How Do Roomba Robot Vacuum Cleaners Work?

The laser rangefinder method has become the dominant tech , and is excellent at quickly learning a home’s layout. But some great robots rely instead on a camera or gyroscopes , and they also get the job done—just irobot vacuum cleaner a little bit slower, bonking into more stuff, and with a slightly higher chance of missing area. The next important task for a robot vacuum is to cover as much ground as possible, as efficiently as possible.

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. Roomba is a series of autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners sold by iRobot. Introduced in September 2002, they have a set of sensors that enable them to navigate the floor area of a home. These sensors can detect the presence of obstacles, particularly dirty spots on the floor, and steep drops (e.g., to avoid falling down stairs). If you want one, we’d recommend getting one of the self-emptying versions of one of our picks, though we’d steer you toward a Roomba instead of a Roborock.

You can now find better mapping technology, stronger suction, longer battery runtimes, home surveillance, and self-emptying charging docks. One reviewer who has multiple pets shared that they needed a robot vacuum to pick up all the hair scattered around the house. Before the vacuum arrived, they swept the floor as best as they could, then let the robot loose. They said, “I cannot believe how much hair it picked up even after I swept my floor.” Now, they run it every day while they’re at work, emptying the dust bin after each run.

On the top are four buttons and a handle, with a big central “clean” power button and four other buttons with which to set the clock, cleaning schedule, return the robot to its dock, or concentrate on a single, troublesome spot. But we wonder if our love is of the flagship 980 itself — or of just having a robotic vacuum cleaner. We’ll soon be trying out a cheaper Roomba to test that theory, shark cordless but for now we can say — if you have the money — the 980 does everything you could ask a robotic vacuum cleaner to do. The vacuum also struggles to clean thoroughly in the small crevice between carpet and skirting board, but then this is the case with most regular vacuum cleaners too. Roomba will definitely not fall down the stairs, you’ll be pleased to know, thanks to its cliff sensor.

Through testing, we found that it didn’t do a great job getting stubborn flour “dust” out of crevices between floorboards , and it tended to not grab our “crumbs” of rice very well. As there are other models with more suction power on the market, consider skipping this base model for an upgraded option. The iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner shoulders some of the housework load by automatically cleaning your carpet and floors. It vacuums up debris, even in hard-to-reach spots like beneath your furniture and along baseboards. The robot navigates around obstacles such as toys and chair legs.

When I talked to engineers at iRobot about a year ago, they told me that there are several ways to measure suction power, but there are no industry standards. They viewed the reported Pa measurements as essentially useless, hence why it’s nearly impossible to find suction power for iRobot vacs. It’s also difficult to find the Pa for Ecovacs, though Eufy and Roborock report the measurements for their models. Our testing methodology has gotten more comprehensive over the years. For any models that I’d previously tested but didn’t have the vacuums on hand anymore, I extrapolated the data as best as possible based on previous testing and manufacturer info. Those vacuums are the iRobot Roomba i7+, Neato Botvac D7 Connected, and Eufy 11S Max and 15C Max.

Eufy makes several RoboVac models built on the same base as the 11S, plus extra features. The following table is a cheat sheet of the most popular Eufy bump bots as of November 2021 (though it’s not a full list of all their models). In our experience, it can be useful in spaces as large as 1,000 square feet, as long as you run it most days of the week as a habit and can forgive that it might not thoroughly clean every room every time that it runs.

First and foremost, the Roomba 980 is a very good vacuum cleaner. It is powerful and does a great job of cleaning both carpets and hard floors. This is important, clearly, because iRobot wants its customers to replace their conventional vacuum with a Roomba. If you want to stay on top of the dust and dirt in your home without having to set aside time to vacuum yourself, now’s the perfect time to score iRobot’s best-selling robot vacuums and/or robot mop while they’re 40 percent off. To be honest, I haven’t seen these kinds of discounts on iRobot since Prime Day, so you may not want to sit this one out.

irobot vacuum cleaner

We’ve tested most of the auto-empty docks out there, including multiple versions from iRobot and Shark, and one each from EcoVacs, Roborock, and a generic-brand dock that came with a generic-brand Roborock knockoff . We keep finding deals on bots from no-name brands like Coredy, Goovi, Onson, and Amarey, all of which have product dimensions that are barely distinguishable from those of irobot vacuum cleaner the Eufy RoboVac 11S that we recommend. The Trifo Max worked fine in our tests, nothing impressive or obviously bad. User reviews suggest it gets lost pretty easily, isn’t built to last, and has poor customer service. We haven’t tested Trifo’s other models, but we’d expect similar results. It may end up cleaning more of your home than other bots just because it fits beneath more stuff.