What Experts Say You Should Know

Best Rated Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Robot vacuums are great to keep your floors clean but they cannot replace a traditional vacuum. Even the best robotic vacuums struggle to get deep into carpets or rugs, and can often get caught in socks and cords.

Your robot will last longer if you carry out regular maintenance. This includes replacing filters, cutting hairs that have become tangled off brushes, and emptying the dust bin.

Battery Life

Most robot vacuums can handle one or two cleaning sessions before requiring a charge. The Ecovacs Q30S Combo is the second-best robot cleaner of our overall selections. It comes with batteries that last up to 180 minutes (3,230 square feet) on a single charge. This amount of runtime will suffice for homes that have the combination of hard floors and carpets with low pile or larger homes with rooms that are roughly the same size.

A longer battery life means the robot will spend less time charging and more time cleaning. It is recommended to choose a model that has an automatic emptying bin. These models are more efficient at picking up debris and returning back to the dock to recharge. It's important to clean or replace the filters and wipe down the sensors and cameras on a regular schedule so they can be seen clearly.

Smart mapping technology is a beneficial feature, as you can program your robot vacuum hoover to ensure that it only cleans certain rooms or avoids areas where it is likely to bump into furniture and other obstacles. This feature is also helpful for ensuring that your robot is able to reach under and around furniture such as beds, sofas and other high-height items. Some robovacs are inexpensive and come with boundary strips that you can use to block off certain areas. Other high-end models rely on cameras and sensors.

Even the best robot vacuums can't replace a conventional vacuum for heavy-duty large-pile dirt and debris. It's best to keep a power vacuum available for these chores and plan robot vacuums for light Cleaning robot price throughout the week.

Navigation

A robot should be able to navigate your home without getting stuck or running into things like metal screws or loose pet hair or sand. In our tests, a tracking device is used to follow the robot around an entire lab. It then tracks its surroundings. We also look for the way it manages to avoid obstacles like furniture legs, power cords and pet waste.

The best robots are able to map out multiple floors, and recognize landmarks such as doors and windows. The most advanced ones, like the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra, come with a dual-sensor navigation device which uses a LIDAR sensor to map the space and a structured lighting camera in front of the robot to identify objects in real time. This lets the S8 to avoid common obstacles like furniture legs and power cords and can store up to four floor maps within its internal memory.

The more affordable models don't have this kind of detection and rely on bump sensors, which aren't as precise. In my tests, they plowed right through dog poop, cords, and even a pair of shoes placed in the middle of the room. The best combo vacuum value pick, the Dreametech D10+, is an exception to this. It has excellent carpet and hard floor pickup, great tangle and hair pickup, and a near perfect auto empty score.

A large onboard dustbin, which doesn't have to be emptying manually is another feature that is essential. For models that mop the floor, this tank can hold enough water to last for several weeks of cleaning sessions. The Karcher RCV 5 has this and a big enough footprint to go under furniture, but not so large that it can't fit into the nook between your bathtub and toilet.

Apps

Robot vacuums are similar to their upright counterparts and require an array of technologies to keep them up to date. The result is a mature market with plenty of options. Even the best models require interaction from their users especially when it comes to plan cleaning schedules, design an outline of your home, and set up virtual barriers.

To lessen the chance of this kind of interaction, look for a model with its own app to determine the location of your home, and save these settings for the future. This will allow the robot vacuum to continue where it started on subsequent runs rather than having the mapping process restarted each time.

Also, consider models that offer spot or zone cleaning. You can tell the robot vacuum cleaner to focus on a specific area, for example, under the table after a large family meal. You can choose to use the app or voice commands.

Many models also offer objects-avoidance. It lets the robot detect objects in its path, for instance the shoe box or a crate of dog toys, and then guide itself around it. This will prevent it from hitting objects that could damage its sensors or cause jams.

This feature is offered on some of the more expensive models we tested. They rely on the technology of bump sensors for this however they weren't always able to keep things out of my test home.

Pet Hair

When you're looking to remove pet hair, choose the right model designed to handle this type of debris. The most effective models come with powerful suction capabilities and a brush that prevents getting caught in a knot, and an emptying mechanism that can automatically empty hair into the trash bin when needed. Some are also able to detect dirt levels and adjust the intensity of cleaning in line with the level of dirt. They can also detect items that aren't a part of your flooring in your home, such as furniture, toys and food bowls.

Some robot vacuums include pet-friendly features, like a small water dispenser that can be used for mopping floors, and an HEPA filter that can help reduce allergens such as pet dander. They may also have a quieter mode of operation to reduce the amount noise produced during cleaning sessions.

Robot vacuums that include mapping capabilities are an excellent option for pet owners, since they are designed to analyze your home and develop an action plan based on the layout and obstructions in each room. For example the Shark Matrix Plus 2-in-1 Vacuum is a smart robot vacuums vacuum with an impressive capability to map the room and navigate around furniture and other obstructions with accelerometer and gyroscope smart sensors which work in tandem to understand the layout of your home.

Other models that are more advanced let you set no-go zones, which are areas that the robot is expected to avoid--like fragile items or pet feeding spots--by adjusting settings via an app. This feature is particularly useful for families with busy schedules, since you can schedule cleaning times without having to be in the room in which the vacuum is. Another excellent feature is spot cleaning which lets you direct the vacuum to clean a particular area that is particularly dirty or full of pet hair.

Dust Bin

If you're not searching for something small, you'll want to choose one that can carry at least a complete bag of garbage from a single cleaning session. We recommend choosing one with a large bin or a bin that self-empties. The former will allow you to keep track of emptying the bin often enough to stay on top of its performance, while the latter will save you time and hassle by automatically emptying its contents into an internal container after every few cleans.

Look for models that have smart mapping capabilities that enable them to "learn" the layout of your home and devise more efficient routes. They also can detect and avoid objects that may hinder their routes (like shoelaces or tangled charging cables). Make sure you choose models with smart mapping capabilities. This lets them "learn the patterns of your house and design a an efficient route.

Certain models also offer spot cleaning, which lets you to manually target a particular area of your home for thorough cleaning. We've found that most of the top performers in our tests are able to take in fine particles such as baking soda and sand together with larger debris such as oatmeal, orzo pasta, metal screws, and pet hair.

Depending on the brand, most robots will last for years and will continue to perform so long as you keep up with maintenance, such as cleaning hair that is tangled from brushes and dust bins, emptying them after each use, and wiping down cameras and sensors when needed. The most efficient robots tend to be more modular which makes them simpler and cheaper to replace or repair parts like batteries and wheels as they wear out.