You can set it to clean when you lock your front door or close your garage, for example. Using the geofencing feature in the iRobot app, I had the j7 start running when I leave the house and stop when I arrive dyson robot vacuum home. This worked reliably, with the robot generally docking as I walked into the house. The only times it failed were when someone else was already in the house and they shut the robot off manually.
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.
Other basic Eufy models have slightly stronger suction and can be a couple of decibels louder, but they are still quieter than most competitors. 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.
That’s a great score, but the Roomba scoffs at it, because in our previous test setup, the Roomba S9 Plus sucked up 71%, which was significantly better than any other cleaner we had ever tested. Like I said, the two figures aren’t technically comparable to each other, thanks to subtle changes in our test setup over the years, but bissell crosswave cordless still, if we reran the tests now, I’m highly confident that the S9 Plus would retain the top spot. Aided by multiple sensors and lasers, efficient navigation is the S7’s other strong suit. The vacuum cleaner covered the entire floor of our test room without missing any spots across multiple runs in an average of just 16 minutes.
Like its predecessor (and a previous Wirecutter pick), the now-discontinued Roborock S4 Max, the Q5 shines with its smart-mapping feature. Using its laser rangefinder (lidar) and bump sensors, the Q5 learns your floor plan in a single cleaning session and creates an interactive map in the companion app. It also allows you to create and store maps for up to four levels, which is a nice perk if you want to use the bot on different floors of your home. 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. The key is that bots don’t procrastinate or get bored, so they spend more time cleaning, and they clean more thoroughly, than almost any human.