The Ultimate Guide to Automatic Vacuum Cleaners
The Ultimate Guide to Automatic Vacuum Cleaners
Blog Article
While upright and canister vacuums are better at deep-cleaning hardwood and carpets, a robot vacuum—often controlled by a smartphone app—can be useful for regular touch-ups.
Under the right circumstances, the i4 is a great, relatively inexpensive cleaner. But the first i4 EVO unit we tried in this testing cycle fell short in its app functionality, especially when compared to the less expensive Roborock Q5 Max+, which maps significantly faster and whose app offers more features.
...The mopping function on this vacuum is plenty enough for us as it'll help clean up any missed small messes and it adds back some shine to make every look and feel cleaner and brighter!"
Top-tier robot vacuums often boast extended battery life and intelligent power management. Many premium models advertise anywhere from 180 up to 240 minutes of runtime on a single charge, especially in standard mode on hard floors. This longer battery life, combined with smart navigation, allows the vacuum to cover larger areas or entire multi-room layouts in one cleaning session. Additionally, almost all of the best models have “recharge and resume” capability – if the battery runs low mid-job, the robot will return to its dock, recharge, and then pick up where it left off to finish the cleaning.
We weighed the contents of each bot’s dustbin after a cleaning cycle to determine how much debris it had collected. Sabine Heinlein/NYT Wirecutter
The maximum-power boost mode lasts a paltry 12 minutes before needing to recharge, but it is practical enough to use if Automatic Vacuum Cleaners you’re away from home for most of the day. Dyson claims the 360 viz nav is six times more powerful than any other robot vacuum, and the results from our home tests seem to back that up.
The top-rated robot vacuums excel at cleaning bare floors and picking up pet hair. Some also come with advanced features like WiFi connectivity and smart mapping technology.
Unsure which way to go? Skip the guesswork. Our robovac buying guide lays it all out—mapping tech, suction specs, floor compatibility, and more—so you can find what actually works for your place.
The mopping function is excellent. It doesn’t just swish a mop pad around on the floor, it actually scrubs the floorboards, helping get rid of dried coffee stains.
Several of the top robot vacs below also double as robotic mops, but we didn’t evaluate mopping capabilities in our vacuum tests.
Staff writer Sabine Heinlein has been a journalist for over two decades. She obsesses over how to remove fur from every corner of her home and hairballs from her heirloom rugs.
With help from friends and colleagues, who generously offer their floors up for testing, he’s able to measure each robovac’s true performance in different types of homes.
Thankfully, many manufacturers make robot vacuums that are suited for cleaning up after pets. Models like the iLife V3s Pro and the Roomba S9, scored the best in our robot vacuum lab tests, picking up nearly all pet hair on both hardwood and carpeting, and making our list of the best robot vacuums for pet hair.
Some can automatically switch to a mopping mode when on hard surfaces, most can detect and avoid common household obstacles and pet mess, and some can even empty their own waste bins and refill their own water tanks.