Roomba® I3 Series Robot Vacuum

The slimmer design allows the S to get its brushes into more places, meaning less dirt for you to clean up later. The 694 is ideal for smaller areas and will work best in rooms without clutter. An auto-adjust cleaning head helps the unit transition easily between low-pile carpet, medium-pile carpet, hardwood, and bare floors. It can run for up to 90 minutes before automatically recharging, but it will need to be reset before its next run.

Try to buy from a retailer with a return policy of at least a few weeks in case a robo-vac isn’t a fit for your lifestyle. We spoke with sources in the floor care manufacturing industry to help make sense of all the low-cost, off-brand options. The novel coronavirus is most easily spread through face-to-face interactions and in close quarters. If someone in your household has been sick — even if it’s not with COVID-19 — it’s recommended to clean and disinfect the area.

irobot vacuum cleaner

You can also set schedules for most bots to wake up and start a cleaning job, so it can take place while you’re out of the house. That means you can potentially avoid all physical interaction until the vacuum needs to be emptied. While pricey, iRobot’s bissell crosswave cordless Roomba j7+ robot vacuum has smarts to spare, with a guarantee to avoid pet waste and a self-emptying base that means you rarely have to lift a finger. The way to get your money’s worth is to set a robot vacuum to automatically run every day.

We’ve tested dozens of robots, from cheap models that bump around randomly, up through fancy machines that empty themselves and steer around dog poop. First, consider the strong, durable, smart-enough iRobot Roomba i3. Even squarish robot vacuums — as opposed to round ones — aren’t perfect at getting into corners. Upright vacuums typically come with attachments helpful in cleaning things like drapes or furniture, which robot vacs can’t handle. Keeping a constant eye out for pet waste didn’t seem to slow the Roomba J7 down.

Whereas some robot vacuums sense carpeting and boost suction, the i3+ EVO provides consistently strong suction, and when it detects excess dirt, it automatically performs multiple passes. In our carpet tests, the i3+ EVO picked up all of the coffee grounds, kitty litter, and pet hairs we laid out and left behind only about 5% of the flour — the best performance of all the robot vacs we tested. In corners, it came within an inch of the wall but left behind about half the flour. It can even mop and vacuum carpets within the same cleaning run by raising and lowering its mopping pad.

The major flaw is the EcoVacs app, which is glitchier than others. Many of those reviewers also noted difficulty getting replacement parts. We can’t be sure whether other models will have similar rates of problems, though the typical user ratings for EcoVacs’ laser-nav bots tends to be a few tenths of a point lower than other brands’ ratings. To EcoVacs’ credit, we’ve found that their bots are a little better at traversing tall rugs and large thresholds than other brands’ bots. First, you need to connect the bot to Wi-Fi via your router’s 2.4 GHz frequency only, and like anything Wi-Fi related, some people seem to have trouble getting it to work smoothly on their network.

And for floors needing a deeper cleaning, the Robovac X8 will automatically adjust the suction to better pick up the debris from your floors. Dustbin capacity for the Robovac is maximized by compressing the debris in the dustbin as it suctions, resulting in far fewer trips to empty as it cleans. The three-hour runtime and multi-floor mapping make this robot vacuum a great choice for larger homes. The best Roomba vacuums offer enough dyson robot vacuum suction power and smart capabilities to meet the needs of the users. Whether you’re looking for a crumb finder or a pet-hair attacker, the hands-on testing results of these robot vacuums can help shoppers pick the best Roomba for their needs. We tested these models in a home to see how they dealt with real dirt, pet hair, and debris as well as simulated dust and heavy crumbs to put the robot vacuums through their paces.

The higher the suction power, the more efficient the Roomba will be on rugs. Keep in mind that deep carpet cleaning may also drain the battery faster than use on solid surfaces. Some of the higher-end Roombas also include intelligent features that allow the vacuum to “talk” to the robot mop, allowing a tag-team approach to cleaning. The Roomba app will also log the machine’s cleaning history so users can keep track of which areas have been vacuumed.