You can program almost all models to run on a cleaning schedule (such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at noon). You can also start some Roomba models from your smartphone before you even get home. Other features include smart mapping, where your Roomba learns your home so you can tell it, “Clean the living room,” and it will concentrate its cleaning run to that area. The Roomba i7+ will learn your home through smart mapping, and it should avoid large obstacles like stairs, but it doesn’t have the technology to avoid smaller obstacles like socks, cords, or pet waste.
Some pet hair got caught on the brushes though, which also proved too powerful for hard floors, dispersing dust and crumbs around the room rather than drawing them in. To identify the best robot vacuums, we put models from big brands such as Shark, Dyson, and Roomba to the test and smaller names, including Eufy and Roborock. We evaluate the dirt pick-up of each model covering fine dust and cookie crumbs, along with larger particles, including cereal, while also looking at whether its pick-up on edges and crevices is as good as on large surface areas. An updated app made using the G30 Edge much easier than with previous Eufy robot vacuums. While the G30 Edge creates a map of your home, you can’t set up virtual no-go zones, or direct it to clean specific rooms. This might not be a dealbreaker for many, but for those who want the ultimate in convenient home cleaning, it’s something to consider.
The Shark AI Ultra is also the best robot vacuum for pet owners for a few reasons. In addition to the powerful suction and mopping, this vacuum features a self-cleaning brush roll that doesn’t get tangled up and clogged with dyson robot vacuum hair. (If you have pets that are potty training, the accident-avoiding j7+ could work better for you). The best robot vacuums have a lot of sophisticated technology and special features, which aren’t necessary for everyone.
At the end of each job, the robo-vac automatically empties its small dustbin into the large clean base – that means you won’t have to empty the dustbin yourself and you’ll only have to tend to the base once every few weeks. Just keep in mind that most self-cleaning bases require proprietary garbage bags – another long-term expense you’ll have to factor in. Also, any vac-and-mop robot with a water tank will not dump its dirty water into the clean base, so you’ll still have to clean that yourself.
It also features a self-emptying dustbin, good battery life, impressive obstacle avoidance, and strong vacuum suction power. We’ve tested more than 50 robot vacuum cleaners, and below are our recommendations for the best robot vacuums for pets to buy. These recommendations are based not only on their pet-hair cleaning performance on different surfaces but also on their design and price. For more, look at our lists of the best vacuums for pet hair, the best robot vacuums, the best robotic vacuums for hardwood floors, and the best handheld vacuums for pet hair. The Eufy RoboVac 11S and other Eufy bots whose model names begin with a number instead of a letter stand out as some of the quietest robot vacuums we’ve tested. They’re also some of the shortest, so they can fit beneath more pieces of furniture.
If you schedule it to run every few days, or even every day, dust and crumbs never have a chance to accumulate, leaving your floors feeling cleaner than they would without a bot. In most homes, a bot is likely to stay in good shape if you do about 15 minutes of maintenance per month, maybe a bit more if the bot has a heavy workload. On that note, there is still a place in the world for cheaper robots that rely on semi-random navigation.
Otherwise, our main concern is whether the little amount of sensitive data on a vacuum, such as your Wi-Fi network password, is stored securely (if it’s stored online at all), in case there are data leaks or breaches in the future. If you’re annoyed or creeped out by the whole thing, you can either buy a non-connected bot or just never set up your bot’s Wi-Fi—these bots all still clean a house automatically even if you don’t connect them to the internet. Keep in mind that you can’t use interactive mapping features without an internet connection. And if you decide to sell or give away a Wi-Fi robot vacuum, be sure to factory-reset it to remove the Wi-Fi credentials. Robot vacuum brands try to push customers toward self-emptying robot vacuums, probably because they cost about $250 more on average. If you truly want a set-it-and-forget-it robot vacuum, then this can be appealing.
In most cases, we buy all these products ourselves, though occasionally we get samples provided to us directly by companies. No matter how we procure products, they all go through the same tests and must meet the same strict criteria to make the best-of cut. We also pride ourselves on shark cordless transparency and will always let you know if we received a product for free. Looking for more products that have earned our BHG Recommends seal of approval? Check out our Top-To-Bottom Spring Cleaning Toolkit to shop everything you’ll need to get your home sparkling for the season.
During several of our tests, the Q5 produced good visual results, but the results for the i3 EVO were a little better when we weighed the dustbins. Also, the Q5 would regularly say that it had completed a job, when a quick look told us otherwise and we knew that we would have to restart the cleaning cycle. We’ve aimed to recommend a handful of robots that should work well in most homes and aren’t wildly expensive.
Instead, it uses gyroscopic navigation to divide the space into individual areas and clean each one methodically. Watching it go to work as it moves up and down in neat rectangular boxes is quite soothing. The best bang for your buck, the bissell crosswave cordless Roomba i3 Evo cleans just as well as the j7 but won’t avoid clutter and doesn’t have app-enabled clean zones or keep-out zones. In future testing, we plan to assess whether those models offer any real improvements on the mopping process.