Many robot vacuums have object avoidance technology and stair recognition, which can prevent it from falling down the stairs while in use. If you’re planning to use your robot vacuum when you aren’t at home, it’s especially important to find a model that is capable of navigating its surroundings without getting stuck, falling down stairs, or breaking something in your house. The best robot vacuums will have object sensors and object avoidance to help them move across your floor seamlessly. “Those with open-style or larger homes should consider purchasing a robot vacuum with smart mapping capabilities,” Hild says. “Smart mapping robots can seamlessly and efficiently navigate an entire level of a home and keep track of its location … Users can also set up ‘Keep Out Zones’ for keeping the robot out of unwanted areas.” After two days of testing in our lab, our selection for the best robot vacuums is the iRobot Roomba 694 Robot Vacuum because of its effectiveness on multiple flooring types.
To test this aspect, we fully charge the battery, start a cleaning cycle, and time how long the robot runs before it needs to be docked. In some cases, it may take several complete cleaning cycles for a robot to run out of battery. The Roomba s9+ is admittedly overkill for most people – but it’s nothing if not one of the best robot vacuums out there. The s9+ is the biggest but also the most attractive robo-vac I tried, with a corner-friendly design, copper accents and a 1.5-foot tall clean base. The setup was quick and easy, with the machine taking only a few minutes to connect to my home’s WiFi and the iRobot app. But even if Mr. Mouse caught the edge of the Shark’s wheels now and then, the robo-vac took it all in stride.
This is so that it has adequate space to start cleaning and dock on re-entry, without any furniture getting in the way. An upgrade over the Roborock S7, this capable hybrid robot vacuum combines vacuum and mopping power in one slick looking machine. Instead of relying on cameras or lasers to map out its environment, the machine bumps around the floor like a slow-motion ping-pong ball, changing direction when it encounters an object bissell crosswave cordless or obstacle. As a result, it took an excessive 91 minutes to finish its cleaning cycle in our test room, so don’t expect it to cover your house in anything close to efficient fashion. Still, that’s more than a fair tradeoff at this bargain-bin price, especially considering what a surprisingly competitive cleaner the thing is. After years developing and implementing extensive tests, we’ve fine-tuned our vacuum testing process.
While WiFi-connected robot vacuums give you the flexibility to start a cleaning job from anywhere using an app, targeting a small area of your home can be more complicated. Some robo-vacs have spot-cleaning features that focus the machine’s attention on a specific area, which almost – but not quite – mimics the spot-cleaning you’d be able to do yourself with a regular or cordless vacuum. We tackled this question when we reviewed budget robot vacuums and the answer is yes, especially if vacuuming is one of your least favorite chores.
If the convenience of unsupervised vacuuming and a suite of customizable features are worth the splurge for you, we highly recommend the Samsung Jet Bot AI+ Robot Vacuum Cleaner. During testing, we found the high-tech features and effortless usability of this vacuum to be more than worth the price tag. If you’re not as concerned about emptying your vacuum’s canister, the Roomba 671 is also on sale for just $209.99 (a 40% dyson robot vacuum discount from its retail price of $349.99). Though it isn’t self-emptying, this model can also be controlled via voice assistants and has detectors that prevent it from falling down the stairs or getting stuck under furniture. I took into account a variety of different characteristics in the search for the best Roomba. Price range, smart features, battery life, and ease of emptying are all important factors to consider.
Even setting aside the smart maps, the Roborock Q5 is still one of the best navigators we’ve tested. It rarely misses any accessible areas of a home, as random-navigation robots (including our budget picks) sometimes do. In our tests, even when it did bump into an object its lidar turret didn’t detect, it course-corrected more quickly and more accurately than other bots. The Roomba i3 EVO is a better cleaner than most robot vacuums—at any price. We know this from assessing the visual results in our tests, but also from weighing the contents of the robot’s dustbin after vacuuming sessions and comparing that against the performance of other vacs.