A robot vacuum is a handy tool for keeping your house or apartment looking tidy between major cleanings. It can be especially helpful in homes with pets, where clumps of hair can accumulate seemingly overnight. And, a robot vacuum can go about its business while you're not home, freeing you do do more important things.
Based on more than 600 hours of testing on more than 40 robot vacuums, the best robot vacuum for most people is the Shark Ion R85. Not only is it great at cleaning, but it also works with both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. It even has an optional stick vacuum, so you can clean couch cushions and other spots the robovac can't reach.
If you're on a budget, we recommend the iLife V3s Pro. While it lacks smart-home connectivity and is on the slower side, it’s better than most other robot vacuums — even those costing hundreds more — at picking up pet hair and other debris.
Read on to see all of our top picks for best robot vacuums.
Our best robot vacuum overall, the Shark R85 proved excellent at picking up pet hair and other debris around our home with a minimum of fuss. While it took about an hour on average to finish a run in our test space, it was much more thorough than all other robot vacuums. We also like its notifications, smartphone control and easy-to-clean dustbin The optional handheld vacuum is handy for getting those spaces the robot vacuum can't reach.
This is the best robot vacuum you can get for a low budget. Despite its low price, the iLife V3s Pro consistently outperformed other robot vacuums that cost three times as much. It picked up nearly all the pet hair in our lab tests, and was also good in our at-home tests, too. The only caveats is that it’s slow, can’t be controlled from your smartphone (though it has a remote), and is a bit louder than other vacuums. But for this price, those are tradeoffs we’re willing to make.
Another great budget robo-vac is iLife’s V5s Pro, which vacuumed nearly as well as the V3s Pro. The V5s Pro has an added mopping feature that was pretty ineffective in our in-home tests. Like most budget robot vacs, the V5s Pro lacks a smartphone app, and doesn’t work with any smart home devices. It’s also one of the slowest robot vacuums we’ve tested. Still, for the money, it’s a very effective cleaner.
iRobot's highest-end model makes our best robot vacuum list because it has a base with its own dustbin, so you can go multiple cleanings without having to empty out the bin. It edged out the Shark Ion R85 on our pet hair test, picking up just over 90 percent of all the fur on the floor.
It has a number of other features, such as the ability to map multiple floors and create virtual walls. The Roomba i7+ is also fast, finishing a cleaning run in less than 20 minutes. Still, its price — very high — plus the fact that it wasn't as thorough as other vacuums kept the i7+ from receiving a higher rating.
iRobot's budget mopping robot vacuum, the Braava Jet 240, helps keep your kitchen and hardwood floors tidier by giving them a good scrub. It's much smaller than a traditional robot vacuum and uses replaceable pads to get at those dried spills. It's fairly good at this task but won't substitute for a real scrubbing with a mop. Plus, replacement pads will cost you extra, which you have to factor into the total cost of ownership.
The iLife Shinebot W400 is both larger and more expensive than the Braava Jet 240, but the W400 is better at mopping floors, and its cleaning roll is washable, so you're not having to constantly purchase additional cleaning pads. However, we found the W400 more of a pain to maintain, as you have to empty a dirty-water bin after each use.
Our best robot vacuum from 2018, the Samsung PowerBot R7070 is still a very capable and fast cleaner. You can also control it from your smartphone, as well as with Alexa and Google Assistant. But while it completed a cleaning run in half the time that the Shark Ion R85 took, it wasn't as effective at picking up pet hair or kitty litter. And it's about twice as expensive.
The Eufy RoboVac 11S is one of the best robot vacuums for those on a budget simply because it works. The device is short enough that it can track under furniture where you normally can't reach with an upright vacuum. And though there's no Wi-Fi connectivity or app control, there's a companion remote. You can use this to schedule the vacuum so that it cleans up any litter crystals, stray hairs and food crumbs left behind.
