Based on your preferences, habits, home and the seasons, Roomba® j7/j7+ uses iRobot OS to create personalized cleaning suggestions, like cleaning more frequently during pet-shedding or allergy seasons. I’m PCMag’s executive editor of reviews, steering our coverage to make sure we’re testing the products you’re interested in buying and telling you whether they’re worth it. I previously managed the consumer electronics reviews team, and before that I covered mobile, smart home, and wearable technology for PCMag and Gigaom. Based on your preferences, habits, home and the seasons, Roomba® s9+ uses iRobot OS to create personalized cleaning suggestions, like cleaning more frequently during pet-shedding or allergy seasons. Dirt Detect™ Technology only from iRobot® allows the Roomba® s9+ Robot Vacuum to detect the dirtier areas of your home and clean them more thoroughly. We continue to test robot mop-vacuum hybrids and will publish our full results soon.
Roomba is an autonomous vacuum and one of the most popular consumer robots in existence. It navigates around clutter and under furniture cleaning your floors, and returns to its charging dock when finished. A. Powered by iRobot OS, the i1 learns from your cleaning shark cordless habits to offer up personalized schedules, while Google Assistant and Alexa allow you to start cleaning with just the sound of your voice. The i1 will even suggest an extra clean when your area’s pollen count is high or during pet shedding season.
A. Yes, with voice assistant capability through Google and Alexa devices, the Roomba® 694 Series robots can clean your home at the sound of your voice. Enhanced maps, the ability to clean specific objects, custom routines, seasonal suggestions, and intuitive smart home integrations. The PrecisionVision navigation system makes clean-up simple by enabling your robot to identify and vacuum around objects in its path like shoes, socks, pet dishes, and cords. Our Pet Owner Official Promise (P.O.O.P.) guarantees a replacement if it sweeps up accidental pet messes3.
The X2’s robust array of sensors help it efficiently map and navigate your home. The built-in AI determines vacuum strength and water flow on the fly based on the room it’s cleaning. When it’s done, it returns to the base station, empties its dustbin, washes and dries its own mops, then refills its tank from the larger reservoir in the base.
Premium models might also function as a roving home security camera, letting you view live video of your home from wherever you are. TP-Link’s companion app provides an impressive amount of control over your robot-vac, too. You can easily change the suction shark cordless power level, the watering level when you’re mopping and cleaning run times. Plus, the companion app is also the home for other TP-Link IoT devices, so you could build onto your ecosystem with more of the brand’s gadgets and control them all from one app.
The Ecovacs Deebot X1 Omni previously held this spot and is still a solid option, but the X2 adds hot water mop washing, lifting mop pads, and increased suction power to outdo its predecessor. When finished cleaning or when the battery is nearly depleted, Roombas (excluding first-generation models) will try to return to a base if one is detected. Roombas with mapping capability can recharge and resume a cleaning job, enabling them to clean large areas that take more than one full battery charge to complete. Roombas, except for first-generation models also support scheduling, allowing cleaning to start at a certain time and day of the week that the owner desires. Most 500-series models support scheduling through buttons on the unit itself, and higher-end models allow the use of a remote control, smartphone app, or smart-home automation integration to program schedules.
Complaints about iRobot’s customer service are rampant, reflecting a broader issue with its app and product support. The i4+ EVO’s self-emptying dock also failed to remove all the debris it had collected in its bin, leaving behind Cheerios and rice. This is not a comprehensive list of everything we tested in previous iterations of this guide—only models that we’ve recently tested and are currently available. In our tests, the Q5 cleaned better than any other smart robot at its price, sucking up almost 90% of the rice, Cheerios, fur, and baking soda we put down.