If you don’t have time to regularly sweep or vacuum, robot vacuums are an easy way to make sure your home stays clean without you needing to do all the work. Since they use various types of technology like lasers or cameras to navigate and maneuver around a room, they can generally avoid furniture and get beneath couches and tables with relative ease. Some even automatically empty their dirt compartments, which further reduces the work you need to do. Although they aren’t as good at cleaning carpet as more traditional upright vacuums, many come with smart pathing technology to clean more efficiently. Many of them also come with companion apps or remote controls so you can set up scheduled cleaning times or place boundaries to keep it out of certain areas.
These 5 picks are selected by RTINGS.com not only based on their performance, but also their feature set, design, and price.
Best Robot Vacuum: Roborock S7 MaxV
This high-end robot vacuum has a dual-sensor navigation system, which uses LIDAR in conjunction with a pair of cameras with 3D scanning capability to identify and avoid common hazards like power cords, furniture legs, or even pet waste in real-time. You can also use it to monitor things at home while you’re away by looking through the camera. It can also identify the type of room it’s in based on the furniture and automatically suggest different cleaning modes for distinct areas, like bedrooms, kitchens, or bathrooms. It performs remarkably well on bare floors and does an okay job cleaning carpets.
Best Upper Mid-Range Robot Vacuum: Roborock S7
The Roborock S7 is a premium robot vacuum, sitting above models like the Roborock E4 and Roborock S6 but below the flagship Roborock S7 MaxV. It’s a LIDAR-equipped robot vacuum with an ultrasonic mopping feature, which scrubs away dried-on stains with vibrating mop pads. Its surface detection system also lets it raise its mopping pad on carpeted surfaces.
Best Mid-Range Robot Vacuum Cleaner: Wyze Robot Vacuum
The Wyze Robot Vacuum is a budget-friendly robot vacuum with a versatile performance. It’s sold mainly through the manufacturer’s website. It has a fantastic performance on bare floors and does a good job of cleaning pet hair from most surface types. It’s equipped with a LIDAR navigation system, so it creates a map of your home and cleans in an organized pattern. The companion app offers excellent automation features, including virtual boundary settings. Unfortunately, it has a small dirt compartment, even by the standards of robot vacuums.
Best Budget Robot Vacuum Cleaner: yeedi K650
If you’re looking to spend as little as possible on a robot vacuum and don’t want or need many convenience features, the yeedi K650 is a simple, solid option. Its companion app is bare-bones but intuitive, and you can use it to set the vacuum’s power setting and schedule cleaning sessions in advance. Still, compared to mid-range models like the Roborock S5 Max, its mapping and navigation systems are very basic, leading it to miss some areas and occasionally bump into obstructions, even its charging dock. It doesn’t store a map of its coverage area, so you can’t direct it to specific rooms in your home or set up virtual boundary lines. However, you can buy magnetic boundary strips to prevent the vacuum from entering certain spaces. It’s compatible with Amazon Alexa devices, allowing you to make inputs with voice commands.
Despite its relatively low price, it still does a fantastic job cleaning pet hair and solid debris from flat surfaces, though it can have a hard time on carpeted floors. Build quality is good for a vacuum in this price bracket, with a fairly sturdy-feeling body made of matte-finish plastic. Its dirt compartment is also large for a robot vacuum, so you won’t need to empty it too often.
Best HEPA Robot Vacuum Cleaner for Allergies: iRobot Roomba S9
If you suffer from allergies and want a robot vacuum to handle your light-duty cleaning needs, the iRobot Roomba S9 is a solid option. Unlike the comparably-priced Roborock S7 MaxV, this premium robot vacuum lacks a mopping system and has a simpler optical sensor-based system that can’t recognize and avoid obstacles in real-time. Still, if you don’t want or need these features and want something better at filtering out allergens, it’s worth a look. It has an onboard HEPA filter to trap allergens as it cleans and is effective in trapping particles like pet dander. If you want to further minimize the spread of allergens, it’s fully compatible with a self-emptying dock that can suck debris from its internal dustbin into an external dirtbag without manual intervention.
However, buying this accessory separately or purchasing it with the vacuum as part of the S9+ bundle does push it into a different price bracket. If you don’t mind giving up the onboard HEPA filter, the yeedi vac station offers self-emptying capability at a much lower purchase price. The yeedi also has a passive mopping system, though it isn’t especially effective in clearing stains.
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