Best Rated Robot Vacuum Cleaner
Robot vacuums can be great for keeping your floors clean but they are not a substitute for a traditional vacuum. Even the most powerful robots have difficulty getting deep into carpets and rugs, and they can become tangled with cords and socks.
Maintaining a regular schedule of maintenance (replacing filters cutting hair tangled from brushes and emptying the dust bin) can help your robot last longer.
Battery Life
Most robot vacuums are able to handle a few cleaning sessions without having to be charged. The runner-up in our top picks, the Ecovacs Deebot Q30S Combo, has a battery that is designed to last for up to 180 minutes (3,230 square feet) of cleaning time on one charge. This amount of runtime will be more than enough for homes that have a mixture of hard flooring and carpets with low pile or larger homes with rooms that are roughly the same size.
A longer battery lifespan also means the robot can spend more time cleaning, and less time charging its dock. It’s worth opting for an auto-emptying dust bin, since those models are more efficient in collecting debris and returning to the dock to recharge. It’s also important to empty or replace the filter and wipe down cameras and sensors regularly so that they are able to see your home clearly.
Smart mapping technology is an important feature to be looking for, as it allows you to program your robot to clean specific rooms or areas that it’s likely to hit furniture or other obstacles. It’s also beneficial for ensuring your robot is able to go under and around beds, sofas and other furniture that is tall. A few robovacs are cheap and have boundaries that you can put on the floor to block off areas, while others make use of sensors and cameras to achieve this goal.
Even the top robot vacuums cannot substitute a traditional vac when it comes to heavy-duty dirt and debris. It is recommended to keep a standard power vac in reserve to handle these chores and to schedule robot vacuum cleaner industrial vacuums regularly for cleaning robots for home up light chores throughout the week.
Navigation
A robot should be able to navigate around your home without getting stuck or crashing into things like metal screws or loose pet hair or sand. In our tests, a tracking device is used to follow the robot around the multi-room lab. It then analyzes its surroundings. We also examine how well it avoids obstacles like power cords, furniture legs, and pet waste.
The most advanced robots are able to map out several floors and identify landmarks, like doors and windows. The most advanced robots, like the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra have a dual sensor navigation system which utilizes the LIDAR to create a floor plan and a structured-light camera on the front to detect objects in real-time. The S8 can avoid obstacles such as cables for power and legs of furniture. It can also store up to four floor maps.
Cheaper models don’t come with this kind of detection and rely on bump sensors which aren’t as accurate. In my tests they cut right through cords, dog poop and even the shoes that were placed in the middle of the room. The Dreametech D10+ is the best affordable robot vacuum value choice. It has excellent carpet, hard floor, tangle, and hair pickup. It also has an auto empty score that is close to perfect.
Another feature worth mentioning is a large dust bin which doesn’t have to be manually emptied, and for those models that mop, a water tank which can store weeks of mopping. Karcher’s RCV 5 is a good example of this. It has a big enough footprint to fit under furniture, but not so big that it cannot fit in the space between your toilet and bathtub.
Apps
Robot vacuums are like their upright counterparts and require a lot of technology to keep them current. The result is a mature market full of options. Even the best models require interaction from their users particularly when it comes to schedule cleanings, create an outline of your home and set up virtual barriers.
Consider a model with its own app that can recognize the layout of your house and save the settings for future use. This will let the vacuum start where it left off in subsequent runs, instead of having to restart the mapping process each time.
Also, look for models that offer zone or spot cleaning. They let you tell the robot vacuum to concentrate on a specific spot for example, like under the dining room table after a big family meal. You can typically do this via the app or voice commands.
A lot of models also offer objects avoidance. It lets the robot observe something in its path, such as a box of shoes or a crate of dog toys, and coach itself around it. This prevents it from hitting objects that could damage its sensors or cause jams.
This feature is available on a few of the more expensive models we test. They depend on the technology of bump sensors for this however they weren’t always able to avoid things in my test home.
Pet Hair
Look for an upright vacuum cleaner specifically designed to remove hair from pets. The best models have powerful suction capabilities and a brush that prevents the tangling and an emptying mechanism that can automatically empty hair into the trash bin when it is needed. Some models can also determine dirt levels and adjust the intensity of cleaning in line with the level of dirt. They can also detect objects that aren’t part your home flooring, like furniture, toys and food bowls.
Certain robot vacuums have additional pet-friendly features. These include a water dispenser which is used to clean floors, and an HEPA filtering system that eliminates allergens, such as pet dust. They may also offer the option of a quieter operation, which will reduce the amount of noise generated during cleaning.
Robot vacuums with the ability to map are a great option for pet owners. They’re designed to evaluate your home and develop an attack plan based upon the arrangement of each room and obstacles. Shark Matrix Plus is a 2-in-1 robot vacuum that can create a map of a room, and navigate around furniture and other obstacles using accelerometer and Gyroscope smart sensors.
Other advanced models allow you to set no-go zones, which are areas that the robot is supposed to stay clear of, such as fragile items or pet feeding spots–by adjusting settings via an app. This feature is particularly useful for households with busy schedules, as you can schedule cleaning times without having to be in the space where the vacuum is. Another feature that is extremely useful is spot cleaning, which allows you to use the vacuum to clean a specific area that is particularly dirty or brimming with pet hair.
Dust Bin
Unless you’re looking for something small, you’ll want to choose an item that can carry at least a full bag of garbage from a single cleaning session. We recommend picking the one with an enormous bin or a trash bin that automatically emptys. The first will let you keep up with the process of emptying your bin regularly enough to keep it functioning. The latter will save time and effort by automatically dropping the contents into an inside container each time you clean it.
Find models that have smart mapping capabilities that enable them to “learn” the layout of your home and devise more efficient routes. They can also sense and avoid objects that could block their paths (like shoelaces or tangled charging cables). Consider models that have smart mapping capabilities, which allow them to “learn” the layout of your home and devise more efficient routes, and ones that can sense and avoid objects that may hinder their path (like shoelaces or tangled charging cables).
Some models also offer spot cleaning. This lets you manually target an area of your house for intensive cleaning. We’ve found that most of the top performers in our tests are able to remove fine particles such as baking soda and sand, as well as heavier debris such as oatmeal orzo pasta, metal screws and pet hair.
Depending on the brand, most robots can last for years and will remain in good working order so long as you maintain them with regular maintenance, such as cleaning hair that is tangled from brushes and emptying the dust bin after every use and cleaning cameras and sensors when required. The best robots are also more flexible. This makes it easier to replace or repair parts like wheels and batteries when they wear out.
