IRobot’s $279 Roomba 694 is a great option for most people thanks to its good cleaning power and easy-to-use mobile app. We won’t get too deep into it here since we have a whole guide to affordable robot vacuums with additional recommendations. But suffice to say, the 694 gives you all the essentials you’d expect from a robot vacuum, along with all of the convenience that comes with iRobot’s mobile app. Even this $1,000 robot vacuum bumped into a few table legs while cleaning, but it was noticeably better than other machines at navigating around my furniture and correcting itself when it got stuck. It also moves faster than the j7, so it was able to cover a bit more of my apartment before it had to return to the base for charging after about one hour of cleaning.
But even if Mr. Mouse caught the edge of the Shark’s wheels now and then, the robo-vac took it all in stride. One thing I look for when testing robot vacuums is how much attention they need from me during cleanings. The best ones require no extra attention at all – once they start a job, they’re smart enough to putter around your home, move around objects and return to their base when they’re finished. With Shark’s robo-vac, I never had to tend to it when it was cleaning.
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. The j7+ did the best job at creating and letting us adjust a map of our test area. A measure of how the device and its service provider collect, share and use your data, and the user’s ability to control the flow of their data. Analysis is based on evaluation of user interfaces, network traffic and publicly-available material.
I think the convenience is worth it, but they may require some tinkering. If you purchase the bin as an accessory rather than bundled, the robot may have trouble settling itself properly on the base station’s air ports when it docks. You also have to check occasionally to make sure the self-emptying chutes on both the station and the robot vacuum itself aren’t clogged. In our testing, it cleaned for up to 145 minutes in Auto mode before running low on juice—a good battery life result. It never got stuck on common obstacles like power cords and long curtains, and had no trouble sucking up dust, hair, and other debris.
However, the basic Eufy series isn’t as durable as Roomba models, nor is it built to be repaired. It also has smart mapping, so you can tell it to clean or avoid specific rooms. But unlike most shark cordless of its competitors, the Roomba i3 EVO is actually a sturdy, repairable appliance—and although longevity is never guaranteed, you can reasonably expect to own and use it regularly for years.
It performed admirably climbing up onto the carpet to clean, though it did get stuck several times on the base of my barstools and had to be rescued. This Shark machine comes with a clean base, so it will dyson robot vacuum empty its dustbin after every job – and also during a job if its bin gets full before it’s done. In the latter situation, the Shark will go back to cleaning automatically after it’s freed up its bin.