Finally, this is a sturdy and long-lasting robot vacuum, so it’s unlikely to break. This Roomba was knocked a few points for lack of features, but it performed the basic, advertised functions extremely well. It was a little noisy, so you’ll likely have to turn up your TV volume if you’re watching a show while running it. In addition, the Roomba 694 doesn’t have object avoidance technology, which is one of the newest features that more expensive models (like the Roomba j7+) offer. You’ll likely need to do a bit of pre-cleaning before running this vacuum to make sure your floor is clear of stray socks or crayons it could possibly suck up. While this might be an inconvenience, object avoidance technology usually means an increase of at least $500 in price.
Even better, there’s iRobot’s Pet Owner Official Promise (P.O.O.P.) to avoid pet waste in your home, or you will receive a free replacement. It’s our no. 4-ranked cleaner on low-pile carpets, and it was able to suck an impressive 56% of sand from more plush, midpile carpets. Before the X1 Omni hit the scene, the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI was the most advanced floor-cleaning robot we’d seen. This feature-rich hybrid vacuums and mops while using AI to successfully detect and avoid many obstacles other floor-cleaning robots would get stuck on. To put its obstacle-evasion technology to the test, we intentionally placed dog toys that have tripped up other robot vacuums in its path.
This small-but-mighty robot vacuum wowed our testers in the lab by picking up tiny grains of sand, clumps of hair, and pieces of cereal with equal ease. It has three different brushes underneath it to help the vacuum pick up a wide path of dirt on every pass, and a strong suction system helps to remove even large pieces of debris from your hardwood floors. If you’re looking for a particularly high-tech robot vacuum with features like object detection, automatic dirt disposal, or smart mapping, you’ll likely find the Roomba 694 to be a little low-tech. It doesn’t offer any of the fancy features a more expensive robot vacuum may possess, but we found this to be an incredibly reliable and effective tool for hands-free cleaning on multiple floor types.
Roborock’s VibraRise technology goes a step further—when the robot detects carpet while mopping, it raises the mopping plate about 5mm, allowing it to mop your hard floors and vacuum your low- to medium-pile carpets in a single pass. And with a maximum 5,100 pascals (Pa), the S7 MaxV Ultra offers some of the best suction power we’ve seen. They’re almost always less powerful and less flexible than standard vacuums. Since most robo-vacs are much smaller than traditional models, they often don’t have the same level of suction you’ll get in an upright machine. Plus, their dustbins are smaller, so they will need to be emptied more frequently.
The Samsung Jet Bot AI+ robot vacuum has a bunch of cool features, including 30 watts of adjustable suction, 3D object recognition with AI and powerful LiDAR navigation. This robot vacuum can recognize what objects to avoid, so you won’t have to deal with it constantly crashing into the couch or a pile of laundry on the floor. The best models to choose are ones that have rubber brushes that are free from bristles, so the pet hair doesn’t get trapped around them. Although that’s not to say robot vacuums with bristled brush bars aren’t as effective at collecting the hair.
However, for the average person, we actually think self-emptying isn’t necessary, and some of the best robot vacuums don’t have this feature. Clearing out the dust bin isn’t particularly time-consuming, and self-emptying docks take up more space in your home. Some high-end robot vacuums have self-emptying and self-cleaning capabilities, which limit the number of times you need to empty the dust bin and care for the machine.
With the iRobot app experience being the same across all Roombas, the s9+ stands out for its subtle premium features like its elegant design, elegant-looking clean base, superior cleaning intelligence and top-of-the-line suction power. Aside from the extra irobot vacuum cleaner suction, those are all nice-to-haves rather than must-haves, so most people – including you! It’s the fanciest robot vacuum iRobot has to offer, but you’ll get a similar level of quality with the Roomba j7 while spending a couple hundred bucks less.
Prices for robots with sophisticated navigation and smart-home features have fallen by half compared with just a few years ago. We do wish it could create a map of your home for a more thorough clean, but it’s an efficient cleaner nonetheless. For a robot vacuum without LiDAR or cameras, the i3+ did a fine job navigating around the house.
Special features were taken into consideration on top of this — including everything from self-emptying bases to object recognition capabilities. The Shark IQ Robot XL also stands out for its self-cleaning brushroll, which in our testing successfully prevented hair from getting wrapped around it, a common problem with many robot vacuums. Moreover, it delivered strong suction power, effectively cleaning dust, debris, and pet hair from hard flooring and carpet, and it never got stuck.
In fact, a full bin will result in it dragging any mess around the floors rather than picking it up. The images that result show us light trails that reveal the robot’s path as it navigates the room and cleans around our mock furniture. The GIF above shows you a quick succession of three of these images for our top splurge pick, the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra. As you can clearly see, it’s incredibly thorough and consistent from run to run, and an expert at running circles around the legs of our test furniture.