The 981 Roomba vacuum cleans with pet-friendly features, including multisurface brushes and power-lifting suction with five times the air power of traditional vacuums. It will run for about 75 minutes before returning to the charging dock to power up and then resume cleaning. It will also link up with a Braava Jet M6 robot mop and tell it to go mop once it’s done vacuuming. The best robot vacuum under $300 that we’ve tested is the Wyze Robot Vacuum.
When we put it to the test, it picked up 100% of pet fur and cereal — it just missed a perfect score, as it collected roughly 97% of kitty litter. It was better on bare floors than our overall winner, the Roborock S4 Max. Brian Bennett is a senior writer for the home and outdoor section at CNET. These include everything from cordless and robot vacuum cleaners to fire pits, grills and coffee makers.
If you’re interested in a model which comes with a base, it can self-charge between runs. However, if the model you’re looking at needs to be manually shark cordless plugged in, you might come home to a half-finished job. Find answers, resources and get the assistance you need for all of your favorite robots.
That is, the i3 EVO couldn’t remember your home’s floor plan from session to session, and you couldn’t designate no-go zones or ask the bot to clean rooms in a specific order while ignoring others. In March 2022, iRobot announced a new software update that remedies this shortcoming. According to the press release, the i3 EVO and the i3+ EVO can now use a feature called Imprint Smart Mapping to follow courses and maps created via the iRobot app.
Our carpet is in great condition every day thanks to the genuine joy we get from letting the Roomba do its thing. Living with a Roomba also made our home tidier because we didn’t want to leave anything this feisty device might try and consume. We moved those too, as well as furniture, positioning pieces to give the Roomba space to navigate. That’s not to say the cleaner can’t fit through small spaces — because it really can. Sometimes the vacuum’s ability to squeeze in-between furniture and under tables pleasantly surprised us.
All Roomba bots, including the i3 EVO, also have a dirt-detection system—another unique feature you can’t find in other brands’ bots. When the Roomba senses that it’s passing over an area with a lot of debris, it’ll stop and make a few passes back and forth to pick up as much as possible. Shag and other high-pile rugs may have too high a threshold for the robot to pass over, dyson robot vacuum or the fibers could clog the brush. Some models will even feature an automated higher suction setting for deep cleaning carpets. Most robot vacuums are equipped with multiroom cleaning features, which allow the device to clean in zones versus one room at a time. An “edge cleaning” mode makes sure dust and debris are picked up along the perimeter and around furniture.