The Best Robot Vacuum Cleaners I’ve Tested
Over the past year, I’ve had three robot vacuum cleaners working in different parts of my house. I tested them in a real environment full of furniture, thresholds, uneven floors and one Doberman who decided to take them outside. I’ve tested robots from all the major brands, from Roomba to Roborock, and there are plenty of small differences that will help you decide whether a particular feature is really important to you. Generally, some robots rank higher than others, but in some cases, the features of your home can help you choose one vacuum cleaner over another.
These days, a robot vacuum that just vacuums is a pretty low bar. All bots of the current class are equipped with self-cleaning docks and cleaning abilities. In some cases, they can collect and dispose of water themselves.
Every robot claims to be quiet (it’s not) and tangle-free (inevitably not true), so set your expectations accordingly. While a robot running around your room isn’t likely to bother you, you won’t be using Zoom while it’s running. While most robots now handle things like long hair with much more grace, over time you’ll leave some yarn behind and your robot vacuum is sure to find that screw you dropped somewhere last year, and all those problems will require turn the bot away from you and clean it.
When people are trying to decide which vacuum to choose, there are many sources to turn to, and I admit I often feel a sense of satisfaction when we all agree on the same models. More often than not, we disagree, which is evidence that different test environments affect the result. In my case, I set up each robot following the instructions and then left it running in my home. There are no man-made obstacle courses here—just the trash that falls on my kitchen floor while I’m cooking, the short dog hair that perpetuates the floor, and the occasional tangle of pet toys. Here’s what I think of the robots I’ve tested over the past year.