EBay offers the best value on the biggest selection of refurbished products from exceptional sellers with warranties as good as or superior to what’s offered on brand-new products. Because everyone should be empowered to get the exact products they want in the right condition at the right price so their dollars go further. Jennifer (Jenny) has over a decade of experience as a digital product writer specialising in appliances, smart tech and mattresses for some of the UKs leading retailers and magazine titles such as Real Homes, Ideal Home and Livingetc. Generally, you’ll find her watching the latest Netflix series, digging around in the garden or attempting to make a cake that is edible.
Roomba is a series of autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners made by the company iRobot. Introduced in September 2002,[1] they have a set of sensors that enable them to navigate the floor area of a home. These sensors can detect the presence of obstacles, particularly dirty spots on the floor, and steep drops (e.g., to avoid falling down stairs). From its companion app, you can move the robot around and view a live video stream of what’s happening inside your home.
If you have plush carpets and a lot of hair to deal with, though, you’re likely to prefer a robot with better brush action and possibly stronger suction. Another advantage is that the Roomba 694 (like other Roomba models) has two counter-rotating brush rolls, mounted in a suspension system, whereas every other bot at this price has a single brush sitting at a fixed height. Even the cheapest bots we’ve tested do a good job of picking up the most common types of debris from bare floors and short rugs, but the Roomba 694’s design helps it work better on rugs, especially when it needs to pick up a lot of hair.
As a rule of thumb, the more features and functions a robot has, the more expensive it will be. This doesn’t mean that the performance you are getting with a robot vacuum will be any less, though. “These can detect and avoid pet bowls, pet toys and pet waste,” says Williams, adding that they also come with iRobot’s Pet Owner Official Promise (POOP), which means if the robot hits solid pet waste, iRobot will replace it free of charge. The Roomba j7 adds to the i3’s functionality by using a camera to map your house, allowing you to tell it to clean a specific room or even a specific area of a room (like “under the couch”) as needed.
In our opinion, the Wyze Robot Vacuum is a much more advanced option than the Eufy G30 Edge, which comes at a similar price. IRobot vacuums do require an investment upfront, but they are cost-effective machines that can save you a ton of labor and stress in the future. These are self-sufficient machines that you can simply turn dyson robot vacuum on and forget about, greatly simplifying life and reducing cleaning costs. It offers Wi-Fi connectivity and compatibility with Alexa, but that is far from all. This is also an incredibly smart vacuum that uses its iRobot OS to offer custom suggestions based on your home, learning your routines and the ins and outs of your home.
IRobot’s Roomba j7 is the best of the best, offering excellent cleaning power, an impressive app, plenty of extra features, easy repairability, and a stylish design for around $600. If you have pets, children, or just lots of foot traffic and find it hard to keep up with your floors, this will do the dirty work for you. The bots might even (semi-randomly) miss a patch of floor or even an entire room in any given session. But if you run the bot at least a few days per week, your floors should stay pretty tidy.
This top-of-the-line model is suitable for those with deep pockets who are willing to pay a premium for convenience. With long battery life, strong suction power, and AI-powered obstacle avoidance technology, the X1 Omni is an excellent option for large homes and those with pets. Roborock’s high-end S7+ deserves a mention for its cleaning power and number of additional features dyson robot vacuum that many other competitors don’t have. First, the S7+ is a vac-and-mop combo, and its mopping map automatically lifts itself out of the way when the machine reaches the carpet. That means you can have it clean your whole home, vacuuming and mopping in the right spots, without you giving it any extra attention (besides filling its 300ml water tank at the start).
The Shark’s water–and-solution based cleaning abilities are basic but much better than having to schlep out an old-school mop and bucket yourself. My mix of hardwood and tile floors appeared noticeably cleaner after the Shark passed over them with its mopping pad. I know I’ll have to whip out my floor steamer every once in a while to really get a deep clean, but the Shark’s capabilities are more than enough for biweekly runs – and it’s hard to beat the convenience of not having to do it yourself.
Some high-end robot vacuums now include advanced obstacle recognition in their navigation systems. In theory, these systems should help the robots drive around any floor clutter they find, and even assist them in avoiding hazards like dog turds. Shark’s non-laser robots are reasonably priced and look great on paper but are just okay in the real world. They’re also pretty loud on bare floors, sounding sort of like a two-stroke lawn mower puttering in the distance. To their credit, they seem to be strong cleaners, particularly on bare floors. Wyze is known for selling good-enough and implausibly affordable smart-home gear such as security cameras, locks, and thermostats, in addition to the laser-nav Wyze Robot Vacuum.
But as of 2022, smart robots are much more common and affordable—and much better at cleaning large spaces consistently and efficiently. Even so, the semi-random bots still have a place in the world, and we’ve concluded that the Roomba 600 series is a great option if you want a simple, sturdy bot for a fair price. In fact, the “brushes” on the i3 EVO are really rubber-nubbed extractors, which are particularly good at picking up pet hair, especially from thicker and higher-pile rugs, without much hair getting wrapped around the roller. All Roomba bots, including the i3 EVO, also have a dirt-detection system—another feature you can’t find in other brands’ bots. When a Roomba model senses that it’s passing over an area with a lot of debris, it stops and makes a few passes back and forth to pick up as much as possible. Mopping is become a standard feature in many new robot vacuums, but that doesn’t mean you should pick a hybrid model automatically.