The best robot vacuum cleaners, tried and tested at home
Can robot vacuums compare to normal vacuums? We had fun testing the latest models from Roomba, Eufy, Xiaomi and others to find out
Should I get a robot vacuum cleaner? Until now, for most people the answer was no. Earlier generations had a tendency to mount chair legs and get stuck, wheels feebly pawing at the air, or to have a nervous breakdown in a confined space.
AI has changed all that. “People want robot helpers,” says Colin Angle, the MIT robotics expert whose iRobot Roomba kick-started the whole industry back in 2002. “Rather than clean the whole house, they want to tell their robot vacuum to just clean under the kitchen table, or in the office, but that takes a huge amount of tech.”
That tech has a fascinating history. Colin and his team designed the Sojourner rover that explored the surface of Mars in 1997 and the bomb-defusing Packbot that saved lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. One of their robots was sent to Fukushima to map safe pathways through the irradiated disaster zone. It might be surprising to find this kind of military technology trundling around your floor, but the challenges are the same: navigating different surfaces, unusual shapes and unexpected obstacles.
“Now they use cameras not just to see where they’re going and remember where they’ve been, but to understand obstacles,” Colin says. “Our latest model can recognise socks, shoes, Christmas trees, pet waste and wires and if it meets something it doesn’t recognise it will send you a pic to ask if it's a permanent feature. If it is, it will add it to its map."
The model Colin is talking about costs £700, so these are not toys — although there have been over a billion views of pets riding robot vacuums on YouTube. If you’re going to buy one, you’ll need to ask a few questions. Here are three of the most common.
How do robot vacuums compare to normal vacuum cleaners?
They're more expensive and much less powerful than traditional upright vacuum cleaners and cylinder vacuum cleaners. They’re best suited to open-plan houses with hard floors or short-pile carpet. They won’t actually fall down stairs — ‘cliff detection’ prevents that — but they can’t go up and down them, so you’d need one for each floor. If you move their base station, they have to begin their mapping all over again.
The advantage, obviously, is that a robot vacuum cleans the floor so you don’t have to. But you’ll still need another vacuum for jobs above floor-height, like upholstery or cobwebby corners. You might find our guide to the best cordless vacuum cleaners useful for that.
What robot vacuum has the strongest suction?
The Dyson 360 Heurist had a reputation for being the most powerful, but stocks are low and may not be replaced, so we’re wary of recommending it. Generally, powerful suction is not what robot vacuum cleaners are all about. They’re not the best vacuums for pet hair, either: they lack the turbo brushes and anti-tangle technology. Our recommendations below are based on usability and technical sophistication, not brute power.
How long does a robot vacuum last?
About five years, although there are still original Roombas in use from 15 years ago, according to Colin. As with mobile phones, after a while your robot vac will simply start to feel like yesterday’s model.
You may be getting the impression that we’re not fully sold on robot vacuums. We actually had a lot of fun testing them: they’re charming to have trundling around and kids love them, as do the abovementioned Roomba-riding cats. But the plain fact is that they’re better suited to big American houses than the average British flat or semi.
In theory they would be good for people with mobility problems who find it hard to operate a traditional vacuum cleaner. But setting up the obligatory apps will be a barrier to many. So in our opinion, they’re more of a technical marvel than a cleaning solution.
Having tested a lot of them, though, there’s no doubt that today’s robot vacuums are leagues ahead of the earlier models — and some are better than others. Here’s our pick of the best
How we tested the best robot vacuum cleaners
All robot vacuum cleaners have an associated phone app. We tested how easy they were to set up and use and put the robots to work on hard floors, carpets and rugs. As with all our vacuum tests we put down large dirt like broken crisps, fine dirt like tea leaves and strands of hair to see how they cleaned them up from different surfaces. We were looking for a quiet, competent robot that could find its way around obstacles, didn’t miss a spot and didn’t demand much maintenance.
At a glance: the best robot vacuum cleaners
- Best overall – iRobot Roomba i7+
- Easiest to use – Miele Scout RX3
- Most advanced – Samsung Jet Bot AI
- Best budget robot vacuum – Eufy Robovac
- Best robot vacuum and mop – Xiaomi Roborock S7
Read on for the reviews in full
The best robot vacuum cleaners
1. iRobot Roomba i7+
Best overall
We like: reasonable price, comparative simplicity, good mapping
Many people looking for a robot vacuum cleaner simply google ‘Roomba’, since they started the whole thing. Makers iRobot have sixty percent market share and work hard to keep it.
