Besides that, I was impressed with how easy it was to set up the X8 Hybrid, how accurate its mapping technology was and how many extra features it supports. It has four cleaning modes – auto, room, zone and spot – and four suction levels starting with Pure at the low end and topping out at Max. These features give you a lot of control over where the machine cleans and how powerfully it will do so. The X8 Hybrid was in Pure mode the first time I ran it, and I was surprised by not only how quiet it was but also how thoroughly it cleaned considering it was on the lowest suction setting. Shark’s RV2502AE AI robot vacuum with Base ticks all of the boxes that a mid-range machine should.
Roborock’s latest version — the S8 Pro Ultra (due out in late April) — has a redesigned dock with a cleaner look, the option of white as well as black, and a mop drying feature. Also, the S8 is the first Roborock with two roller brushes, not just one, which gets a better clean on carpets. The S7 also has an ingenious “VibraRise’’ feature that lifts the mop a few millimeters when it senses carpet, meaning you don’t get a damp rag dragged over your living room rug. Another bonus is that I didn’t have to swap out the mopping pad when I wanted it to vacuum only — something you have to do with most hybrid models. But the VibraRise feature can only clear low-pile rugs, so I set a no-mopping zone around my plush floor coverings.
In addition to all the testing, this guide includes feedback from dozens of bot owners who live in all kinds of homes and households. We still think bump-and-run bots have a place, so we’ve shuffled our favorites in this group to budget-pick status. This tried-and-true robot vacuum is much more durable and repairable than similar bots from other brands and is better at cleaning rugs, too. It’s a nimble navigator that rarely gets stuck, though it works best when it has to clean only a few rooms at a time. The first and only fully retractable 2-in-1 robot vacuum and mop with a mop that lifts high to keep carpets dry. To achieve a truly hands-off clean, look for a Roomba with a self-emptying base.
Plus, the built-in sensors allow the robot vacuum to navigate around furniture and large obstacles in its way (though you’ll want to make sure there aren’t any socks, power cords, or other small items in its path). It can even detect and avoid staircases, so you’ll never come home to find a broken Roomba at the bottom of your stairs. On bare flooring, the Roomba 694 was able to pick up small sand particles and larger debris alike in a single pass, including cereal, pet hair, and human hair.
Browse the owner reviews for any robot vacuum with smart maps, and you’ll find stories about problems with setting up the map, the map being inaccurate, the bot ignoring the zones on the map, or weird changes happening to the map over time. With the best models, mapping glitches don’t happen often, but problems will eventually crop up for everyone who owns one of these bots. At some point, you might have to erase your old maps and retrain the robot. Even Shark and Samsung joined the laser-nav bonanza (after previously releasing robots that used camera-based smart navigation), with the Shark AI Robot Vacuum RV2000 series and the Samsung Jet Bot and Jet Bot AI+, respectively.
Only the smartest bots can distinguish between hardwood and carpets, so if your home has a lot of rugs or carpets, then this could pose problems. More importantly, the average robot mop just isn’t very good, dyson robot vacuum ending up smearing big messes than actually cleaning them up. While the iRobot Roomba 694 earned the No. 1 spot in our list of the best robot vacuums, the Roomba S9+ didn’t perform as well during testing.
Although the function works well, we found the Roomba i3/i3+ to be more affordable and a better cleaner overall. This is the Roborock Q5 packaged with a charging dock that sucks all the debris out of the robot after a cleaning session. Two rounded corners dyson robot vacuum allow it to clean corners in your home better than any other Roomba currently on the market. If you’re interested in mopping after vacuuming, you can purchase the iRobot Roomba s9+ Bundle that includes this Roomba and the Braava Jet m6, too.
Plus, the battery life is 90 minutes, which is competitive with higher-end picks, and you’re able to customize your cleaning schedule so you can come home to clean, sparkling floors. However, it builds on this with an Auto-Empty Station and will automatically empty the onboard 14.2oz / 420ml dust canister into a disposable bag after every clean. So you only have to worry about emptying the robot vacuum once a month or so. We found it sucked up fine dust and larger debris on hard floors on the lowest power setting but required the highest suction setting to remove the most visible traces of flour from medium pile carpets. The i3+ EVO offers 10 times the suction power of the entry-level Roomba 600 series, and in testing did a good job of removing dirt from hard floors and carpet. When it finds an especially dirty area, it automatically goes into Dirt Detect mode and moves over the offending spot multiple times until it’s sufficiently clean.
They save time and effort compared to regular vacuum cleaners and are ideal for a mid-week clean. Auto-emptying is a quick process but can be noisy, so we’d suggest not running them at night or during an important work meeting. For those without this feature, be aware that due to their size, the dust canister will need to be emptied more frequently than a regular vacuum cleaner. These small-scale vacs are ideal for cleaning up spilt food and keeping on top of dust in-between more thorough cleans. They navigate around your home using sensors to avoid bumping into furniture, or by detecting (provided) magnetic strips that mark no-go areas.
Although robot vacuums are weaker than traditional vacuums, they can reliably pick up most kinds of floor debris, and they work on most bare floors and carpets. Based on our testing, the Eufy RoboVac X8 seemed to be a fine laser-nav robot vacuum, but it’s relatively expensive and doesn’t offer meaningful improvements over the company’s cheaper models. Its defining feature is supposed to be its strong suction, with two turbines pulling 2,000 pascals each (whereas most laser-nav bots have a single turbine and less than 2,500 pascals of suction total). That’s fine, but it’s slightly less than what you get from the slightly more affordable Roborock Q5. The older Eufy RoboVac L70 is still available, as well, but its app is not capable of permanently remembering specific rooms in a home, which makes it substantially less convenient than most current laser-nav bots.