Four Robot Vacuum Cleaner Features You Should Pay Attention to (and One That Doesn’t Matter)
One of the first concessions I made due to the pandemic was a robot vacuum cleaner. If my dog and I had to be isolated at home, I would be willing to spend money on cleaning up the dog hair. Even though I bought a top-of-the-line Roomba, I was ultimately disappointed by how “automated” my robot vacuum and mop actually were. Five years have passed; Since then, I’ve tested an absurd number of high-quality floor robots and mops. I’m amazed at how much more advanced they are. It’s not just that they have new features; they fundamentally work better. If I were buying a robot vacuum in 2024, here are the features I’d look for.
Robots that sweep and mop are the new standard
Almost all high-quality floor robots are now vacuum cleaners and mops. If you have any concerns about one machine being able to do both, don’t worry. In my years of using many brands and many models, I have never had anyone accidentally rub through a rug or rug. If you think that pursuing two goals makes both goals worse, that’s also an issue you can dismiss. The newest vacuum cleaners come closer to the wall than ever before, and some even have protruding handles that protrude under feet and furniture. They are capable of sucking up both micro and macro dirt, and the best ones rarely have rollers that get stuck in that dirt. In fact, the curlers themselves are now much more durable, so the days of constantly having to replace them due to hair getting stuck are over. What will really impress you with these bots is their cleaning ability because it makes a huge difference to your floors. Stay without the bot for a few days and you will notice it. While some brands and models clean better than others (I recommend using models with mop pads rather than rotating brushes or pads), they all take the burden off the person taking care of the home.
Cleaning/vacuum robots I recommend:
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Roborock S8 Pro: $1,399.99 includes mop head, remote control, and auto fill/empty feature.
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Ecovacs Deebot X2: $1,099.99, has rotating pads, but handles turns well and is great for large spaces.
LiDAR means faster, more accurate mapping
Over time, the floor robots moved around, moving in a certain direction until they bumped into something, and then kept bumping into it until they walked around it. The result was shabby furniture and walls with distinctive black marks. The maps themselves weren’t very accurate, and it took many tries before you got a real, usable map of your room. Most (but not all) robots now use LiDAR for mapping and navigation, and it’s like night and day. Moments after the robot leaves the dock, the entire room will appear on the map with frightening accuracy. Precise mapping led to other innovations that I would want to see in any bot I was considering buying. Maps are only as good as they can be used for planning. Separating spaces, merging them, naming them, maintaining zones, etc. means you can delegate allowed/not allowed areas of your space. You don’t need to vacuum under the living room couch seven days a week, but you do want plenty of people around the TV. Manipulating these maps also means you can use voice assistants to quickly resolve a problem area. “OK Google, wipe down the area under the TV.”
Remote control mode means you’ll never have to reach under the sofa again.
If the robot gets stuck, it will most likely be in a place you can’t reach. A tangled cord ties up your bot, or it gets stuck under a bookshelf or sofa. Previously, this meant finding the bot using your guesses and then getting down on the floor to rescue a stuck vacuum cleaner. Remote control solves this problem. In almost all cases, even if your videos are taped, you will still be able to use the remote control to find and guide your bot from where it is to a place where you can grab it. I use this feature once a week and it’s clutch. I wouldn’t buy a bot right now without it. This feature is usually combined with Pin and Go technology, which means you can simply add a point on the map and the robot will go to that exact location and start cleaning.
Let the bot support you
A robot that cleans for you is great, but not if you have to constantly empty it yourself. It’s dusty and dirty here. Older robot mops need to be constantly refilled and simply spill dirty water all over the floor. These days, advanced bots have a charging base with a vacuum bag, and the bot will empty itself. You simply change the bag at the base every month or two. Even the bags are better – they last longer and don’t break down like earlier models. Then comes the mopping of the floors. These same bases have clean and dirty water tanks so they can fill with clean water and empty themselves into the tank. At least one model has a container on board just for cleaning fluid, so it automatically adds it to the cleaning water. But if I were buying a robot tomorrow, I’d wait until one of the two models comes out that connects directly to your water line.
Some features don’t really add anything
In the race to make these robots justify their hefty price tag and outperform the competition, new features are constantly being added. One of the latest is an embedded video that you can watch from an app on your phone, and it certainly has me excited. I’ve raised this issue several times on floor robots (and even once on a lawn robot), but still, I don’t find it to be of any use.
Price also turns out to be not as important a determinant of quality as one might expect. While the best-performing robots I’ve tested are all at the higher end of the price range, a number of models in the same range performed poorly. There are at least a few mid-range robots that perform impressively.
If you’re shopping for a robot vacuum/mop, keep an eye out for sales because even outside of major events like Amazon sales days or Black Friday, sales occur regularly, which can knock hundreds of dollars off the price.