It doesn’t take the same logical path around the home when cleaning as other more expensive Eufy models do. Sometimes it’ll go in straight lines and sometimes seek out the edges of a room, while on occasion, it’ll travel in circles, which means it may take slightly longer to clean the whole room or floor. Also, it wasn’t always that good at moving around objects – low-level things seemed to fox it the most, such as deep-pile rugs, piano pedals, and pet food bowls. For those seeking a robot vacuum on a budget, the Eufy 11S is worth considering. At a reasonable price and often discounted, you’ll be hard pushed to find anything cheaper on the market. This is where you can set it up to map your floorplan and set zones, and it continues to learn.
He noted that the company has curated a large learning library of different “shapes and configurations” of pet waste. We’ve tested a handful of its laser-nav bots over the past few years, including the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI (a higher-end but otherwise similar version of the N8 and N8 Pro). All of the Ecovacs models we’ve shark cordless tested worked fine when they were new, but you can usually find a better bot for a lower price. We can’t be sure whether other models will have similar rates of problems, though the typical owner ratings for Ecovacs laser-nav bots tend to be a few tenths of a point lower than the ratings for other brands’ models.
To find out, we use dry, uncooked black rice as a stand-in for the crumbs, and sand as an analogue for finer particles. The Eufy 11S is the most basic and one of the few still available that doesn’t connect to the internet. Other Eufy 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. The mop cleaning and drying process is efficient, and in theory, you don’t need to remove the pad after every run. But I recommend throwing it in the washing machine when emptying the dirty water tank. We bought one of the Goovi models, and lo and behold, we found that it was functionally identical to the 11S, with many of the same components and even the same beep and boop sounds.
But the Roomba bot can easily pay off in the long run because it’ll last longer. In fact, several Wirecutter staff members have owned Roomba 600-series bots for several years and have found them to be sturdy and reliable. Siri Shortcuts worked a little better in our tests since we could customize the wording of our voice commands, but their overall functionality is limited. For example, you can’t use Siri to set up Automations as you can with Alexa and Google Assistant—though to be fair, Automations on those two platforms are pretty limited, as well. Using Alexa, Rachel was able to create an automated Routine that would tell the Roomba i3 EVO to start vacuuming whenever Rachel and her smartphone left her house.
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. Pair iRobot OS powered robots with Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant-enabled devices³ to get cleaning on command. This model is a step up from the Roomba i7+, but that step comes at a cost. This is an expensive Roomba, but if you’re a pet owner with a puppy or elderly dog prone to accidents, it could be worth the price.
The larger surface area also means that the vacuum covers more ground, so it doesn’t have to make as many passes across your floor as the smaller models do. This model also has 40 times the suction power of the 600 series, which makes it ideal for removing debris shark cordless or pet hair that’s deeply tangled in carpets. Every home is different, so the best robot vacuums are versatile enough to handle a variety of housecleaning scenarios. They can handle pet hair and navigate intelligently around furniture or other obstacles.
This was the case for all of the machines I tried that came with clean bases; they’re all quite loud, but the Roomba j7+ was the loudest of them all. The whooshing sounds last for only five to 10 seconds, but it was shocking the first time it happened. Just keep that in mind if you ever decide to run your self emptying robot vacuum at night when others are sleeping. Every Wi-Fi-connected robot vacuum worth its salt today works with Alexa or Google smart speakers for voice control. However, some are limited to stop / start and pause, whereas others can be told to go clean specific areas.