Robots look stupid at least some of the time—making weird turns, missing spots, struggling to escape from a trap—and it can shatter the illusion that you have an artificially intelligent magic machine. All you really need to do is empty the bin and appreciate your tidy floors. The cheap, simple bots have matured to the point where they work really well in many homes.
If you want advanced features like interactive maps, smart-home connectivity, and self-emptying bins, there are plenty of solid choices, with healthy competition helping to drive down prices.
Not many bots are truly terrible anymore, and most of them work well with certain types of floor plans. Based on years of at-home use and side-by-side testing, we think that nimble navigation is the most important element of a great robot vacuum, followed by cleaning performance and repairability.
Smart maps that let you set up barriers and target individual rooms for cleaning can also be super-handy. And we considered privacy and security, among other less-important features all of our criteria are covered in detail below. For every robot, I run at least two regular cleaning cycles in my apartment. None of the rooms have any wall-to-wall carpet, but there are 10 area rugs, with styles ranging from lightweight doormats to rubber-backed, medium-pile rugs that take up half a room.
I have a long-haired cat, a long-haired wife, and a toddler, who all leave plenty for the robot to pick up for my part, I spill a lot of coffee grounds.
In one test, I run the bot in a room with two chairs, some stray USB cables, a sock, a flat-weave area rug with uneven edges and tassels, and a tall threshold—several of the most-common bot-trapping obstacles in one place. In another test, I pour out about an eighth of a cup of all-purpose flour across an area rug and bare floor including some against a baseboard and let the bot try to suck it up for a couple of minutes.
Then I sprinkle a 2-ounce mixture of cat litter and coffee grounds around my dining room, which has a mix of bare wood and a low-pile rug as well as a big table with three dinner chairs and a bench underneath it. I run each bot for 25 minutes or until it stops on its own, whichever comes first. I make sure to try out anything related to the interface or user experience: companion smartphone apps and all of the features within, like room or zone labeling, no-go lines, and suction adjustments , compatibility with voice assistants like Alexa, the scheduling system, and, for the bots that still use them, boundary markers, physical remotes, and anything else along those lines.
Using a noise-meter app, I measure the volume and frequency of each bot from about 10 feet away as they work. Then I check how easy it is to take apart each bot, and which kinds of replacement parts are available online.
When I find robots that do well on all of those tests, I run them as much as possible for at least a week to see if they perform consistently. For example, I found that bots in the Roomba series sunset and that software updates to the Electrolux Pure i9 sometimes screwed up the navigation.
Plenty of affordable robot vacuums clean and navigate effectively. But it gets the job done for a fair price. The series comes in a few variants. The Roomba can connect to Wi-Fi so that you can control it through an app or voice assistant.
Older models like the and no Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi are also similar. The company still stocks parts for the original Roomba from and every model released since then—everything from brushes and batteries to wheels and dustbins. Personally, I used a Roomba at home for four years and found that it held up very well. Several other Wirecutter staff members own Roomba series bots and have also found them to be sturdy and reliable.
Another advantage is that the Roomba has two counterrotating brush rolls, mounted in a suspension system, while every other affordable bot has a single brush sitting at a fixed height.
But the brush design more than compensates. The Roomba also has a dirt-detection system that no other cheap bot uses. Most robot vacuums are pretty good at this now, and the Roomba is as good as any of them. You can also control it through Amazon Alexa or Google Home. The voice commands, in our opinion, are more of a gimmick or party trick—all you can do for now is tell the bot to start, stop, or look for its base—but some people find them cool or handy.
The Roomba , like most affordable robots, is what we call a bump-and-run navigator. With 90 minutes of battery life, the effective brush design, and clever features like the dirt-detection sensor, the Roomba can reliably clean spaces as big as 1, square feet, in our experience. If you want a smarter robot, take a look at our upgrade picks. Compared with other cheap bump bots, the Roomba is a little rough. None of the current Roomba series models come with a barrier system, but they work with the iRobot virtual walls , which you can buy separately.
These battery-powered beacons project an invisible do-not-cross barrier, switchable between a narrow cone shape to block a doorway or a semicircle to keep the bot away from pet bowls. Or you could upgrade to a robot with smart mapping, like the Roborock S4.