The Roomba i7+ isn’t the absolute cutting edge – subsequent models are more powerful, can recognise wires and pet waste and send you pics of suspected hazards – but the price is somewhat more sensible and the tech is still impressive.
As it cleans rooms, the i7+ creates a map which you can amend on your phone with keep-out zones and areas that need special attention, like around the bins or under the kitchen table. You can then send it to spot clean a given area using the app or a voice command. It can even work out the dirty areas for itself and give them extra attention.
In our tests it was faster, but gentler when it met obstacles, than other robot vacs. It was also less ‘dithery’, forming a confident map of its surroundings: tell it to return to its base station and it goes straight there without hitting anything. The dock needs a clear area around it about the size of a coffee table.
The i7+ has two rubber brushes, for hard floors and carpet. It can tell the difference and adjust accordingly. On carpet it did leave some fine dirt and behind on a general sweep, but got it up on a targeted clean.
There is a cheaper i7 that you empty manually but we'd recommend this i7+, which automatically empties itself into a bag in the base station with a satisfying whoosh. It’s the only time the Roomba makes a loud noise; the rest of the time it’s like a small desk fan. The bags take about a month to fill up – less in a house with pets – but are very easy to slide out and dispose of.
With frequent discounts now available this mid-range Roomba is the one to get. It auto-updates its software over wi-fi, so won’t be obsolete for a good while yet.
Key features: 9.2cm high, 34cm wide, auto-empty into disposable bags, laser, camera and infrared sensors for obstacle and cliff detection, 75 minute run time, iRobot app
German appliance-maker Miele's RX3 is around the same price as the Roomba despite being unable empty itself, but are pluses. It has a much smaller, less obtrusive base station its twin cameras look like cute eyes, which can’t be an accident. It’s also much simpler to use, with no real need to download the app: the remote control lets you choose between zigzag auto clean, spot clean or a quick dust and also lets you take manual control, telling it to go forward, back, left or right. Although if you’re standing there doing that, why not just do the hoovering yourself?
If you do use the app, it lets you see your home through the Scout’s eyes, a plausible alternative to a home security camera as long as you don’t mind seeing everything from ankle height. As with the remote, you can take control of the Scout, which is a lot of fun.
Although noisier than the Roomba, it’s better at sweeping debris into its mouth, with long, 20-arm brushes for hard floors and stiffer six-arm brushes for deep carpets, although you have to swap them out yourself. The dust receptacle is about the size of a toothpaste tube and has a built-in brush for cleaning the filter when you empty it. You have to do it about once a week, or once a day if you have pets.
The object-detection is not as good as the Roomba or the Jet Bot below, especially at night, since it relies on camera vision and infrared rather than lasers.
Key features: 8.5cm height, 40cm width, 0.4l capacity, infrared sensors for obstacle and cliff detection, 120 minute run time, Miele Scout app with home vision
3. Samsung Jet Bot AI with cleaning station
Most advanced
We like: show-off features like remote home monitoring
Samsung’s Jet Bot is in theory the most powerful robot vac we tried and, although this is hard to confirm, it certainly got rid of every kind of dirt we put in its path, on both hard floors and carpet. While it wasn’t quite as good at getting hair up, it does have an effective anti-tangle device. Its square-fronted shape gives it a few problems in tight corners because it can’t turn on its axis quite so nimbly, but it gives it the edge when marching along in straight lines and along borders.
It’s taller than other robot vacs due to the LiDAR turret that rises from the top to scan its environment. It’s supposed to be able to recognise obstacles as small as 1cm high and report back to you what it’s found. We put that to the test by placing cups of water, socks and a dog bowl in its path, all of which it spotted and avoided, but it blithely trundled over wires and dragged them around. (You can increase the sensitivity, but then it gets scared of large bits of fluff.)
After about an hour it returned to its docking station, like a Tie-fighter to the Death Star, and the dirt was sucked out of it with a powerful ten-second whoosh. The replaceable dirt bag is about the size of a carton of orange juice, takes about a month to fill and has an extremely good HEPA filter.
