Re: Best Robot Vacuum Cleaner For Home
Oleta Blaylock
Designed to navigate your home and clean your floors automatically, robot vacuum cleaners are made to tackle this chore so you don't have to. They can clean on demand, on a schedule and even when you're not home. Powered by rechargeable batteries, the robot typically sits on a charging dock to top off its energy supply. Premium models come with docking stations that can also empty the robot's dustbin when it's full.
Robot vacuums are complex machines with more moving parts, electronics and software than ordinary vacuums. Still, with regular maintenance and replacement parts such as batteries, brushes and filters, these devices can last just as long as traditional vacuums. This should translate to multiple years of use.
How well a robot vacuum cleans your home depends on many factors. Floors cluttered with obstacles like wires, charging cords, toys, shoes and clothing can stop robots in their tracks. The less overall clutter the better a robot will operate. Some robot vacuum models clean tile, wood flooring and different types of carpet better than others.
I'll admit that I was initially skeptical of the DreameBot D10 Plus. At a retail price of $400, it offers features like a self-emptying dustbin and a built-in mopping pad, while costing hundreds less than comparably equipped cleaners. Too good to be true? A dream, you might say? Turns out, no. Although it wasn't the best at any of the skills in our slate of tests, it was powerful and versatile enough to keep up with the competition at just about every turn. It's right on par with the top robot vacuums we test on low-pile and midpile carpets, and it outperformed every other cleaner on hardwood floors except for the $899 Roomba Combo J7 Plus. Its lidar, laser-aided navigation was sharp and consistent, and right on par with what we'd expect from other top brands that put that technique to work, including Neato and Roborock. With built-in Wi-Fi, it supports voice-activated cleaning via Alexa or the Google Assistant. I also appreciated that the self-emptying dock holds up to 2.5L of dust and debris -- good enough for 45 days of uninterrupted cleaning, DreameTech says -- while still being less bulky (and less ugly) than some other tank-like self-emptying cleaners.
All of that is well worth the $500 or more that you'd spend for a comparable, self-emptying, mopping-ready model from the likes of Roomba, Roborock, or any other top brand, but again, the DreameBot D10 Plus is available for $400. That makes this highly versatile floor cleaner a top-value pick, and an easy recommendation for the very top of our list.
We made some major upgrades to our lab's robot vacuum test setup a few years ago, so the data from the tests that came before aren't directly comparable to our most recent models. That's a shame because the iRobot Roomba S9 Plus was a major standout from that earlier era -- particularly for its eye-popping performance on thick, plush carpets. The biggest challenge in those midpile carpet tests is picking up sand, which has an excess of fabric and fibers to cling to as the vacuum tries to suck it up. I mentioned that 50% is a good benchmark in that test, and the best cleaner in that challenge from our last two years of tests is the Neato D9, which returned an average of 62%. That's a great score, but the Roomba scoffs at it because, in our previous test setup, the Roomba S9 Plus sucked up 71%, which was significantly better than any other cleaner we had ever tested. As I said, the two figures aren't technically comparable to each other, thanks to subtle changes in our test setup over the years, but still, if we reran the tests now, I'm highly confident that the S9 Plus would retain the top spot.
On top of that, the S9 Plus aced our pet hair pickup tests, where we scatter clumps of actual pet hair donated from a friendly local groomer across all of our test floors. The Roomba S9 Plus didn't miss a single clump. It isn't as much of a standout on hardwood floors, and it doesn't include a mop at all, but if your home is filled with plush carpets and your pets are having a field day shedding fur across them, then the self-emptying Roomba S9 Plus is a perfect pick for your home.
You might not expect sufficient cleaning power from a budget-priced robot vacuum, but that's precisely what the Anker Eufy RoboVac 25C delivers. For instance, its ability to scour sand from hardwood floors (78.9%) wasn't too far below that of our top midrange pick. It's a decent performer on low-pile and midpile carpets as well, sucking up averages of 54% and 52% of sand from them, respectively. The current asking price? Just $149 at Walmart.
How did Anker cut down on costs here, anyway? The answer is navigation. Instead of relying on cameras or lasers to map out its environment, the machine bumps around the floor like a slow-motion ping-pong ball, changing direction when it encounters an object or obstacle. As a result, it took an excessive 91 minutes to finish its cleaning cycle in our test room, so don't expect it to cover your house in anything close to efficient fashion. That's more than a fair tradeoff at this bargain-bin price, especially considering what a surprisingly competitive cleaner the thing is.
