If you run your bot a few times per week, or even every day, crumbs and pet hair will never get a chance to pile up; the mess is gone before it becomes a nuisance, with very little effort on your part required. Most robot vacuums can handle hardwood floors and carpets, though going from one to the other might be a challenge, since the edge of an area rug can trip some up. We spilled a pinch of wig hair, a tablespoon of Cheerios, and a tablespoon of sand onto a hard floor and rug and assessed how well each vacuum cleaned the mess in two minutes. For vacuums with mopping capabilities, we spilled a tablespoon of coffee and a drizzle of sticky syrup on the hard floor and again evaluated how well it cleaned the mess in two minutes. We also used a decibel meter to measure the noise level of each robot vacuum while running it in a small room with the door closed. Our best overall pick is the iRobot Roomba 694 Robot Vacuum, which impressed us with its ability to suck up all the hair, cereal, and sand we scattered across carpets.
By comparison, the mopping Roborock s7 has a slightly higher cleaning performance, but it wasn’t as strong at collecting pet hair, with 85.8% removed on average. It took less than five minutes to get this robot vacuum up and running, and it quickly proved to be effective on hardwood and carpeted flooring. It sucked up pet hair, synthetic human hair, and Cheerios with ease, and it did a really impressive job vacuuming up sand from a carpet, too. Compared to the other robot vacuums in The Lab, this one transitioned smoothly from area rugs to hardwood floors, which is a big plus if you have a home with a variety of flooring types.
At a reasonable price and often discounted, you’ll be hard pushed to find anything cheaper on the market. The good news is that robots these days have a ton of options, and whether you have a 3,000-square-foot home and three shaggy dogs or a small, stylish apartment you share with a goldfish, there’s a robot vacuum to suit your needs. The Shark AI Robot VacMop is the only model on this list that doesn’t use a camera. That’s great, but it did not avoid any obstacles, nor did it even acknowledge in the app that it encountered any. The Roborock app has tons of features and customizations, and it gives you more control over navigation than you can find on other robot vacs. It also provides a better user experience and works more reliably than its closest competitors’ apps.
We also tested the Kyvol Cybovac S31, along with its auto-emptying dock, and it was perfectly decent (at least when new). The navigation (as of late 2020, at least) was a little clumsier, and some of the details—including the translation in the app, manual, marketing materials, and even the voiceovers from the bot itself—lacked polish. In owner reviews, the main complaints about the bot included glitchiness, an unstable app, and poor customer service.
This way, the machine continues to learn your home and adapt to temporary and permanent obstacles. Most are also compatible with in-home smart speakers like Alexa or Google Assistant. You can program almost all models to run on a cleaning schedule (such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at noon).
With replacement rollers and edge brushes for the 400 and 500 series of floor cleaning robots, you’ll have near limitless ability to replace worn or damaged brushes at an incredible value. Also available are replacement rubber wheels for the pool-cleaning Scooba robot. IRobot’s robotic vacuum cleaners are definitely more than the sum of their parts and they have been designed shark cordless with components that won’t break the bank when the time comes to replace them. IRobot parts are designed to be easily installed and to keep your Roomba in top working condition. Among Vacuum Direct’s vast array of iRobot replacement parts are several filters, such as Aerovac filters, designed to provide comprehensive filtration for your Roomba’s internal suction components.
This allows you to keep it away from rooms with toys, laundry, or cables on the floor that could potentially get sucked up. It also has an object sensor that allows it to avoid ramming into walls and furniture, so you’ll only need to keep small clutter out of this vacuum’s path. Hardwood floors in high-traffic areas can be especially tricky to keep clean since it’s easier for crumbs and debris to be pushed around by the vacuum instead of being sucked away. Whether you’re trying to keep an entryway free of dirt and dust or looking for a simple way to sweep up crumbs off the kitchen floor, we recommend enlisting the help of the Eufy RoboVac 30C. We found it to be a “lifesaver in sucking up dog hair” when we tested it at home. It’s a relatively quiet and fast operator as well, needing just 2 minutes 56 seconds to clean a 5′ x 5′ space.
For instance, you can say “Hey Siri, go clean the kitchen,” and the bot will do just that. As we mentioned earlier, Siri Shortcuts does not provide the ability to create Automations. You can connect the Roomba i4 EVO to your Wi-Fi so that you can use a smartphone app to tell it to start or stop, instruct it to return to its dock, or create a cleaning schedule, if you’d like, though doing so is totally optional. Since we first tested this model, iRobot has added smart mapping, which allows the i4 EVO to run through the house, without cleaning, in order to create a single floor plan that is saved in the app.
In fact, iRobot is so confident in the Roomba j7+’s intelligence that it’s introduced the Pet Owner Official Promise (P.O.O.P), whereby iRobot will replace any j7+ that fails to avoid solid pet waste. “Suction is only one factor in a complex cleaning equation that includes agitation, type of debris, air path, sealing, etc.,” he says. While some vacuums provide numerical measurements for their suction power, iRobot does not, he said. Instead, it offers up more vague terms like “5x the cleaning power” or “40x the suction power.” Still, paying attention to how each model compares to the others can help you determine which one is right for your level of mess. Some of the best robot vacuums can be quite expensive, although as with all tech the prices do come down over time.
It learns your cleaning habits and suggests schedules to meet your needs, says the brand, and also recommends extra cleaning during allergy season. We rate each robot vacuum on how easy it was to empty, how loud it was in use, and how long shark cordless the battery lasted between charges. 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.