Like the Roomba the Samsung can be ordered to clean the whole house, specific rooms or specific areas either by voice command (it talks back) or through Samsung’s SmartThings app. Downloading the app takes about half an hour and involves lots of fiddly passwords, but does unlock Home Monitoring, where you can tell the Jet Bot to go to any room so you can have a look through its camera eye.
Overall this is about as impressive as robot vacs get, and as expensive. A more basic Samsung Jet Bot without the self-emptying base station, object-detection or security camera is available for £499.
Key features: 14cm high, 32cm wide, auto-empty into disposable bag with HEPA filtration, 3D and LiDAR object and cliff detection, 90 minute run time, Samsung SmartThings app
4. Eufy Robovac 15
Best budget robot vacuum
We like: reasonable features for the price, although it can’t match the others for intelligence
At this price, the Robovac from Chinese tech firm Eufy makes a good first robot vacuum to buy: if you don’t like it, at least you haven’t spent a month’s wages.
In fact it has a lot to recommend it. The 100-minute run time is up there with the best, it’s among the quietest and it’s certainly the slimmest: at 7.3cm it could fit under most sofas. Its dust bin is also bigger than the Roomba’s, Jet Bot’s or Scout's — but you have to empty it by hand.
It doesn’t map your house, instead carrying out a set pattern unless it detects walls or objects with its infrared sensors and physical bumpers. It seemed to detect light-coloured objects, but not dark ones, and the bumpers weren’t particularly gentle. It mounted table legs and pushed an office chair a few inches on its wheels. It also got tangled in wires and tassels. All this was quite entertaining to watch, of course.
There is an app but, since the Robovac doesn’t map your house, you can’t tell it to go to a specific room or place, just set cleaning schedules. Other than that you’re better off using the refreshingly simple remote control. That lets you change the suction level (although it can do this automatically), tell it to go home to its base, do a spiralling spot-clean or a 30-minute quick clean.
Really the Robovac is more charming than practical, but if you want to give robot vacs a try it’s a fine choice.
Key features: 7.3cm high, 32.5cm wide, 0.6l capacity, 100-minute run time, EufyHome app
5. Xiaomi Roborock S7
Best robot vacuum and mop
We like: ‘sonic’ mopping and better AI makes it a big advance over previous robo-mops
Robot mops have been around for a while (the iRobot Braava is probably the best known) but until now there hasn’t been a decent hybrid robot that can both vacuum and mop floors. Many can’t tell the difference, leading to soggy carpets. In our tests the S7 didn’t make that mistake, reliably switching modes. You can also use the app to create no-mop zones on the map of your house.
Talking of the app… it’s pretty buggy and some British customers might feel a bit wary about giving a Chinese robot their wifi password and letting it trundle around their house taking pictures (it can also listen), but that is how the Roborock works. Using a combination of camera, LiDAR and structured-light 3D mapping, it not only maps your house but recognises furniture and places it on the map, so you can direct it to clean under the dining room table, for example.
In our tests the obstacle detection was impressive, about as good as the Samsung, but the solid-rubber brush wasn’t so good at lifting fine dust and got tangled with hair. It would also randomly stop and give confusing error messages. Really, though, this is all about the mopping.
No robot mop can match a human, but the Roborock S7 does better than most, vibrating the mop head 50 times a second in what it calls ‘sonic mopping’. It’s just water (cleaning products would clog the system), but it was enough to remove muddy footprints and tea and coffee stains from around the bin and to give the kitchen an overall freshen-up.
Although not available to buy in the UK just yet, we’ve also tested the brand new ‘MaxV’ version sold in the US, whose base station includes a tank for topping the robot up, a dustbin so it can automatically empty itself and a washing system to clean the mop. This is a big improvement over the base model, which you have to manually maintain – but it also takes up a huge amount of space in the kitchen. You’d have to REALLY like robots to choose it over a simple Hoover and mop in the cupboard.
Overall, the Roborock is an impressive bit of 21st-century technology with quite a few bugs which software updates will need to iron out.
Key features: 9.7cm high, 35cm wide, 0.3l water tank, 0.47l dust bin, 180 minute run time, 3D and LiDar object and cliff detection, remote viewing and talk function, Roborock app