We tested 10 robot vacuums to see which one is best at navigating a home, picking up dirt and simplifying your life. The Roomba i3+ is perfect for homes with lots of foot traffic, including homes with pets and kids. Its premium three-stage cleaning system is as powerful as it comes, and it’s able to clean precisely, moving in straight lines back and forth to thoroughly clean your floors while navigating around furniture. If it manages to drain its battery before it finishes the job, it will return to its base for recharging, then promptly pick back up where it left off when it’s all charged up.
Many of the latest models feature a Light Detection and Ranging laser (the same technology used in self-driving cars) to map your home and plan an efficient cleaning route. But some affordable robot vacuums still haphazardly ping-pong from wall to wall, inefficiently crossing over the same space multiple times as they clean. Battery life is also an important factor to consider based on the size of your home. In general, most robot vacuums can run for at least 60 to 70 minutes, which should be enough to tackle smaller homes and apartments.
It features effective battery life of up to 75 minutes, while also delivering Roomba’s triple-stage cleaning system and having up to 5 times the suction power of the 600 series. IAdapt navigation technology tracks where the robot has cleaned and helps it intelligently avoid obstacles. The Roomba 960 makes a great budget-conscious offering for almost any home. Whether you’re looking to mop the floor or lift pet hair from the carpet, there are robot vacuums that help tackle a multitude of household cleaning jobs. Roomba vacuums, made by iRobot, are a well-known name in hands-free cleaners. The Roomba product line comes in a variety of small but effective robot vacuums with smart features such as household mapping, as well as control integrations through app, Wi-Fi, and voice.
Many of today’s robot vacuums are great at thoroughly cleaning every room in a home without getting lost or stuck. We’ve tested a handful of their laser-nav bots over the past few years, including the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI (a higher-end but otherwise similar version of their latest models, N8 and N8 Pro). All the ones we’ve tested worked fine when they were new, but you can usually find a better bot for a lower price. Many of those reviewers also noted difficulty getting replacement parts.
The latest innovation is an auto-empty dock that can refill the mopping reservoir, clean the mop, and empty the bin, promising hands-free operation for at least a couple of months. Here’s some tips on what to look for when picking your next house cleaner. A brash, loud auto-emptying robot vacuum that’s long on features and short on style but comes at a real bargain.
Instead of random navigation around your home, the i series can clean in neat, straight lines, which might be more effective in larger spaces — especially when combined with its increased suction . The i3 is a standalone vacuum, but the i3+ comes with a self-emptying dock — you don’t have to clean out the chamber as often. Roomba budget models used a simplified interface (a single “Clean” button) and lacked some of the software-controlled flexibility of other versions. The Roomba Dirt Dog contained sweeping brushes and a larger dust bin, but lacked the vacuum motor, using the space that would be required for the vacuum for additional dust bin volume. The Roomba Model 401 was similar but had a standard-size dust bin and vacuum system. An original roomba model robotic vacuum is in the collection of the National Museum of American History, which they note as the first successful domestic robot.
You’ll also want to ask yourself how much time you want to devote to prepping the house before you vacuum. If your main struggle is keeping up with pet hair and small pieces of debris like cat litter, you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars to get a well-performing robot vacuum. In our testing, the iLife V3S Pro did the best job on cat hair and cat litter on my hardwood floors.
Our experts also look at how intuitive the controls are, how easy they are to program, how loud each vacuum is and how simple the dust bin is to remove and empty. Whether you want a model you can activate to clean before you get home, or a robot mop that does double duty and can wet-mop your kitchen too, these are the best robot vacuums you can buy in 2022. If your house is like ours, you’re probably sweeping, vacuuming bissell crosswave cordless or even just bending over with a wet paper towel after dinner to get rid of the bits of food that inevitably make it onto the kitchen floor after cooking. Now with robot vacuums, there are devices that can do this job for you. While robot vacuums can’t totally make floor cleaning a thing of the past, they can make floor cleaning happen less often in your home, and you don’t need to break the bank to afford one.
While not as effective as the top performers on our list, it still managed to pick up 88.9 percent of all debris laid before it. It is a much better performer on hard floors (94.35%) vs carpets (83.52%), which is worth bearing in mind depending on your flooring. This new robot vacuum cleaner from Wyze makes our list because dyson robot vacuum of its exceptional performance on hard floors. When we put it to the test, it picked up 100% of pet fur and cereal — it just missed a perfect score, as it collected roughly 97% of kitty litter. Until the Roborock S7, most of the hybrid robot vacuums/robot mops we’ve tested have been good, but not great, at either task.
Thanks to its bagless self-emptying system and self-cleaning brushroll, it’s one of the lowest-maintenance robot vacuums we’ve tested. That said, allergy sufferers might prefer the comparably priced Roomba i3+ EVO, which empties its bin into an AllergenLock bag so you’re not exposed to dust. Like other self-emptying robot vacuums, the Shark IQ XL returns to the base and empties its contents. The Shark, however, is the only vacuum we tested that features a bagless self-emptying base. To empty it, you simply detach the bin and empty it manually over the trash. This can get messy as dust flies around, but you save money buying replacement bags.