The Roomba 880 is capable of cleaning several rooms on one charge, and will spend a maximum of 25 minutes in each room before moving on. They simulate a wall in doorways, preventing the robot from passing into the next room until it has finished in the first, and then help it find its way back to the charging base. The device also encourages you to keep your house tidy and actually makes cleaning fun. Our carpet is in great condition every day thanks to the genuine joy we get from letting the Roomba do its thing. While the Roomba does a thorough job when left to its own devices, sometimes you’ll need it to clean in one specific area. For this there is ‘spot mode’, which is activated by pressing a button on the top of the device.
The “everyday” prices are a bit high, but we’ve seen some pretty good deals on the version of the Shark that comes with the self-emptying dock. Since we know laser-nav bots are all pretty similar to one another, this Shark could be a good choice if you see it on sale. It struggled to cross from floors onto rugs without getting stuck. The Roborock S4 Max has the most clever, controllable navigation you’ll find in any robot vacuum.
The robot is powered by a rechargeable battery contained in the unit. The 11S is the most basic, and is one of the few robotic vacuums still available that doesn’t connect to the internet. Other RoboVac variants, including the 30C, 35C, and 15C Max, do have WiFi connectivity, which allows you to use a companion app to turn the robot shark cordless on or off, steer it manually, and set a cleaning schedule. Tired of constantly sweeping up or vacuuming dust, crumbs, and other debris from your floors? We’ve found that as long as a robot has a brush roll and a side brush, it’ll pick up crumbs, tufts of pet hair, and other common debris from bare floors and low-pile rugs.
It’s a little different to most in that the collection bin also doubles up as a water tank, with a rubber seal on the top you can pour 300ml of water into. You also have to clip on a plastic plate to the bottom of the unit, which has a removable mop cloth attached. The robot can then drag this around behind it, dripping water onto the cloth to give your hard floor shark cordless a wipe. There’s even a special mopping program, that moves the vacuum back, forth and side to side slightly as it covers an area, to provide a little more friction to the wiping motion. The simplest method is to simply press the start button on the top. The robot will head out, vacuum everywhere it can find, then return back to base for emptying and charging.
I have become surprisingly attached to it, like a little robotic cleaning pet. When it has caught and screwed up bits of paper or got stuck somewhere, I’ve felt more sorry for it than annoyed. I’ve irobot vacuum cleaner then made a special effort to keep things off the floor, which is all round a good thing. The iRobot Roomba 880 costs £600, which is at least £300 more than most other normal vacuum cleaners.