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.
To Ecovacs’s credit, we’ve found that its bots are a little better at traversing tall rugs and large thresholds than other brands’ bots. All of these bots have worked well, but they lack some of the polish of our top picks. We’ve also noticed that the lesser-known brands have not updated their robots’ software with bug fixes or new features as consistently as Roborock has. The Roomba i7 is an older model and tends to cost less than the new Roomba j7. We wrote a review of the self-emptying Roomba i7+ in 2018, when it was brand-new, and at the time we called it the best robot vacuum that money could buy. The rest of the industry caught up very quickly, so the i7+ is no longer such a standout, but it still works well.
It also has the longest battery life of any robot vacuum we’ve tested, cleaning for up to 170 minutes on a charge. For even greater convenience, Ecovacs makes an Auto-Empty Station (sold separately) that allows the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI to empty its bin into a disposable dust bag without your help. If you’re looking to upgrade from a basic robot vacuum to one with self-emptying abilities, the Shark IQ Robot XL is an excellent choice. Thanks to its bagless self-emptying system and self-cleaning brushroll, it’s one of the lowest-maintenance robot vacuums we’ve tested. That said, allergy sufferers might prefer the comparably priced Roomba i3+ EVO, which empties its bin into an AllergenLock bag so you’re not exposed to dust.
But as of 2022, smart robots are much more common and affordable—and much better at cleaning large spaces consistently and efficiently. Even so, the semi-random bots still have a place in the world, and we’ve concluded that the Roomba 600 series is a great option if you want a simple, sturdy bot for a fair price. In fact, the “brushes” on the i3 EVO are really rubber-nubbed extractors, which are particularly good at picking up pet hair, especially from thicker and higher-pile rugs, without much hair getting wrapped around the roller. 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. Mopping is become a standard feature in many new robot vacuums, but that doesn’t mean you should pick a hybrid model automatically.
In addition to CNBC, her work has been seen in USA Today, Huffington Post, Yahoo Finance, HerMoney, and for various television news programs including the Nightly Business Report. Automatically trap allergens and dander inside the vacuum to stay healthier in your home. The iRobot Home App has been rebuilt to deliver an intuitive experience for an intuitive clean.
If you have plush carpets and a lot of hair to deal with, though, you’re likely to prefer a robot with better brush action and possibly stronger suction. Another advantage is that the Roomba 694 (like other Roomba models) has two counter-rotating brush rolls, mounted in a suspension system, whereas every other bot at this price has a single brush sitting at a fixed height. Even the cheapest bots we’ve tested do a good job of picking up the most common types of debris from bare floors and short rugs, but the Roomba 694’s design helps it work better on rugs, especially when it needs to pick up a lot of hair.
Plus, some iRobot robot vacuums offer advanced features, like object avoidance and self-emptying for an even better cleaning experience. These worked well on test, while it also impressed cleaning on carpet and when picking up larger debris, with comparable results to a standard vac. But, while it lifted most pet hair, it did then tangle on the brushes, which took a while to clean. We wanted our tests to decide whether robot vacuums can compete with regular vacs. We tried them on both hard floors and carpets, assessing the performance of each by measuring how much of our specially formulated dust was picked up after a number of sweeps.
This top-of-the-line model is suitable for those with deep pockets who are willing to pay a premium for convenience. With long battery life, strong suction power, and AI-powered obstacle avoidance technology, the X1 Omni is an excellent option for large homes and those with pets. Roborock’s high-end S7+ deserves a mention for its cleaning power and number of additional features that many other competitors don’t have. First, the S7+ is a vac-and-mop combo, and its mopping map automatically lifts itself out of the way when the machine reaches the carpet. That means you can have it clean your whole home, vacuuming and mopping in the right spots, without you giving it any extra attention (besides filling its 300ml water tank at the start).
This makes it less intrusive since it doesn’t try to clean the whole house on every run — so I didn’t find it dead in a corner as often after an annoyed family member shut it off. While most mapping robots allow you to create virtual keep-out zones — areas the irobot vacuum cleaner robot shouldn’t venture into — this Roomba uses its AI smarts to suggest trouble spots, making creating keep-out zones a one-tap job. The Roomba j7 is a mapping robot that can learn your home’s floor plan and identify the furniture and appliances in it.
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 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.