You can schedule cleaning sessions or use a voice assistant to start one, but even though it’s connected, you can’t map your home or target areas to be cleaned. We don’t think the extra connected features are worth the extra money, so for $50 less, we found the Eufy 11S to be a better vacuum. Like other self-emptying robot vacuums, the Shark IQ XL returns to the base and empties its contents. The Shark, however, is the only vacuum we tested that features a bagless self-emptying base.
Mapping features allow you to create a model of your home within the app and direct your robot vacuum according to the layout of each room. You’ll find this cheap robot vacuum offers such features for a great price – this kind of tech is usually only found on more expensive models. With 40 times the suction power of a standard Roomba, the s9 simultaneously lifts away small and large debris from all floor surfaces and extracts embedded crumbs from carpets. Its extra-wide, multi-surface rubber brushes prevent hair from getting tangled and, instead, shedding, dander, and other pet-related allergens are whisked away and trapped by the high-efficiency filter.
You might even prefer the simplicity of leaving everything to the bot, and never having to think about an app. And again, we think the Roomba i3’s rug-cleaning ability and expected sturdiness are very good reasons to consider this robot at this price. Then I sprinkle a 2-ounce mixture of cat litter and 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. In another test, I pour out about an eighth of a cup of all-purpose flour across an area rug and bare floor and let the bot try to suck it up for a couple of minutes.
It uses AI to detect and avoid obstacles and builds a virtual map that you can watch in real time, something other vacuums don’t do. It also got into a few tangles with power cords and had to be rescued but did a great job scooping up a cat toy that I later found in the dustbin. It’s a solid machine, but at $599, you can get the self-emptying and superior iRobot Roomba j7+ for just a hundred dollars more. In 2020, we sent a privacy and security questionnaire to the brands that make our picks and have compiled the key portions of their responses in the table below. In general, the owner data isn’t that sensitive, and the mapping data is unsophisticated for now. We’re more uneasy about what companies may do with collected information in the future, like selling it to third parties.
We keep finding deals on bots from no-name brands like Coredy, Goovi, Onson, and Amarey, all of which have product dimensions that are barely distinguishable from those of the Eufy RoboVac 11S that we recommend. The Eufy 11S doesn’t have Wi-Fi or any smart-home connectivity, but you can still set a daily cleaning schedule with the remote control. 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.
Try to buy from a retailer with a return policy of at least a few weeks in case a robo-vac isn’t a fit for your lifestyle. We spoke with sources in the floor care manufacturing industry to help make sense of all the low-cost, off-brand options. Robot products purchased in North America are intended for use in North America only. Both the 30-day, money-back guarantee and the limited warranty are void if products are used outside North America. At just 3.6” tall, Roomba has been specifically designed to fit under most furniture and kickboards, so dirt has no place to hide.
Plenty of models can reliably clean homes both small and large, by moving in an orderly path throughout your home, and making a map of where it has or hasn’t been. They rarely miss patches or waste time re-cleaning areas that they’ve already visited. If their batteries run low before they can finish cleaning an entire level of a home, they’re smart enough to drive right back to their dock, recharge for a few hours, and pick up where they left off. Many of today’s robot vacuums are great at thoroughly cleaning every room in a home without getting lost or stuck. Also, we’re not convinced that obstacle avoidance is really the holy grail of robot-vacuum technology. One of the reasons robot vacuums help your home feel so tidy is because they force you to pick stuff up off the floor.
Another advantage is that the Roomba 694 has two counter-rotating brush rolls, mounted in a suspension system, while every other bot at this price has a single brush sitting at a fixed height. Even the cheapest bots we’ve tested do a good job of picking up the most common types of debris from bare floors and short rugs. But the Roomba’s design helps it work better on rugs, especially when it needs to pick up a lot of hair.
It’s like the developers left in a bunch of code that makes it think it’s still round. We watched it stubbornly try to shove itself into spaces where it obviously couldn’t fit, roughing up some furniture in the process. This would be annoying in a $400 robot, but it’s especially frustrating in a robot that costs more than our favorite dishwasher. Hooman Shahidi, iRobot’s vice president of product development, told Wirecutter that it’s more difficult to get a D-shaped robot like the Roomba s9 to navigate smoothly.
And while the 11S will get your floors much cleaner than if you didn’t vacuum at all, this bot just isn’t built to dig up much debris from rugs, especially softer, thicker types. Like the Roomba 600 series , the 11S is dyson robot vacuum a semi-random navigator and works best in small spaces. The Neato Robotics Connected series of robot vacuum cleaners has been hit and miss. Thankfully, they got all the connectivity features of the D4 model just right.