The best robot vacuum cleaner to buy in 2022 – The Verge

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The S7 is the best option for a bot that can actually mop at a semi-accessible price. It does require a bit more hands-on effort, though, since you have to refill the reservoir (it doesn’t warn you when it’s empty) and wash the mopping pads (you can throw them in the washing machine). There is a new Roborock model that cleans its own mop, but it costs $1,400 (see the section below “What about robot vacuum mops that can clean their mops and refill themselves?”).

For more details, read my full review of the S7 Plus here.

Best robot vacuum that can auto-empty

While the Roomba j7 is the best bot if you want all the bells and whistles, the Roomba i3 Plus EVO ($550) is the best robot vacuum for a better price that also empties itself. You don’t get AI obstacle avoidance or app-enabled clean or keep-out zones, but you do get smart mapping (so you can control exactly which rooms it cleans and when) and a physical spot cleaning button that lets you do small areas on the fly.

The mapping feature (which is a recent update) allows you to set a schedule to clean only certain rooms or send it off at anytime to clean just the kitchen or living room. This helps make it less intrusive since it doesn’t try to clean the whole house on every run — meaning you’re less likely to find it sitting silently in a corner because an annoyed family member shut it off. However, it does take a long time to map your home initially (almost two hours for my downstairs), because iRobot uses its own navigation tech and not lidar, which most other mapping bots use to map in minutes.

The i3 Plus EVO is also iRobot’s most affordable self-emptying option. For $550, $250 less than the j7 Plus, you get the power of a high-end Roomba vacuum; it has the same suction level and similar battery life to the j7. You can also buy the i3 as a standalone vacuum for $350. However, it does have a tendency to bump into things more often than the j7, likely because it doesn’t have a camera on board. During testing, this resulted in a few toppled chairs, so this isn’t the right bot for you if you have delicate items like vases on pedestals.

Most other features are the same as the j7, including voice control with Alexa, Google, and Siri; scheduling; the option to create favorite cleaning routes; and integration with smart devices to tell your robot to get busy when you’re gone. The physical design is also very similar under the hood, with two multisurface rubber roller brushes to get more dirt up. These rubber brushes don’t get tangled by long hair the way bristle brushes can. Because there’s no option to add keep-out zones in the app, you’ll need to buy iRobot’s virtual walls if there are places you don’t want the robot to go. These are little towers that emit a 10-foot barrier or a 4-foot circle. They cost $99 for two, so if keep-out zones are important to you, it’s worth upgrading to the j7.

The i3 has an attractive woven plastic gray top — a nice change from most of the shiny black plastic you find in this category (which is a magnet for dust, fingerprints, and scratches). It does still get stuck on common robot traps such as phone charging cables, cat toys, and, in my house, the skinny feet of a lounger chair. You do need to tidy up a bit before you set it free, but it does better with large cables and rug tassels than many other robots. (iRobot has an anti-tangle tech that makes the bot reverse course if it starts to get tangled.) This works pretty well for bigger items but, sadly, not phone charging cords.

Best midrange robot vacuum

The latest vacuum from Shark is the company’s first that uses lidar mapping. This brings the level of this bot way up, making it much more reliable than some of Shark’s previous models. It’s also designed exclusively as a self-emptying bot. (You can’t buy it separately.) For only $650, you get most of the features of the high-end bots.

A mapping robot, the Shark has room-specific cleaning and app-enabled keep-out zones. It also has a handy Zones feature that lets you select areas of your house — say, half the living room and the hallway — to clean on a schedule. This is useful for regular, quick cleans in high-traffic areas and it doesn’t need to be set up every time you run it, as with some clean zone options.

The Shark has both clean zones and keep-out zones — neither of which the Roomba i3 Plus has. If those features are important to you and the j7 Plus is a step too far, the Shark is a good option.

The downside is that this robot is loud. It rattles terribly as it rolls around and is super distracting — you want to be far away when this is doing its job. The design is also flashy and ugly: lots of chrome and shiny black plastic and a really obnoxious Shark logo. But the base is relatively compact, and it’s the only self-emptying robot I tested that doesn’t use bags. You just empty it over the trash bin, so cost-wise you don’t have to spend $20 every few months for extra bags (which is how much iRobot charges for a three-pack of bags).

Best robot vacuum for pet hair

The Deebot U2 Pro is a monster. With a giant 3,200mAh battery that goes for 150 minutes and a huge 800ml dustbin, this is one of the best sub-$400 bots for pet owners. There’s no smart mapping, keep-out zones, or AI obstacle avoidance, but it has enough intelligence to go in straight lines and not bumble randomly around your home.

Two things make it a great pet bot: the big bin and that it comes with a swappable bin / mopping pad. This means that, if your pup makes a mess, you can do a quick switcheroo and have it mopped up in a few minutes. (It has a spot cleaning mode in the app.) The second bin combines a 400ml dustbin with a 300ml water reservoir, which is unusually large for a budget bot. This ensures there’s enough water to get the grime up, and you can select different water levels in the app.

