The simplest robot vacuums navigate back and forth, in long Z-shaped rows, avoiding obstacles as needed. However, the newest generation of robot vacuums feature on-board cameras or LiDAR laser mapping, which they use to construct a map of your home for guided cleanings. Today, the best robot vacuums offer a full suite of cleaning tools and assorted bells and whistles. This article was written by Erin Johnson, a commerce editor at The Spruce focusing on appliances, cleaning, and organization. She has hands-on experience testing upright, cordless, handheld, and robot vacuums and mops and has developed and led tests in The Lab.
Another option is to set up do-not-cross lines or no-go zones, which is a great way to keep bots out of areas where they tend to get stuck or make a mess (like around pet food bowls). The dust- and crumb-pickup stress tests are meant only to give us an idea of each bot’s cleaning power—they don’t tell the whole story, and we don’t place much weight on them when we’re deciding which models to recommend. We’ve found that as long as a robot has a brush roll and a side brush, it’ll pick up crumbs, tufts of pet hair, and other common debris from bare floors and low-pile rugs. That’s enough to keep most homes tidy, and most owners seem happy with those results. If you have thicker rugs, or if you just feel like owning a stronger bot, go ahead and spend a little more on a bot with better brushes or stronger suction.
It can also recognise objects and offer alternative cleaning patterns, so you can choose the route you want it to take. IRobot’s robotic vacuum cleaners are definitely more than the sum of their parts and they have been designed with components that won’t break the bank when the time comes to replace them. IRobot parts are designed to be easily installed and to keep your Roomba in top working condition. Among Vacuum Direct’s vast array of iRobot replacement parts are several filters, such as Aerovac filters, designed to provide comprehensive filtration for your Roomba’s internal suction components. To complement the effective filtration from the Aerovac filters, we also offer replacement debris bins to help keep your Roomba functioning at the top level.
We’ve also tested some cheap bump bots that are slightly different from the standard-issue Eufy, including the Eureka Groove. That bot was basically fine, but it couldn’t match the agility of the Eufy model (and its endless clones) or the durability of the Roomba bots we’ve tested. Wirecutter’s Liam McCabe wrote the previous versions of this guide, evaluating some 200 robots and testing close to 50 models since 2012. It also has built-in sensors bissell crosswave cordless to help it avoid small objects in its path, so you can feel more comfortable running it without supervision. During testing, we found that it avoided all the objects we placed in front of it—including socks, power cords, and pet messes. The Roomba i8+, which is smaller and slightly more advanced than the i4+, can create personalized Smart Maps of your home and be programmed to only clean designated Clean Zones and avoid Keep Out Zones.
A strategically-designed corner brush that’s unique to this model helps it get into hard-to-reach places. This 4.4-star-rated Shark IQ Robot vacuum (RV912S) cleans your whole home in neat rows. It lacks the advanced smarts of more expensive robot vacuums, but this is one of the most affordable robot vacuums with a shark cordless self-emptying base you’ll find. The Anker Eufy 25c robot vacuum doesn’t skimp on features — it connects to your home Wi-Fi and can be controlled through an app or through your home’s smart speaker. It has 1,500 Pa of suction, three-layer filtration and a slim profile that helps it get under furniture to clean.
We found that it worked equally well on both carpet and hardwood, only faltering once when transitioning from a hard floor to the rug. The 0.6-liter dust bin can hold a larger amount of dirt compared to other robot vacuums we tested, so you won’t necessarily have to clean it out after every completed job. Plus, its battery runs for up shark cordless to 100 minutes, meaning this little machine can power through multiple rooms in the house before needing to recharge. If you’re in the market for a proficient midrange hybrid that works best as a mop, the Bissell SpinWave Wet and Dry is a top choice. We recommend this model for homes with pets or difficult-to-clean hard flooring.
You just clip on a water reservoir (no cleaning solution allowed with most models) and a microfiber pad behind the vacuum intake, and the bot wipes the floors while it vacuums. Eufy makes several RoboVac models built on the same base as the 11S but with extra features. You can connect the Roomba i3 EVO to your Wi-Fi so that you can use a smartphone app to tell it to start or stop, instruct it to return to its dock, or create a cleaning schedule, if you’d like, though doing so is totally optional. 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. You can then label rooms and tell the vac to clean specific areas (or avoid ones that are particularly cluttered).
However, it tends to bump into things more often than the j7, resulting in a few toppled chairs during testing. So it isn’t the right bot for you if you have delicate items like vases on pedestals. If the dock is in a cluttered area or under a piece of furniture, there’s a good chance the bot will not re-dock. You can find tons more laser-nav robots with largely similar specs and appearance, including bots from barely-there brands such as Tesvor, Dreametech, Viomi, and Honiture.
I unbox, set up, test, and review a wide range of consumer tech products from my home in Florida, often with the help of my pitbull Bradley. I’m also a yoga instructor, and have been actively teaching group and private classes for nearly a decade. I’m PCMag’s executive editor of reviews, steering our coverage to make sure we’re testing the products you’re interested in buying and telling you whether they’re worth it. I previously managed the consumer electronics reviews team, and before that I covered mobile, smart home, and wearable technology for PCMag and Gigaom. The biggest selling point of the Roomba j7 series is its upgraded AI-driven computer vision which helps it detect and move around objects, including pet waste. The S7’s killer combo is a mop that vibrates 3,000 times a second to simulate some good old-fashioned scrubbing, which is paired with an extra-large water tank so the mop can actually get wet enough to be effective.
Google Assistant and Alexa compatibility let you start a cleaning session with just your voice, or simply use the iRobot Home App. When your area’s pollen count is high or during pet shedding season, the Roomba 677 robot vacuum can even suggest extra cleanings —to help keep your floors clean every day of the year. The Dual Mode Virtual Wall® Barrier gives you greater control over where your robot cleans. Virtual Wall Mode keeps your robot in the rooms you want cleaned and out of the ones you don’t. The Eufy G30 Edge is a mapping robot, using a mixture of sensors and software to move methodically though your space in a back and forth motion, like a game of Snake, instead of bumping randomly through your apartment.