While it works best in small spaces, it rarely gets stuck, and it does a good job on bare floors and short-pile rugs. Many robot vacuums are actually designed to work seamlessly between hardwood, tile and carpets. The majority of robot vacuums can easily handle low-pile area rugs, while those with more robust motors can tackle even high-pile carpeting. In addition to an effective cleaning routine and a carpet boost, it has a long-lasting battery time and a large dustbin. A few years ago, the hot thing in robot vacuums was sticking a cloth attached to a tiny liquid reservoir underneath the bot and calling it a mopping robot. These were very ineffective at mopping, and they took away from the capacity of the dustbin, a key feature if you don’t have an auto-empty dock.
Since we first tested this model, iRobot has added smart mapping, which allows the i3 EVO to run through the house, without cleaning, in order to create a single floor plan that is saved in the app. We’ve concluded that the Roborock Q5’s smart mapping works better, but this new addition to the i3 EVO makes it slightly smarter than it was previously. For every robot vacuum, we run at least two regular cleaning cycles across about 1,000 square feet, with lots of obstacles and thresholds. None of the rooms have any wall-to-wall carpet, but the space does have several area rugs, with styles ranging from lightweight doormats to rubber-backed, medium-pile rugs that take up half a room. The test house also has cats, kids, and other family members, all of whom leave plenty for each robot to pick up. Robot vacuums never get bored or distracted, and they don’t mind cleaning every day.
They range in price from under $200 to well over $1,000, so there’s a bot for every budget. Whether you have a 3,000-square-foot home and three shaggy dogs or a small, stylish apartment you share with a goldfish, there’s a robot vacuum to suit your needs. “These can detect and avoid pet bowls, pet toys and pet waste,” says Williams, adding that they also come with iRobot’s Pet Owner Official Promise , which means if the robot hits solid pet waste, iRobot will replace it free of charge. The Roomba j7 adds to the i3’s functionality by using a camera to map your house, allowing you to tell it to clean a specific room or even a specific area of a room (like “under the couch”) as needed. Like the i3, there’s an elevated plus version that comes equipped with a self-emptying dock.
This system looks silly, and some people simply can’t stand to watch it. The bots might even (semi-randomly) miss a patch of floor or dyson robot vacuum even an entire room in any given session. But if you run the bot at least a few days per week, your floors should stay pretty tidy.
It’s an optional feature, not on by default, and is livestream only — there’s no recording. With the same battery as its more expensive S7 sibling that can run for 200 minutes and a huge 640ml bin, the E4 is a workhorse. It’s also very nimble, cleans in methodical rows, and works with Google Home and Alexa voice assistants. Introduced in September 2002, the first-generation Roomba had three buttons for room size.
As with most budget robot vacuum cleaners, there are no mapping features, so if you need to create keep-out zones — and a door won’t work — you’ll have to purchase some magnetic tape to create a barrier. The best robot vacuums are impressive devices that will clean your floors well without complaining . Thankfully, today’s robo vacs have largely shaken off the category’s early reputation for running out of juice halfway through a job, missing large swaths of your floor, or losing a battle with a chair leg. Most know when to return to their base to recharge, and if they get stuck, they can call for help. The cleaning time depends on room size and, for models equipped with dirt sensors, volume of dirt.
All Roomba bots, including the i3 EVO, also have a dirt-detection system—another feature you can’t find in other brands’ bots. When a Roomba model senses that it’s passing over an area with a lot of debris, it stops and makes a few passes back and forth to pick up as much as possible. If you suffer from allergies but still want a robot vacuum to handle your light-duty cleaning needs, the iRobot Roomba S9 is among the robot vacuums we’ve tested.
You can basically rebuild your bot if needed, making this an investment that should last a long time. Keep in mind that manufacturers typically cover their robots with one-year limited warranties that include parts and labor. The Samsung JetBot AI Plus consistently failed our solid pet waste test.
The Clean Base is shorter and shallower than Samsung’s emptying bin base, taking up less space in a room or under a table. It also has a hidden storage area where you can stash your extra bags. The height, rounded up to the nearest half-inch, of the shortest vertical space the robotic vacuum could enter while operating. Bare floorsIndicates the vacuum’s ability to remove surface debris from a bare laminate floor. For a dependable, versatile, and affordable cleaner, we prefer a bagless upright, but we have recommendations for other types of vacuums as well.
The ideal cleaner will make easy work of finding its way from room to room and automatically avoiding obstacles along the way, all of which makes for proper, low-maintenance automated cleaning. These overhead long exposure shots each show the trail of a Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra as it cleans our test room. We attach glow sticks to the top of the cleaner directly above the vacuum intake to get a sense of how much coverage the vacuum offers and how intelligently it navigates. In this case, the S7 MaxV Ultra is as thorough and consistent as robot vacuums get. In response to the growing interest of hackers in their product, the company developed the iRobot Create. In this model the vacuum cleaner motor is replaced by a “cargo bay” for mounting devices like TV cameras, lasers and other robotic parts.