Revenue plunged 30% primarily on order reductions and delays, and the company announced it was laying off 10% of its workforce. The favorites are still weird because tapping on their large buttons edits them rather than starts them; to start them you have to click on 3 little dots and select start, which seems backwards. Finally, we do the work of combing through user reviews to see how real people interact with the product, and if it stands up to the test. Every editorial product is independently selected, though we may be compensated or receive an affiliate commission if you buy something through our links.
During several of our tests, the Q5 produced good visual results, but the results for the i3 EVO were a little better when we weighed the dustbins. Also, the Q5 would regularly say that it had completed a job, when a quick look told us otherwise and we knew that we would have to restart the cleaning cycle. The Roborock Q5+ performs exactly the same as the Q5 but comes with a charging station that can empty debris from the robot right into a disposable bag.
There are robot vacuums to honor every price, budget and style preference. Whether you have less than $200 to spend or up to $1,000, these smart investments can free up your personal time and offer a hygienic home environment. Unfortunately, despite the presence of a high-efficiency dyson robot vacuum E11 filter, it does a terrible job of sealing in fine particles, which are blown clean out of its LIDAR sensor. Like the Roborock, it features LIDAR navigation and feels better built; however, it has a shorter battery life and a slightly less feature-packed companion app.
You should only have to interact with it to turn it on, empty its dustbin and untangle it if it were to get stuck somewhere. Then there are the top-of-the-line Roomba s9 and self-emptying Roomba s9+, which we do not recommend. Instead of the classic puck shape, the s9 has a D-shaped body and extra-wide brushes intended to improve its edge-cleaning and corner-cleaning abilities. It also has four times more raw suction than the already-strong Roomba i3 EVO, i7, and j7. That helps it consistently pick up larger debris such as cat litter or yard waste better than most robots, though it still doesn’t come close to deep-cleaning dust from a rug like a traditional vacuum does. But when we tried the s9 in 2020, it was one of the clumsiest navigators we’d ever tested.
The Eufy RoboVac X8 is packed with smart features and offers four different suction levels for powerful cleanup. It uses AI to detect and avoid obstacles and builds a virtual map that you can watch in real time, something other vacuums don’t do. It also got into a few tangles with power cords and had to be rescued but did a great job scooping up a cat toy that I later found in the dustbin. It’s a solid machine, but at $599, you can get the self-emptying and superior iRobot Roomba j7+ for just a hundred dollars more.
The first journey the Shark makes is an “Explore Run,” during which it produces a map of your home that you can then edit from the mobile app. We also tested the Ecovacs Deebot T8 AIVI, which failed irobot vacuum cleaner to avoid any objects. It just informed us in the app, after the session was over and the Nutella was smeared everywhere, that there were many objects on our floor and that we should pick them up.
As with the low-pile tests, note that most of the cleaners in the top half of the graph are all relatively close to one another — it isn’t until you get to the bottom of the pack that those bars really start to shrink. That’s good for you as a consumer, because it means that you’ve got a good variety of robot vacuums to choose from that all offer comparable cleaning capabilities across various price points. Along with the fact that the orange bars are a lot shorter , note that the order of cleaners is different, with our top midrange pick, the Roborock S7, now leading the way. Different robot vacuums will have different strengths and weaknesses based on their designs, so our variety of tests help us make recommendations that are as informed and well-rounded as possible.