The Clean Base is shorter and shallower than Samsung’s emptying bin base, taking up less space in a room or under a table. If you want the convenience of a self-emptying vacuum but want to save a couple of hundred dollars over an iRobot or Samsung, the Shark IQ XL cleans and performs almost as well for a lot less. Bissell’s SpinWave Wet and Dry robot can both vacuum and scrub your floors to make them truly shine. We scouted reviews for hints about longevity, and favored bots with easy-to-find replacement parts like filters and brushes, but also batteries, wheels, and transmissions.
While the vacuum has features such as voice control and in-app scheduling, it didn’t function half as well as the similarly priced Eufy 11S. If you’re pressed for time or have a pet who sheds, a good robot vacuum is a worthwhile investment. Once the J7+ completes the initial mapping setup of your home — which takes some effort and input from you — the robot takes care of the rest. If you have both carpet and hard flooring throughout your home, you might want to consider a hybrid that can do double duty as a vacuum and a mop, such as the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI or Bissell SpinWave Wet and Dry. Standalone robot mops, such as the iRobot Braava Jet, aren’t eligible for this list because they don’t suck up dirt and debris, but they will get your hard floors nice and shiny.
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 shark cordless 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.
This is important because if you set your bot to clean while you’re out of the house, but it gets stuck under your dining room table within the first 10 minutes, you’ll still have dirty floors when you get home. Even if you’re home to babysit your robot and rescue it from trouble, that kind of defeats the purpose of having an automatic vacuum anyway. If you like the sound of the Roomba 694 but want just a little more cleaning power, you could look for a Roomba e5.
You’ll also want to ask yourself how much time you want to devote to prepping the house before you vacuum. Many of the latest models feature a Light Detection and Ranging laser (the same technology used in self-driving cars) to map your home and plan an efficient cleaning route. But some budget-friendly robot vacuums still haphazardly ping-pong from wall to wall, inefficiently crossing over the same space multiple times as they clean.
(It was launched in fall 2021, and representatives from iRobot suggested to us that it will get smarter over time through software updates.) However, the one obstacle that they do promise to avoid—with a money back guarantee—is poop. “You’d be surprised at how many types of poop there are,” said Hooman Shahidi, iRobot’s vice president of product development, in a conversation with Wirecutter. He noted that they’ve curated a large learning library of different “shapes and configurations” of pet waste. They’re basically fine, but they won’t match the agility of the Eufy or the durability of the Roomba. The LG CordZero R9 is a very expensive vacuum with powerful cleaning specs, but user reviews from Australia, where it’s been available for a while, are not favorable. The 11S and similar Eufy models have a manual steering mode (Roombas don’t).
According to the Wyze customer support forums, a beta version of the Wyze app supports multiple maps, and it’s supposed to be released widely at some point. If that doesn’t matter to you, or you’re willing to believe that they’ll actually release the multi-level update soon (I wouldn’t, but I’ve been wrong before), the Wyze seems like a decent-enough option. The Eufy RoboVac 11S and other Eufy models that begin with a number instead of a letter stand out as some of the quietest robots we’ve tested. They’re also some of the shortest, so they can fit beneath more pieces of furniture. Like the Roomba 694, the Eufy’s navigation is semi-random, so it’s best for cleaning just a few rooms at a time.
This Roomba is noisier than some other models, but it is attributed to the increased suction power of the s9+. In fact, the s9 has 40 times the suction of Roomba’s early 600 series robot vacuums. This translates into a deeper clean on all types of surfaces, including hard flooring and carpeted surfaces. If you don’t want smart features like bissell crosswave cordless mapping, don’t need a self-emptying dustbin and don’t mind picking up before you start the vacuum, the Eufy 11S is the budget robot vacuum we recommend. It’s a basic and affordable vacuum with a slim profile, good suction and quiet operation, and should work well for anyone who wants to maintain their floors in between manual vacuuming.
They aren’t as flexible as invisible barriers that you can draw in an app, but they’re much more elegant than the ugly magnetic strips used with some other cheaper bots . That said, the virtual walls are expensive if you buy them through iRobot, at $60 each, though it’s not hard to find used ones on eBay or similar marketplaces. But on a basic level, you’ll never have as much control over the i3 as you would over a robot with smart maps. By our count, more than 100 robot vacuums are available as of November 2021, and we’ve tested more than 30 of the most noteworthy ones.
We measured the volume on the bot’s maximum suction setting and found that it was just 57 dBc, a full 5 dBc quieter than the Roomba 694—that’s a major difference. On its normal suction setting, it’s just 53 dBc, which sounds more like a fan than a vacuum cleaner (“traditional” vacuums are often 70 dBc or louder because of their much stronger suction). And since the 11S stops short of most obstacles, it also avoids creating many of the bonking impact noises that the rougher Roomba 694 does. Other basic Eufy models have slightly stronger suction and can be a couple decibels louder, but they are still quieter than most competitors. Compared with other cheap bump bots, the Roomba 694 is a little rough on furniture. None of the current Roomba 600 series models come with a barrier system, but they work with the iRobot virtual walls, which you can buy separately.