The iRobot Home App has been rebuilt to deliver an intuitive experience for an intuitive clean. Our sleek, intuitive design allows you to dial in the way you clean, every single day. I’ve covered appliances and other major household fixtures for more than a decade, and I’m excited to help CR’s readers find the right goods for their homes. If you ever get me talking, I’ll probably have a story about some wacky side effects of appliance regulations, or the journey to fully electrify my 100-year-old house.
So with very little effort on your part, your floors can stay constantly tidy. We’ve tested dozens of robots, from cheap models that bump around randomly to fancy machines that empty themselves and steer around dog poop. First, consider the strong, durable, smart-enough iRobot Roomba i3 EVO. Floors cluttered with obstacles like wires, charging cords, toys, shoes and clothing can stop robots in their tracks. Some robot vacuum models clean tile, wood flooring and different types of carpet better than others.
The Roomba works by using smart sensors that allow the robot to adjust to your home’s features and layout. These sensors also allow Roomba to navigate under and around furniture, and shark cordless 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.
ILife serves up a solid budget option with this hybrid robotic mop and vacuum. The V8s is a simple machine with little in terms of smart technology or features. But for people who prefer simplicity or those purchasing their very first robot, this may be an excellent option.
You can get the robot on its own or with iRobot’s Clean Base auto-empty dock. Several users were unhappy with the occasional connectivity issues, and how the device could lose an entire floor plan from a single piece of furniture being moved. A few also noted a design flaw that required repairs, as fur can get sucked into a gap between the brush and housing. Some people reported issues working on black carpets, due to a malfunction with the sensor.
It’s also Wi-Fi-enabled and Alexa-compatible, it connects to Yeedi’s app, and now there’s a self-empty station ($200.) It works, but I have occasionally had trouble getting the vac to settle properly onto the ports. No robot vacuum can climb stairs , so if you want hands-free cleaning everywhere, you’ll want to budget for one per floor or be prepared to move it around. You can also buy extra charging bases, and some models can map multiple floors.
The battery life will generally range from 60 minutes with more basic versions to about 120 minutes at the higher end. Those who want their Roomba to cover more square footage may prefer a model with a longer battery life, or perhaps two robots to cover different zones or floors. For our hard floor straight-line pickup tests, large and small debris is deposited onto a marked area of the floor (based on the width of the opening of the robot vacuum’s nozzle). Then each robot vacuum dyson robot vacuum is allowed 10 minutes to pick up the debris from the floor and the weight of the dustbin is taken to find how much debris is picked up by each. Straight-line pickup tests on carpet are done in an enclosed area where we deposit mixed debris including potting soil, sand and rayon fibers meant to mimic hair. Each robot vacuum is allowed to clean the carpet for a specified length of time, and the weight of the dustbin is taken to find out how much debris each robot can pick up.