The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner
Robot vacuums sweep pet hair, dust and lint from floors before it can settle. They also can avoid obstacles like furniture that is slippery and stairs.
The majority of robotic vacuums require maintenance. This includes emptying the bin (and sometimes rinsing it) and wiping the cameras and sensors. They also need to be plugged in. Many come with smartphone applications to schedule, adjust settings and more.
Roomba 980 from iRobot
The iRobot Roomba 980, the latest in a series of top-of the-line robot vacuums, is an essential for any modern home. This model has seriously strong suction and it comes with a HEPA filter that can aid anyone who is concerned about allergies. Additionally it also has a powerful battery that can clean for up to two hours and it automatically returns to its dock once its bin is full.
Smart mapping is another feature that allows it to identify areas of your home that require attention and provides a cleaning path to get around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does a good job of maneuvering around toys that have been placed on the floor, or furniture legs that are sticking out of the ground. It also has a camera that can snap the Roomba back to the real world when it starts to drift away from its original location.
iRobot also added the option of rolling rollers under the Roomba which do not have bristles and therefore are more likely to resist knots than earlier models. They are also taller and can fit under beds or couches with low sides. They're designed to make this model more movable on various floor types.
What makes robot mop stand out from other high-end models however, is its incorporation of the latest dirt detection feature that uses cameras to identify particles of dirt embedded. This is a nice improvement over the previous version which relied on the sensor-driven pseudorandom cover method to bounce around a room and clean everything at least three times from different angles.
The Roomba 980 performed well in our tests on both carpets and hard floors. Its score on the low pile carpet was excellent and it got a very high score on mid pile too. It did a good job of removing pet hair, but it was struggling with very thick and long pet fur that was stuck together.
Despite these small shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our best-performing robots, and it's even nearly as expensive as some of the other top-of-the-line models in this list. It comes with many of the features you'd expect from a top model, but doesn't come with all the fancy apps or smart home integration that you'll find in other top models.
The iRobot Roomba is simple to set up and start running right away. After taking off the battery pull tab and yellow bin insert from undercarriage, all you need to connect it to its Home Base docking station or a wall socket, press its big "Clean" button and let it get to work. It will return to its dock when it is running out of battery or is full of debris. There are also indicators on top that show the bin is empty, when it needs to recharge, or if it loses Wi-Fi.