The Eufy RoboVac 11S , along with other Eufy models that begin with a number instead of a letter, are also decent and affordable robots with semi-random navigation that are especially effective in smaller spaces, but they can be useful in any home.
The RoboVac 11S was even the top pick in this guide for a couple of years. And since the 11S stops short of most obstacles, it also avoids creating many of the bonking impact sounds that the rougher Roomba does. Other basic Eufy models have slightly stronger suction and can be a couple decibels louder, but they are still quieter than most competitors.
Another surprisingly useful upside to the basic Eufy bots is the short body. I was surprised the first time I saw the 11S disappear under my bed—and then more surprised when it reemerged with an unholy amount of cat hair stuffed into its bin and wrapped about the brush roll. Eufy makes several bots built on the same base as the 11S, plus extra features. About a year after the 11S was released, we started to hear from owners whose bots had already died, and the complaints have kept on coming.
We dismantled an older Eufy RoboVac 30, and major repairs are impossible without breaking parts of the robot. The Roomba , on the other hand, was easy for us to strip down and reassemble with just a screwdriver. Eufy is good about honoring its warranty if a bot breaks down within the one-year window and will often offer a discount for a new one to customers whose bots break outside the warranty period.
And the company does sell some replacement parts, including filters , brush rollers , side brushes , brush guards , and batteries through Amazon—but no replacement wheels or brush transmissions, like iRobot does for Roombas.
Many people will probably get years of reliable service from their Eufy bots. More on these clones later. The price is reasonable, too. The S4 Max and Roborock bots in general are weaker on other robot-vac fundamentals, like carpet-cleaning performance and durability. And with the horde of copycat bots that flooded the marketplace in late , the S4 Max might not always be the best deal among robots of this type.
The smart-map feature is the highlight here. Using its laser rangefinder LiDAR and bump sensors, the S4 Max learns your floor plan in a single cleaning session and creates an interactive map in the companion app. That map enables a bunch of cool tricks, like targeted room cleaning and no-go zones, without having to manually move the bot or fiddle with physical barriers like you would with other robots including our other picks.
Like all bots that rely on laser navigation, the S4 Max is smart about driving around obvious obstacles such as furniture legs and stopping short of walls. When you add up all those little optimizations, the S4 Max saves a noticeable amount of time compared to other bots. I found that the S4 Max could clean my kitchen, dining room, and living room about square feet in total in 30 minutes, which is about 15 minutes quicker than the Roomba i7 which itself is a few minutes faster than the Roomba i3 and roughly the same pace as other speedy laser-navigating bots.
The bigger your home, the more valuable this speed will be. The S4 Max will be fantastic in many homes, but it has a few quirks and shortcomings you should know about. So does any bot with this kind of advanced navigation system. For a lot of people, the robust control is worth it. Cleaning performance is adequate but not great. On its strongest suction setting, the S4 Max has enough oomph to suck up almost anything from a bare floor.
Some older Roborock models, especially the previous-generation Roborock S4, have struggled to climb onto rugs if the transition is more than a half centimeter or so, or to clean plush rugs without a stuck-brush error. The S4 Max seems to be better, at least at climbing taller transitions this applies to door thresholds, too. A thick rug like that is a challenge for any robot vacuum and lots of regular vacuums, too , and it worked better when we took off the side brush.
But even then, the S4 Max moved slower over the rug and seemed to pick up less debris than competing models. Bottom line: If you have soft, thick rugs you want to clean with a robot vacuum, consider another model. The original Roborock S5, which put the company on the map, was built on a more repairable and possibly sturdier frame, whereas all the subsequent models seem to be a bit flimsier.
Many brands are gaming the system somehow. For Roborock in particular, several verified purchasers wrote that the company offered them a gift card to improve or delete critical reviews. If the S4 Max is out of stock or the price seems high, you actually have a ton of similar models to pick from we have more details on some of them below.
Although the Roomba i3 is new as of fall , all the praise we heaped upon the Roomba for its durability should apply to the i3 as well. Sticking with the same chassis has given the company time to work out the kinks in the system, too, and it makes repairs easy for owners to pull off at home. On a few occasions, we ran the Roomba i3 immediately after a Roomba series bot completed a session, and the i3 still came back with a half-full bin.
