The major flaw is the EcoVacs app, which is glitchier than others. Many of those reviewers also noted difficulty getting replacement parts. We can’t be sure whether other models will have similar rates of problems, though the typical user ratings for EcoVacs’ laser-nav bots tends to be a few tenths of a point lower than other brands’ ratings. shark cordless To EcoVacs’ credit, we’ve found that their bots are a little better at traversing tall rugs and large thresholds than other brands’ bots. First, you need to connect the bot to Wi-Fi via your router’s 2.4 GHz frequency only, and like anything Wi-Fi related, some people seem to have trouble getting it to work smoothly on their network.
My one quibble is that the j7+ is supposed to smart-recharge and return to clean areas that it missed. During the initial mapping, it missed one corner of one room on my 1,000-square-foot downstairs. My husband quickly realized that just one spot wasn’t getting cleaned. If you think your robot vacuum doesn’t work, it’s probably because you don’t empty the bin often enough. If that small onboard bin gets full during a run, the vacuum just drags excess dirt all over your house. The 2,000 Pa suction is typically powerful enough to really clean your carpets, and will pick up surface-level debris on the first run.
Whereas some robot vacuums sense carpeting and boost suction, the i3+ EVO provides consistently strong suction, and when it detects excess dirt, it automatically performs multiple passes. In our carpet tests, the i3+ EVO picked up all of the coffee grounds, kitty litter, and pet hairs we laid bissell crosswave cordless out and left behind only about 5% of the flour — the best performance of all the robot vacs we tested. In corners, it came within an inch of the wall but left behind about half the flour. It can even mop and vacuum carpets within the same cleaning run by raising and lowering its mopping pad.
You can also set schedules for most bots to wake up and start a cleaning job, so it can take place while you’re out of the house. That means you can potentially avoid all physical interaction until the vacuum needs to be emptied. While pricey, iRobot’s Roomba j7+ robot vacuum has smarts to spare, with a guarantee to avoid pet waste and a self-emptying base that means you rarely have to lift a finger. The way to get your money’s worth is to set a robot vacuum to automatically run every day.
They’re worth it, but they do require some extra work here and there. The Roomba i3+ doesn’t have all the navigational features that many other similarly priced vacuums have, like the ability to set virtual barriers. But it still has iRobot’s easy-to-clean rubber roller and Dirt Detect systems to sniff out trouble spots on your carpet. And it is incredibly satisfying to see it trundle back to the Clean Base and empty itself with a tremendous whoooosh after a mere 10 minutes.
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. Most robot vacuums are reliable when it comes to getting rid of standard household detritus, so you don’t have to worry about whether they can suck up lint, dirt, or hair. Since we test all the robot vacuums in the same home environment, we check how full the dustbins get and whether the robot picks up obvious debris like pet hair and dust bunnies. 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.