In addition to spot mode and the standard back-and-forth cleaning mode, you can opt for edge-only cleaning to get all that pet hair off your baseboards. The Deebot U2 also comes with a tangle-free silicone brush you can swap out with the standard bristle brush. In my testing, bristle brushes work better on carpet but are prone to getting tangled with fur. (A lot of bots come with a little cutting tool to help with this.) The silicone brushes are able to shake off the hair better, making them good for households with lots of pet hair.

Best robot vacuum for small spaces

This small, practically silent robot is an ideal, inexpensive option for a cozy apartment or to use as a second bot for an upstairs space or home office. At $320 (or $279 for the mopless version), it lacks smart mapping features, has no smart obstacle avoidance, and only runs for 90 minutes. But it is the smallest and quietest vacuum I tested.

Despite being a budget bot, it doesn’t partake in the classic bump and roll navigation, Instead, it uses gyroscopic navigation to divide the space into individual areas and clean each one methodically. It’s quite soothing to watch it go to work as it moves up and down in neat, rectangular boxes.

Slimness is a trademark of Eufy bots, as is a stylish, sleek design. If the competition are bulky SUVs, Eufys are the Porsches of the robot vacuum world. At 2.85 inches high, the G20 is the smallest robot vacuum I tested. Combined with whisper-quiet operation (66 decibels on the lowest suction level on hardwood floors), this makes it a good option if you’re looking for something to get under low furniture or run quietly while you’re working in your home office.

It also holds a decent amount of debris. The standard model has a large, 600ml dustbin, which can handle five or six runs’ worth of debris in a small space before you need to empty it. If you’re taking care of hardwood floors, the G20 Hybrid model swaps the 600ml debris bin for a 450ml bin, and has a 130ml mopping reservoir. This is not going to do much to mop your floors, but it does help with fine dust and debris.

While not really a feature I consider essential for operation, the G20 has a remote control option in the Eufy Home app, which means it can also double as a fun cat toy.

What to look for in a robot vacuum cleaner

There’s a lot of specs around suction for you to study when selecting your new housemate (see my comparison chart), but I can tell you all of these rolling sweepers are suitably sucky, picking up everything from dog hair and kitty litter to Cheerios and dust bunnies. Most have multiple suction levels and will adjust when they sense carpet. This makes the key consideration whether you want to spend money on a robot that can map your house for precision cleaning and avoidance (crucial if you have delicate objects or areas in your home), even more money on a model that can intelligently avoid clutter and a potential poop-ocalypse, and copiously more on one that can empty its own bin. If you don’t go the latter route, then the size of its onboard bin is an important factor. The bigger it is, the less often you’ll have to dump it out — never a fun experience.

Every Wi-Fi-connected robot vacuum worth its salt today works with Alexa or Google smart speakers for voice control, although some are limited to just stop / start and pause, whereas others can be told to go clean specific areas. I wrote two blogs on how to use your robot vacuum with your voice assistant, so check those out if you want to know more about Alexa voice control or Google Home voice control. A couple of manufacturers now also work with Siri Shortcuts so you can use Apple’s Siri voice assistant to command your bot. If this is something you want, look for robots from iRobot or higher-end models from Roborock and Ecovacs.

A few other things to keep in mind. No robot vacuum can climb stairs (yet), so if you want hands-free cleaning everywhere, you’ll want to budget for one per floor or be prepared to move it around. You can also buy extra charging bases, and some models can map multiple floors. Thankfully, all the bots I tested have cliff sensors and none attempted to dive off the stairs. Finally, none could really, truly get carpets clean. They get the surface, but if you have a carpeted house or lots of rugs, I’d recommend investing in a stick vac as well for weekly deep cleans. (They’re also handy for stairs.) The only robot I found that does a really good job on carpets is the Roomba s9, which has 30 times the suction power of the Roomba j7. But that’s a $1,000 bot (including a self-empty base), and its lack of AI obstacle avoidance means it’s prone to getting stuck.

What about robot vacuum mops that can clean their mops and refill themselves?

As I’ve mentioned, robot vacuums are advancing rapidly. The latest innovation is an auto-empty dock that can refill the mopping reservoir, clean the mop, and empty the bin, promising hands-free operation for at least a couple of months.

I’ve tested Roborock’s version of this model, the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra (available in April for $1,400), and the $1,550 Ecovacs Deebot X1 Omni (which also has its own built-in voice assistant). Right now, I’m not ready to recommend these, not because they’re not good but because they are incredibly expensive. And the technology is still new enough that I’m not sure how they’d hold up to heavy use. I’ll be keeping an eye on this space and provide an update when I have a solid recommendation.

Photos by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

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