If you have plush carpets and a lot of hair to deal with, though, you’ll want a robot with better brush action and possibly stronger suction. The Roborock S4 Max has the most clever, controllable navigation you’ll find in any robot vacuum. Its smart-map feature is as robust as any that we’ve used, letting you tell the bot which specific rooms to clean, places to avoid, and when to do it all through a smartphone app and Wi-Fi connection. It also moves faster and bonks into fewer things than other robots at this price, particularly the Roomba i3. It won’t clean carpets or hair as well as the Roomba i3 and may not last as long, but owners generally seem satisfied with this bot’s performance.
We know this because on many occasions, we ran it immediately after other bots had done a cleaning session, and the Roomba i3 would still come back with a lot of extra debris in its bin that the other bots must have left behind. We also tried the opposite, running the i3 before the Roborock S4 Max, and found that the S4 did not come back with much debris in its bin, likely because the Roomba i3 grabbed it all first. We actually recommended the semi-random style for most people up until fall 2021, but it became clear from analyzing user reviews that the zeitgeist has shifted. Now that prices have dropped, most would-be robot owners expect their robot to look like it knows what it’s doing, instead of cruising around randomly, bumping into stuff. But we still think bump-and-run bots have a place, so we’ve shuffled our favorites to budget pick status.
That map enables a bunch of cool tricks, like targeted room cleaning and no-go zones, without having to manually move the bot or fiddle with physical barriers like you would with other robots, including our other picks. The S4 Max isn’t the only robot with a smart-map feature, nor is it the cheapest, nor does it always work perfectly. I’ve written about robot vacuums for Wirecutter since 2013, logging hundreds of hours of research and testing in that time.
Connected bots also typically generate statistics and maps of the areas they’ve cleaned. Many even create personalized floor plans, allowing for targeted room cleanings and eliminating the need for you to use physical “virtual walls” to cordon off sections of your home. In most homes, we think a bot will stay in good shape if you do about 15 minutes of maintenance per month, maybe a little more if the bot has a heavy workload. For irobot vacuum cleaner bump-and-run bots, it’s a good strategy to keep the dock near the middle of your home so that the bot will cross its path more often, increasing the chance that it finds and successfully re-docks when the battery runs low. 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. But we’ve put the current AI bots to the test in the real world, and they aren’t that good yet.
When it does, it will sit there until it has enough energy to go back out and continue to bust dust from where it left off. You can also set schedules for most bots to wake up and start a cleaning job, so it can take place while you’re out of the house. That means you can potentially avoid all physical interaction until the vacuum needs to be emptied. Unlike more traditional canister or stick models, robot vacuums are autonomous and intelligent. The vacuums we’ve tested are equipped with lasers, motherboards, sensors, and even Wi-Fi to navigate around your home without assistance.
Replace filters and side brushes a few times per year, the brush roll about once a year, and the battery as needed—probably every second year, though that depends on how often you use the bot. Clean the bearings on the brush roll, caster, and side brushes every few weeks. You might need a screwdriver for this job, but many bots let you pop out the parts with no tools. So the first order of business for any successful robot vacuum is to avoid or at least escape from potential bot traps and hazards.
Also consider the Eufy RoboVac 11S, which is so quiet and nimble that it blends into the background like no other robot . This basic, affordable bot sounds more like a desk fan than a vacuum—even if you’re home while it works, you’ll barely notice it running. It’s shorter than most bots, which lets it glide under more furniture, picking up plenty of hidden debris. The big downside is that the 11S don’t seem to be built to last for more than a couple of years on average, and we’ve heard about plenty of unrepairable breakdowns that happen even sooner.
Our floors have never, ever been this clean, and that’s pretty great given that we’re almost always at home now. But as a relative novice to robot vacuums, I was in for a few unwelcome surprises during our first few days together. The size and square footage of your home should play a key role in how you choose which Roomba is right for you. A smaller house or apartment won’t need a Roomba with the longest battery life or the largest dust bin available, but a larger home might.