As with most budget robot vacuum cleaners, there are no mapping features, so if you need to create keep-out zones — and a door won’t work — you’ll have to purchase some magnetic tape to create a barrier. The best robot vacuums are impressive devices that will clean your floors well without complaining . Thankfully, today’s robo vacs have largely shaken off the category’s early reputation for running out of juice halfway through a job, missing large swaths of your floor, or losing a battle with a chair leg. Most know when to return to their base to recharge, and if they get stuck, they can call for help. The cleaning time depends on room size and, for models equipped with dirt sensors, volume of dirt.
One of the reasons robot vacuums help your home feel so tidy is that they force you to pick stuff up off the floor. Even if advanced obstacle recognition worked well enough to let you skip the pre-tidying, your home would still feel messy. The 11S is quiet enough that you could easily forget that it’s running if you’re home at the time. We measured the volume on the bot’s maximum suction setting and found that it was just 57 dBc, a full 5 decibels quieter than the Roomba 694—that’s a major difference.
However, I test them in one of the most challenging environments possible—a carpeted, two-story family home with messy kids and a shedding dog—and personally, I find them indispensable. Whether you’re choking on cat hair, need to lighten your chore load, or just want to spend more time with your family, we have a pick that will help. That means you’re looking for a robot that can traverse different floor types or maneuver around furniture without your help.
The Clean Base is shorter and shallower than Samsung’s emptying bin base, taking up less space in a room or under a table. It also has a hidden storage area where you can stash your extra bags. The height, rounded up to the nearest half-inch, of the shortest vertical space the robotic vacuum could enter while operating. Bare floorsIndicates the vacuum’s ability to remove surface debris from a bare laminate floor. For a dependable, versatile, and affordable cleaner, we prefer a bagless upright, but we have recommendations for other types of vacuums as well.
The real benefit here is that you don’t have to tidy up before you run your vacuum (although cluttered floors won’t get as clean). It also means it rarely gets stuck during a job, so you won’t come home to a beached bot and a half-clean house. If you like the idea of a self-emptying robot vacuum but not the high price tag of the iRobot Roomba j7+, then we recommend the Shark IQ XL. It has smart features such as linear navigation, in-app mapping, scheduling and voice control.
This system looks silly, and some people simply can’t stand to watch it. The bots might even (semi-randomly) miss a patch of floor or even an entire room in any given session. But if you run the bot at least a few days per week, your floors should stay pretty tidy.
Do a quick run-through beforehand for robot booby traps, like ribbons and pieces of string. Connected bots also typically generate statistics and maps of the areas they clean. Many even create personalized floor plans, allowing for targeted room cleanings and eliminating the need for you to use “virtual walls” to cordon off sections of your home. If you have a small home or an apartment of around 1,000 square shark cordless feet or less, the Wyze Robot Vacuum should have no problem covering your entire space in a single run. If it runs low on battery before finishing the job, the robot will return to its base station, charge up, then pick up where it left off. Your robot never stops getting smarter because it constantly receives innovations in its software with the latest tech and groundbreaking features, thanks to iRobot OS.
All Roomba bots, including the i3 EVO, also have a dirt-detection system—another feature you can’t find in other brands’ bots. When a Roomba model senses that it’s passing over an area with a lot of debris, it stops and makes a few passes back and forth to pick up as much as possible. If you suffer from allergies but still want a robot vacuum to handle your light-duty cleaning needs, the iRobot Roomba S9 is among the robot vacuums we’ve tested.