Vacuum Direct also carries replacement batteries and AC power supplies to keep your favorite robotic home-cleaning unit full of juice and ready to go. Several available iRobot replacement parts also exist to ensure that your Roomba stays as autonomous as possible, like the room-limiting Auto Virtual Wall and replacement remote controls for several models. Dreame manufactures robot vacuums that are also rebranded and sold by other companies—an indication that this practice could be employed by other brands as well, says Giese. Most robot vacuum companies MIT Technology Review spoke with explicitly said they don’t use customer data to train their machine-learning algorithms.
With a variety of controlled tests at our disposal, we evaluate them for their suction power, navigation smarts, ease of use and their ability to clean different kinds of messes from carpets and hardwood floors alike. The S series also includes linking technology that allows the Roomba to communicate wirelessly with other iRobot products, where the Braava irobot vacuum cleaner Jet M6 can automatically be set to mop after the s9 has finished vacuuming. The iRobot Roomba j7+ might induce sticker shock, but it’s one of the smartest standalone robot vacuums you can buy. It uses a built-in camera and machine learning technology to recognize obstacles in its cleaning path in real time and automatically reroute itself around them.
On many occasions, we also ran it immediately after other bots had done a cleaning session, and the i3 EVO would still come back with a lot of extra debris in its bin that the other bots must have left behind. The Roomba works by using smart sensors that allow the robot to adjust to your bissell crosswave cordless home’s features and layout. These sensors also allow Roomba to navigate under and around furniture, and along edges, while the Cliff Detect technology keeps it from falling down stairs. The auto-adjust cleaning head automatically adjusts its height to clean carpets and hard floors.
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. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the s9+ wasn’t nearly as loud as the j7 vacuum when emptying its dustbin into the clean base. Arguably the most compelling reason to get a robot vacuum at all is convenience, and iRobot managed to figure out how to incorporate mopping into an already stellar robot vacuum without removing any convenience. Sure, you have to add water and cleaning solution when you want to mop, and dispose of the remnants when it’s finished, but that’s about it.
If you need to vacuum only a few rooms at a time, and you’re looking to save a few bucks, consider the iRobot Roomba 694, or really any model from the 600 series. We also found the Roborock Q5 to be easier to use and program than other robots we tested, including the iRobot Roomba i3 EVO. On the robot vac itself, you’ll find a power button and a home button; the latter can send the device back to the dock or tell it to spot-clean if you hold it for a few seconds. We found that all three responded to voice commands very well; this was most evident in how the robot always reacted after our first request, no repeat commands necessary.
They get the surface debris, but if you have a carpeted house or lots of rugs, I’d recommend investing in a stick vac for weekly deep cleans. These are also handy for stairs, something no robot vacuum can tackle (yet). I’ve tested several models in this category now, and the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra is my favorite. The Ecovacs Deebot X1 Omni (which has a built-in voice assistant) is also good, but the Roborock can vacuum carpets and mop simultaneously. In contrast, you have to choose your cleaning preference with the Ecovacs model each time you send it out.
He noted that the company has curated a large learning library of different “shapes and configurations” of pet waste. We’ve tested a handful of its laser-nav bots over the past few years, including the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI (a higher-end but otherwise similar version of the N8 and N8 Pro). All of the Ecovacs models we’ve tested worked fine when they were new, but you can usually find a better bot for a lower price. We can’t be sure whether other models will have similar rates of problems, though the typical owner ratings for Ecovacs laser-nav bots tend to be a few tenths of a point lower than the ratings for other brands’ models.
Blossom enjoys delving into the intricacies of products and refining testing protocols for hundreds of items. Innovative items like robot vacuum cleaners and wine coolers are among her favourite tests to date, and her most notable accomplishment is toasting 360 slices of bread in a determined bid to find the best toaster. We timed how long it took and looked at how well it picked up from corners, edges and crevices too. Today’s robotic household helpers are positively packed with cutting-edge tech.
Throughout these tests, our experts evaluated the vacuums for their overall quality, noise level, and ease of use before assigning individual ratings for each category. Once lab testing was complete, we sent the robot vacuums home with our testers, where they used the devices in their own homes for an entire month. Our carpets were practically spotless when we used this Eufy vac, lifting all pet hair and brushing dirt towards the suction inlet.