“Dock” mode, introduced with the third generation, instructs the Roomba to seek a charging base for recharging. Many second- and third-generation Roombas come packaged with infrared remote controls or special control panels, allowing a human operator to “drive” the Roomba to areas to be specially cleaned. We provide a detailed analysis of each of these vacuums in our reviews, and you can see our vacuum product guide for the latest models. If you specifically want to stick with the iRobot brand, we also have a roundup of the best Roombas. When you find the right one for you, be sure to read up on our simple robot vacuum tips. Finally, we test how easy it is to set up, program, and control the robot.
Other RoboVac variants, including the 30C, 35C, and 15C Max, do have WiFi connectivity, which allows you to use a companion app to turn the appliance on or off, steer it, and set a cleaning schedule. Aided by multiple sensors and lasers, efficient navigation is the S7’s strong suit. The vacuum cleaner covered the entire floor of our test room in an average of just 16 minutes. CarpetShows how much surface litter and embedded dust the vacuum picked up from a medium-pile carpet. Shows how much surface litter and embedded dust the vacuum picked up from a medium-pile carpet.
Judging from our experience, it can be useful in spaces as large as 1,000 square feet, as long as you run it most days of the week as a habit and can forgive that it might not thoroughly clean every room every time that it runs. But some people don’t want to deal with unpredictable coverage, and that’s understandable. If you want a smarter robot, take a look at our top pick, the iRobot Roomba i3 EVO, and our also-great pick, the Roborock Q5. If you need to vacuum only a few rooms at a time, and you’re looking to save a few bucks, consider the iRobot Roomba 694, or really any model from the 600 series. Bots work on almost any kind of bare flooring and on most kinds of carpets and rugs—though there are some exceptions, such as high-pile rugs and some very dark flooring (which can impede the bots’ infrared sensors). Bots can reliably pick up most kinds of common floor debris, including hair, crumbs, dust, and cat litter.
Ratings and prices are accurate and items are in stock as of time of publication. To see our Interactives, Ratings, and other cool features, your browser needs JavaScript enabled. As the host of beloved and groundbreaking TV series, including “This Old House” and “Bob Vila’s Home Again,” he popularized and became synonymous with “do-it-yourself” home improvement. At the end of its life, a Roomba battery or the entire machine can be safely recycled through local electronics/battery recycling programs or through Roomba’s recycling partners in the U.S. and around the world. “iRobot Extends Wi-Fi Connectivity with New Roomba 890 and 690 Vacuuming Robots”. You could save some money by using third-party filters, which are extremely unlikely to harm the bot, but you may void your warranty if you happen to send in your bot for repairs with one of them in the filter slot.
We can’t pinpoint one spec or feature that helps a robot navigate well—we just have to test the bots and see how they do. Some cheap, dead-simple bots are especially nimble, while certain high-end models struggle constantly. But for the most part, modern robots are pretty good at navigation, and many models now give you the option to draw invisible boundaries around problematic areas using a smartphone app.
Many of today’s robot vacuums are great at thoroughly cleaning every room in a home without getting lost or stuck. You can find tons more laser-nav robots with largely similar specs and appearance, including bots from barely-there brands such as Tesvor, Dreametech, Viomi, and Honiture. Again, our educated guess is that they all probably work okay and are just more prone to app glitches and less likely to get useful software updates over time than models from the best brands in this category. Another surprisingly useful upside to the basic Eufy bots is their short body. At 2.85 inches, the 11S is almost a full inch shorter than the Roomba 694, enough for it to glide under even lower-clearance furniture, where dust and hair build up but never see the light of day.
Also, the Q5 would regularly say that it had completed a job, when a quick look told us otherwise and we knew that we would have to restart the cleaning cycle. We’ve aimed to recommend a handful of robots that should work well in most homes and aren’t wildly expensive. But plenty of models that we don’t explicitly recommend can be good or great, too, and we cite many of them throughout this guide. Wirecutter’s Liam McCabe wrote the previous versions of this guide, evaluating some 200 robots and testing close to 50 models since 2012.
First, consider the strong, durable, and smart-enough iRobot Roomba i3 EVO. The best robot vacuum models offer strong suction, quiet motors and hands-free cleaning that makes life easier than ever before. With the app-controlled, WiFi-enabled Shark IQ Robot Self-Empty XL, you can set it and forget it for up to 30 days. It comes with a bagless, self-emptying base and works with Alexa so that deep cleaning can happen with just the sound of your voice.
Keep a can of compressed air handy in case you need to blow dust out of gears or other hard-to-reach nooks in the bot. Wipe the sensors clean as needed, according to the manufacturer’s guidelines—usually with a microfiber cloth or cotton swab with a little water or rubbing alcohol. If you understand that you’ll probably be disappointed but want to try an AI bot anyway, consider the iRobot Roomba j7 (or j7+), which is a higher-end version of our top dyson robot vacuum picks and costs a little extra. Once we whittle down each test group to arrive at our picks, we keep running those bots, and we examine how loud each one is , what replacement parts are available, and what warranties are offered. If a robot runs across anything smearable, get ready to do some nasty cleanup. Senior staff writer Rachel Cericola first started testing smart-home devices more than 20 years ago, when the only smart-home devices were X10.