Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. For a dependable, versatile, and affordable cleaner, we prefer a bagless upright, but we have recommendations for other types of vacuums as well. If you understand that you’ll probably be disappointed but want to try an AI bot anyway, consider the iRobot Roomba j7 (or j7+) or the Roborock dyson robot vacuum S6 MaxV (both are higher-end versions of our top picks, and each cost a few hundred dollars extra). We’ve tested most of the auto-empty docks out there, including multiple versions from iRobot and Shark, and one each from EcoVacs, Roborock, and a generic-brand dock that came with a generic-brand Roborock knockoff . The Trifo Max worked fine in our tests, nothing impressive or obviously bad.
The Spruce uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Erica Puisis writes about home products for The Spruce and specializes in interior design and plant bissell crosswave cordless care. She’s contributed to Forbes and smart home blogs like Smart Home Solver and TechDigg. The iLife V3S Pro was able to transition easily from a rug to a floor and back up onto the rug without any problem. Because of its low 11.8-inch-by-3-inch profile, it also fits under a dresser that the Shark IQ and iRobot j7+ couldn’t get under.
Again, there are plenty of no-cost solutions that could work, such as picking any loose cables off the floor before starting a cleaning cycle, or closing closet doors to keep shoes hidden. If your budget allows it, you could also instruct a floor-scanning robot vacuum to avoid areas with cords and cables, or use virtual wall accessories to block them off. It’s been about six weeks since our family coughed up the cash for our very first robot vacuum, and I can honestly say that it was worth every penny.
I know, but for whatever reason, this particular fact of life about robot vacuums caught me off guard, even though I’ve emptied the dust bag in my dumb vacuum more times than I care to remember. While using a robot vacuum to clean your floors is still far easier than sweeping them yourself, they still require a fair amount of care and handling, and you’ll almost certainly need to iron out some kinks during the first few cleanings. Newer and more advanced Roombas come with such bells and whistles as home mapping, adaptive technology, and app and smart home device integrations. These features will provide you with a better idea of how your Roomba cleans your home as well as a more sophisticated, empowered user experience. If all you want is a device that will clean your floors while you tackle other tasks, these features may be less of a priority. The bottom line is that this budget Roomba will require more hands-on interaction for tasks like emptying the somewhat small dust bin and removing hair that becomes caught.
Even corners and baseboards will get a deep cleaning from the s9, thanks to its specially designed corner brush. Another feature that stands out on the Shark IQ XL is Evacuate and Resume, which is designed for homes with lots of pet hair. Most robot vacuums are reliable when it comes to getting rid of standard household detritus, so you don’t really have to worry about whether or not they’ll be able to suck up lint, dirt, or hair. Since we test all the robot vacuums in the same home environment, we check how full dustbins get and whether obvious debris like pet hair and visible dust bunnies are picked up. Most companies in this space advertise power in pascals , the metric unit of pressure, though iRobot doesn’t always make this information easy to find. In general, the higher the Pa the better, especially if you have carpet, but battery life and obstacle avoidance capabilities also play a factor in overall performance.
The bots might even (semi-randomly) miss a patch of ground or even an entire room in any given session. But if you run the bot at least a bissell crosswave cordless few days per week, your floors should stay pretty tidy. And again, we’ve found over and over again that it works well in smaller spaces.