Whichever type you go for, here are six robot vacuum tips and tricks so you can get the most out of your robot. These are just some of the questions our reviewer answers when evaluating each robot vacuum. The Roomba j series created a lot of buzz upon its release because it promised to avoid pet waste. dyson robot vacuum The Pet Owner’s Official Promise (lovingly named the P.O.O.P. Promise) is currently offered on the iRobot Roomba j7+ Robot Vacuum, and based on our testing experience, it really does work. Plus, if your Roomba j7+ does not avoid solid pet waste during its first year of use, iRobot will replace it.
It’s a lot better than dumping the robot’s dustbin into your kitchen garbage can. It doesn’t take a scientist to realize that a robot vacuum, like one from iRobot’s high-tech line of Roombas, can be a game-changer, allowing you to keep a tidy home without putting the time or energy into actually vacuuming it yourself. “They’re great for someone that’s gone during the day and wants to have this [cleaning] task off their list,” says Becky Rapinchuk, The Spruce’s Cleaning Board member and founder of Clean Mama.
There are several aspects you should consider when choosing the best robot vacuum cleaner for you. And while it is well-designed — it’s easy to fill the fresh water and empty the dirty water tank — it does get a bit smelly. You also need to clean the mopping station periodically, and there is no hot air drying. I also like that you can use the S7 as two separate robots — a vacuum and a mop. It has a mop-only mode that moves in a tighter “Z” pattern and goes over the floors twice.
Still, this isn’t surprising considering the lower price, and when it came to more solid obstacles we found that it was quite agile and moved very quickly. Vacuum Direct also carries replacement batteries and AC power supplies to keep your favorite robotic home-cleaning unit full of juice and ready to go. Several available iRobot replacement parts also exist to ensure that your Roomba stays as autonomous as possible, like the room-limiting Auto Virtual Wall and replacement remote controls for several models. Though the Eufy RoboVac doesn’t have mapping technology to memorize the layout of your house, it does come with two 6-foot boundary strips to block off certain areas of your home.
Whether you’re cleaning one room or the whole house, you’ll want to make sure whatever robot vacuum you choose has the battery power to get the job done without recharging. The robot vacuums we tested ranged between 70 minutes and 200 minutes, so depending on the size of your home, you may be able to purchase one with a shorter battery length or require one that runs for longer. If you’re planning to use your robot vacuum when you aren’t at home, it’s especially important to find a model that is capable of navigating its surroundings without getting stuck, falling down stairs, or breaking something in your house. The best robot vacuums will have object sensors and object avoidance to help them move across your floor seamlessly. While it’s easy to set up, we found it difficult and cumbersome to mark out zones in the floor plan. As you enlarge the map to make precise adjustments, alternative zones can be moved in error.
I liked to send it out to vacuum everywhere first, then recharge and go out again to mop, which resulted in sparklingly clean floors. If the dock is in a cluttered area or under a piece of furniture, there’s a good chance the bot will not re-dock. Before you start a cleaning session, you should pick up irobot vacuum cleaner any laundry, charging cables, or lightweight mats—most bots will get stuck on them. But then you’ll figure out the pain points and get into a routine, and it won’t seem like a big deal. In our tests it was uncomfortably loud—by far the noisiest vac we’d ever tested—and the nav system was not effective.
On hard floors, this robot vacuum struggled a bit to suck up the cereal pieces we’d strewn across the ground, but it had no trouble collecting smaller particles. We specifically noted how easy and straightforward this vacuum was to use, especially when compared to some of the high-tech robot vacuums we’d already tested. Whether your home has hardwood flooring, tile, carpets, or rugs, it’s convenient when you can find a device that’s versatile enough to clean all surface types in one fell swoop. That’s why we rated the iRobot Roomba 694 as the best overall robot vacuum after testing; this easy-to-use machine effortlessly navigated multiple floor types while collecting dirt and debris with ease. This article was written by Erin Johnson, a commerce editor at The Spruce focusing on appliances, cleaning, and organization.
The main reason we don’t recommend the Wyze bot is that the app can’t currently remember maps for multiple floors of a home—it learns one level, whereas Roborock bots can remember up to four levels. According to the Wyze customer support forums, a beta version of the Wyze app supports multiple maps, and it’s supposed to be released widely at some point. If that doesn’t matter to you, or if you’re willing to believe that Wyze will actually release that multi-level update soon, the Wyze robot seems like a decent-enough option. Eufy makes several RoboVac models built on the same base as the 11S but with extra features. 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.