Another time, we ran the Roomba i3 after cleaning with the Roborock S4 Max. The Roborock performed better than the Roomba series bots, but the Roomba i3 still came back with quite a bit of hair and some larger debris in it. But on most types of floors in most homes, we think the i3 will consistently pick up more of the obvious debris especially hair than other great bots at this price. The i3 is currently the most affordable model in the Roomba lineup that follows a mostly logical, orderly path throughout your home, drawing a map as it works.
It can run for up to 75 minutes on a charge, which is good for about 1, square feet a little less if the space is broken up into many small rooms , including the edge-cleaning routine at the end of a session. The i3 is a new model, and its nav system is a bit different than any other Roomba to date: Instead of a camera to track its location as with the Roomba i7 or older series bots , an iRobot representative told us the i3 relies on a gyroscope, plus a bunch of other sensors and mapping techniques that other Roombas have used for years.
The i3 has worked well for us so far, and user reviews have been positive. Or you could upgrade to the i7, which can do most of the same tricks as the Roborock S series bots—more on that later. We get into more details about it later in this guide , but it actually works. The i3 starts every session from scratch, with no memory of the map it created the previous time, and aims to clean every bit of open ground that it can find.
You might even prefer the simplicity of letting the bot figure everything out rather than fiddling with an app. The app lets you start or stop the bot, set cleaning schedules, and adjust a few settings one or two passes, edge cleaning, full-bin behavior. It also works with Alexa and Google voice assistants. The older Roomba series was a pick in this guide from fall through fall The only meaningful differences compared to the i3 are that the series bots have cameras, which speeds up navigation a bit in most scenarios; certain variants have more battery life than the i3; and none of the series bots work with the auto-emptying dock.
You could also consider stepping up to the iRobot Roomba i7 , a camera-based navigator with a smart-map feature that lets you tell it to clean specific rooms or zones, or to avoid certain areas.
It also follows a more-efficient path than the i3 or series, so it finishes the job quicker and it has a big battery to boot. The price premium is justifiable. They include:. The iRobot Roomba j7 , which has a camera-based obstacle avoidance system that the company promises—with a money-back guarantee—that it will not smear pet poop all over your floors. The Roborock S7 vacuum-mop hybrid and its self-emptying dock. Its unique feature is a retractable mop, which lifts itself up a few millimeters when it senses a carpet.
The mop also vibrates slightly as it works, which may help its scrubbing ability. The Shark AI VacMop , which is one of the few hybrid bots that is designed to work with a cleaning solution, rather than plain water. It also has a camera-based obstacle avoidance system. The vacuum cleaner features a low centre-of-gravity design to make vacuuming easier.
It comes with three brush heads that can be used as required. It also sports a special tooth comb structure that is designed to separate the hair on the roller brush while sucking in dirt. Pocket-friendly This Inalsa Kardia Cordless Vacuum Cleaner offers a host of features for its relatively affordable price. It offers multiple attachments for cleaning different surfaces and can last up to 30 minutes on a single charge.
It sports a 1L dust collector that is designed to be removed and emptied with just one hand. Email Shrey Pacheco. Follow Us. About Me: Writer, gamer, and hater of public transport. Read More. Digit caters to the largest community of tech buyers, users and enthusiasts in India. The all new Digit.
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Full specs Other Xiaomi Vacuum Cleaner. Full specs Other Eufy Vacuum Cleaner. While using it takes just a press of a button, all our experts stressed the importance of regularly cleaning brushes and filters, and running the vac when no one is in the room to keep the indoor air quality clean and avoid resuspended particles.
We get into details over here. I tested each robot vac's cleaning abilities along with its extra features and app. You can find the details of how we tested , what else we recommend , how to shop for a robot vacuum , and more at the end of our guide. Pros: Excellent performance on carpeting, cleans well on hardwood, pairs with the app and Alexa, comes with an automatic dirt disposal base, doesn't get stuck easily. You just replace the disposable dust bag every month or two. In corners, it came within an inch of the wall but left behind about half the flour.
The robot vac didn't get stuck during its cleaning sessions. Setup is a breeze, only taking about 10 minutes, including connecting to the user-friendly app. Unfortunately, the app doesn't allow you to set up no-go zones, so you must buy virtual wall barriers.