With a combined competitive price and solid performance paired with intelligent navigation, the Roborock S8 is an easy pick for the top midrange robot vacuum. Roborock has been cranking out excellent robot vacuums for years now, and this model handles messes wonderfully on all floor types. On top of that, it features a built-in mopping pad, which is great to have on hand for those unexpected messes in the kitchen. It isn't inexpensive at $750, but it's regularly on sale (including right now, where you can knock a whopping $200 off the price via Amazon).
Thanks to multiple sensors and lasers, the efficient navigation of the S8 is another strong suit. The vacuum cleaner does a great job at navigating even the most complex floorplans to ensure a thorough cleaning job. The lack of a self-emptying bin is a bit of a bummer here, although you've got other good options if that's what matters most (and you can always step up to the Roborock S8 Plus, which adds it in). Apart from that, there's not much that you're missing here, making this an excellent midrange pick, especially for homes with a variety of flooring types, including area rugs and other low-pile carpets.
While we're talking about pets, let's stop for a moment to consider the robo-vac's mortal enemy: pet waste. If your dog makes a mess and your robot vac stumbles across it before you do, you might end up with a poo-pocalypse all over your floors (that link is safe to click, by the way, and worth it if only to read a hall-of-fame-worthy CNET lede from David Katzmaier). Fortunately, iRobot scrambled to come up with a solution. The answer? AI-powered cameras capable of recognizing and avoiding obstacles -- including piles of dog poop -- as it cleans. Its first feces-defying flagship was the Roomba J7 Plus, and sure enough, when we tested it out against an armada of unnervingly convincing fake dog poop samples, it steered clear at every turn. Meanwhile, the Samsung JetBot AI Plus promises the same poop-detecting smarts but fails to dodge the doo-doo in our tests. Advantage, iRobot.
Aside from not pushing poop across your floors, the Roomba J7 Plus excels at other things, too. It doesn't feature a built-in mop, but it's a semi-affordable self-emptying option, and an exceedingly well-rounded cleaner, boasting top-three averages on both hardwood floors and low-pile carpets. It fell short on plush, midpile carpets, so go with the Roomba S9 Plus if your dog is well-trained and you're more worried about its fur than its waste, but that's really the only weak spot here.
I mentioned that the otherwise excellent Roomba J7 Plus doesn't include mopping capabilities. Enter the Roomba Combo J7 Plus (emphasis mine), which adds that talent to its skillset. Rather than just slapping a mopping pad onto the bottom of the thing, iRobot did a very clever thing and designed a motorized mopping pad with arms that lift it out from the bottom of the cleaner and relocate it to the top whenever it detects it's traveling over carpets. That way, it'll never drag a wet, dirty mopping pad across your otherwise freshly vacuumed floors as it cleans. To test that out, I took the Roomba Combo J7 Plus home, where I have a mix of carpets and hardwood floors. It did a great job of identifying carpeted areas during its initial mapping run -- from there, I never caught it vacuuming those carpeted areas without lifting the mop up and out of the way first. It's just a better, more high-end approach to automated mopping and one you won't need to think about quite as much.
It's a capable vacuum, too, and a top-five finisher on all three flooring types we test, which is something that only one other robot vacuum we've tested can claim (the also-excellent Neato D10). I didn't find it to be quite as sharp a navigator as lidar-based cleaners from names like Dreametech, Neato and Roborock, and I wish it included a water tank in the dock so you didn't need to fill the reservoir before each mopping run -- but apart from that, this motorized mopping machine checks all the boxes that I'd want from a combo cleaner in my own home.
The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra is the most expensive product on this list, at a splurge-worthy $1,800. This robot vacuum offers enough seriously impressive intelligence and cleaning power to justify that price tag.
Whether you need the Roborock's vacuum dust, crumbs or hair from your hardwood floors, vinyl, rugs and carpets of varying lengths, you can rest assured the S8 MaxV Ultra will get the job done. With a very highly rated 10,000Pa of suction power combined with the dual-brush sweeping system, the vacuum efficiently gathers whatever ends up on your floors without getting tangled nearly as often as some other robot vacuums, thanks to the new Reactive AI 2.0 Obstacle Recognition system.
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