✅ You also need a manual vacuum: Most people with robovacs also have a manual vacuum. The Ecovacs takes the fuss of that out by providing you with one in the first place.

The mopping is a cut above average, and the space-age looking curvy dock takes care of the mopping maintenance tasks including refilling the bot's onboard tank and washing and drying its mop pads. (You will need to supplement this with the occasional deeper clean, but that's unavoidable.)

The All-Rubber Brush floats on a multi-directional frame for effective cleaning and easily clears away pet hair with fewer hair tangles.

Q Revo has 30 water flow levels so you can fine-tune cleaning to match your floor types and preferences.

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.

Hunter Fenollol specializes in smart home gadgets and appliances with a focus in robot vacuums, Roombas and security cameras.

While the robot does most of the work for you, there may still be areas that it misses, like under sofas or corners it can't reach. Just like this, there are other factors to consider before splashing the cash, so let’s take a look.

The iRobot s9+ is simple to operate and provides strong pick up across hard floors and carpet. Its high-end performance especially excels in picking up strands of pet hair. Roomba's self-emptying base saves you time and effort on maintenance too.

Some robots will let you set different schedules for each room in your home, but others might just start cleaning every room each time

Freely switch among different modes and power levels as you want via the Vactidy App. Preset a working time to get your T6 robot to start its daily routine cleaning.

We suggest scheduling it for Top 3 Automatic Vacuum Cleaners when you're out of the house, as this is admittedly a noisy robot vacuum, particularly on hardwood floors; we struggled to have conversations as it cleaned.

A robot vacuum uses navigation tools like sensors, lasers and cameras to work its way around your home, suctioning up pet hair, crumbs and dirt into its dustbin from hard floors like wood, tile and laminate and low pile carpets and area rugs. Many high-end robots are capable of mapping and learning your space, so you can set the robot to clean only one room or a specific area.

The T30s did very well on our cleaning tests, earning an average score of 93%; while that isn't tops among the best robot vacuums, that's still very good.

A robot that doesn't map will just bump around the objects in your home as it cleans and may miss spots or even entire rooms. You won’t be able to view the robot’s cleaning route, send the robot to clean a specific room or spot (more on that below) or set up no-go zones.