My sound meter recorded 68 dB, and you can't adjust the suction power for a quieter clean. Pros: Good performance on carpeting and hardwood, doesn't get stuck easily, quiet, supported by an app, Alexa and Google Assistant compatible, fits into small spaces. Cons: Did poorly in corner cleaning tests and picking up flour on carpeting, app doesn't let you set no-go zones.
It picked up all of the coffee grounds, kitty litter, and pet hair we laid out on carpeting and hardwood. Another area where the unit showed poor performance was in corners. It only came within about 3 inches of the hardwood corner, and though it came within an inch of the carpeted corner, it didn't pick up much of the flour. On the plus side, the RoboVac 15C Max only got stuck during its cleaning cycles about a quarter of the time, which is impressive in my messy home.
Also, it's the quietest of the units we tested, registering 60 decibels on its highest suction power. Beyond quickly testing to make sure it worked, I didn't use the controller because the vacuum pairs with your phone and is compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant.
Unfortunately, the app available for iOS and Android doesn't allow you to set up no-go zones or virtual barriers. Additionally, setup and connecting to the app were seamless experiences, taking a total of 10 minutes. The vacuum also has a small footprint so it can squeeze into tight spaces. Pros: Excellent performance on carpeting and hardwood, automatically empties the dustbin, HD video surveillance, impressive deep-cleaning mop attachment, quiet operation.
The vibrations-per-minute scrubbing motion offers a deep clean. The mL water tank was large enough to complete at least two passes over the square-foot test floor. With the app, you can choose from four water-flow levels to reach a balance of moistness and quick drying and two mopping patterns. The deep scrubbing option provides thorough cleaning, and the quick scrubbing is for routine mopping.
And, I appreciated that it automatically avoids carpeting. As for the robot vac itself, the Ozmo T8 AIVI has HD video and a microphone so you can watch your pets or check for open windows and doors from your phone. I didn't find the home surveillance features particularly useful, but they could be handy if you're concerned about security. The more helpful feature is the auto-empty station that automatically empties the dustbin after cleaning sessions.
You just replace the disposable pouch every month or two. Plus, it remains relatively quiet at just 67 dB on the highest cleaning setting and 58 dB on Quiet mode.
However, the vac consistently got stuck on a 1-inch lip between rooms. It also wasn't able to come within 2 inches of corners. The setup was seamless. I plugged in the dock to charge the vacuum, connected the app, updated the firmware, and set a schedule for cleaning.
After two cleanings, the vac created a map of my layout so I could set no-go zones to keep the T8 AIVI away from sensitive areas. Pros: Cleans well on hardwood flooring, good performance on carpeting, rarely gets stuck, comes with a charging dock that empties the dustbin, large main brushes, has a helpful app with virtual no-go zones.
It empties itself and is supported by an app that allows you to schedule cleanings effortlessly, set no-go zones, and customize your cleaning experience. You can even pair it with the iRobot Braava Jet M6 sold separately to mop after it finishes its vacuum cycle. After the cleaning cycle, there was only a trace of flour left. Its D-shaped design came within an inch and a half of the corner, picking up everything it could reach.
The unit didn't get stuck in our testing area either. Additionally, the vac got within an inch of the carpeted corner. Installation was easy, but it took about 25 minutes. I spent most of that time installing firmware updates after connecting to the app. The Bissell SpinWave Robot Vacuum picked up all the pet hair on carpet in our tests and has a great assortment of mop attachments and accessories.
The company is also committed to helping homeless pets and helps them find loving homes. Pros: Excellent job on hardwood and corners, picked up all of the pet hair in our tests, great mop attachment and accessories, app connectivity, small size, quiet operation. Specs aside, a portion of each sale also goes to the Bissell Pet Foundation , which is committed to finding loving homes for pets.
The Bissell SpinWave picked up all the cat and dog hair we laid out on carpeting and hardwood. Additionally, on the hardwood, it only left a trace of kitty litter and flour. It's also among the quietest vacs we tested — 58 decibels on quiet mode slightly softer than a normal conversation and 65 on high suction. If you have particularly skittish pets, the low-decibel output is less likely to startle your fur friends.
The vacuum's extras are helpful to any pet parent, including a mop tank attachment, spinning mop pads, and a trial-size bottle of cleaning formula.
