until it stops on its own, whichever comes first. When it’s done, I weigh how much debris each bot managed to pick up.
Others perpetually got trapped under the same damn easy chair and could never maneuver their way out. Yet others somehow never connected to my WiFi network, rendering them useless when I wasn’t home. Not only can it handle both vacuuming and mopping in the same cleaning session — lifting the mop when carpet is detected — it comes with an auto-emptying dock, which Roborock claims is good enough for eight weeks of dirt.
While not as effective as the top performers on our list, it still managed to pick up 88.9 percent of all debris laid before it. It is a much better performer on hard floors (94.35%) vs carpets (83.52%), which is worth bearing in mind depending on your flooring. The best robot vacuums are designed with convenience in mind above all.
In addition, it lacks automatic surface detection capability, which would allow it to automatically increase its suction power on different surfaces and eliminate the need for you to choose this setting manually. If that’s a must-have feature for you, you could look at the Roborock E4, though it features a less advanced mapping system that relies entirely on optical sensors and can’t generate a permanent map of its coverage area. The iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner shoulders some of the housework load by automatically cleaning your carpet and floors. It vacuums up debris, even in hard-to-reach spots like beneath your furniture and along baseboards. Most robot vacuums are reliable when it comes to getting rid of standard household detritus, so you don’t have to worry about whether they can suck up lint, dirt, or hair.
It uses a built-in camera and machine learning technology to recognize obstacles in its cleaning path in real time, and automatically reroute itself around them. The dream scenario is that you set your robot to automatically run on a schedule and then empty itself out, so you don’t have to touch your bot or even think about cleaning your floors for weeks on end. But the dream is possible—and even if it isn’t fully realized in your home, it’s still super-convenient to not deal with a messy dustbin every time you use your robot vacuum. The downside with some of these other bots is that you might end up having a hard time getting customer support. It won’t always be clear where you can get spare filters, brushes, or other consumable parts, let alone major components like battery packs, wheels, or LiDAR assemblies. It’s tough enough to find these parts from established brands like Roborock, so it’s hard to imagine the smaller brands will make it any easier.
Once the home is mapped, users can use the app, Google Assistant, Alexa, or voice control to guide the unit to specific areas and cleaning tasks while also avoiding keep-out zones. It vacuums in neat rows using floor-tracking sensors to navigate and dirt-detecting sensors to clean up dust and debris. To accomplish this, the Roomba uses Adapt 2.0 Navigation with visual localization. This Roomba isn’t going to win any awards for quiet operation, but it sure can clean up dirt! It cleaned our flour “dust” on the first pass and easily sucked up flour out of crevices between floorboards, where other robot vacuums left it.
The Bissell is a great starter robot vacuum for those not into techy gadgets. There are more robot vacuums than ever on the market today, and they have come a long way from the very first one we tested in our Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab way back in 2002. We regularly test all types of vacuums in our Labs, from stick vacuums to canister vacuums to HEPA vacuums to vacuums for pet hair and so much more. One great thing about Roombas is that there’s a model to suit almost every size home and budget.
This piece slides off easily, opens to deposit dirt into your bin — and is also where you gain easy access to the filter, which is simple to clean. Like the j7 above, the s9 features an excellent mapping function that uses a front mounted camera and sensors galore. It will happily venture beneath beds and sofas even if covered in a valance. Jodhaira Rodriguez is the Home Appliances & Cleaning Products Reviews Analyst at the Good Housekeeping Institute, where she also writes cleaning how-tos and tips.