Plus, you receive a cleaning tool that helps remove hairs from the brushes and clean the filter. In testing, the mop attachment worked seamlessly. You just fill the tank with water and some cleaning formula and attach it to the vacuum in place of the dustbin. The mop pads spin to scrub away stuck-on debris while avoiding carpeting. The SpinWave has a quick setup that takes five minutes, including installing the app and connecting the unit. The most significant limitation is it consistently got stuck on the 1-inch threshold between rooms.
Ecovacs U2 Pro : This vac did excellent cleaning hardwood and carpeting and rarely got stuck. The U2 Pro also comes with a mop attachment, which didn't do a good job of cleaning up dried Tang on linoleum.
Despite good performance, it couldn't compete with our current top picks and was too expensive for consideration as our best budget pick. Other negatives include loud operation, poor corner cleaning, and boundary strips for setting no-go zones that are sold separately. Proscenic T : When it comes to cleaning hard flooring, the T is outstanding.
It picked up almost all of the debris on hardwood in our testing, got deep into the corners, and got all of the grounds, hair, and litter on the carpet. Plus, the vac regularly disconnected from the app in my long-term testing and required my attention to run on schedule. Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge : Eufy usually makes more affordable robot vacuums, so at this price, the G30 Edge is considered the company's top-end model. The variety of extras — no-go zone strips, a user-friendly app, and Alexa and Google Home compatibility — make it worth the price, but you'll have to compromise some power.
It performed poorly on carpeting and in corners during our testing, and it was in the middle of the pack on hardwood. Despite the underwhelming performance, it remains a good value for the price. ILife A10 : If setting no-go zones is essential to you, the A10 might be a good option. After it maps your house, you can set up virtual barriers in the app.
This model also does an outstanding job of cleaning hardwood and carpet. But, there are plenty of cons: The A10 barely picked up any flour in carpeted corners, it runs loudly, and it gets stuck easily. Proscenic M7 Pro : I enjoy the automation afforded by self-empty charging docks, and the M7 Pro has one that works well.
You can also set no-go zones in the app. Plus, the vac didn't get stuck easily and performed well on carpeting and hard flooring. Yet, it had trouble cleaning corners and was loud. Plus, with a height of 4 inches, it doesn't fit under low-clearance furniture. Though this Roomba has great high-end features, its performance doesn't justify its price. It only did a satisfactory job on carpeting and hardwood, and it got stuck relatively often. Read our full review. The vac itself has powerful suction and avoided getting stuck in our tests.
The mop scrubs at up to 3, cycles per minute, which translated to one of the top performances in our mop test. However, it didn't do well vacuuming in corners and operated loudly. It came close but did not perform well enough to unseat any of our top picks.
We recommend the S6 MaxV because of its excellent performance in our carpeting, hardwood, and corner tests. It also has video surveillance, no-go zones, and a useful app. But it's oversized and kept getting stuck on the 1-inch lip leading into the kitchen of our testing course. The S6 MaxV is louder than most vacs we've tested. The 11S doesn't have WiFi connectivity, which has become standard at every price point in the industry. The vac performed well on carpeting but left a lot of debris behind on hardwood and in corners.
You'd be much better off with the Moosoo MT It left significant debris behind on carpeting and hard flooring and in corners. The vac also got stuck easily and ran loudly. Plus, the app is slow to respond to finger taps and commands. Yeedi K : The attractive price doesn't make up for the fact that the Yeedi K does a poor job cleaning any surface. It also gets stuck often, is noisy, and doesn't have many of the features we like, such as the ability to set no-go zones.
It didn't come with any extras — not even an additional filter. You can schedule it easily in the app, and it's compatible with Alexa and Google Home, but you have to buy virtual wall barriers separately. Also, it gets stuck easily and doesn't clean well on hardwood. Neato Botvac D7 Connected : We're dropping the Neato Botvac D7 Connected from our guide this time around because it's relatively big, got stuck about half the time during our initial testing, and it only comes with two extra filters and a magnetic barrier, which isn't necessary since you can set no-go zones in the app.
We think there are more affordable alternatives that perform better and are more feature-rich in our guide. If you're spending this much, though, the 15C Max performed much better in our testing.
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