The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Best Robot Cleaner With Mop vacuums sweep pet hair, lint, and dust from floors before it can settle. They can also stay clear of obstacles such as furniture that is unstable and stairs.

Most robotic vacs require some maintenance, such as emptying (and occasionally rinsing) the bin, and wiping sensors and cameras. Also, they have to be plugged into the power source. Many come with smartphone apps to schedule, adjust settings and more.

Roomba 960 by iRobot

The iRobot Roomba 980 is the most recent in the line of top-of-the-line robot vacuum cleaners that are a staple of any modern household. This model is incredibly powerful suction as well as an HEPA filter that’ll aid anyone who is concerned about allergies. It also comes with a powerful battery which can be cleaned for up to two hours, and return to its dock automatically once the bin is full.

It also comes with a feature called smart mapping which uses multiple sensors to help identify the areas in your home that require attention and create a cleaning route around them. We’ve seen this technology in action and it does an excellent job of moving around toys that have been abandoned on the floor or furniture legs that stick out from under the furniture. It also has a sensor that will snap Roomba back to reality when it starts to wander away from its original position.

iRobot has also added an additional set of rollers beneath the Roomba that don’t have bristles, and therefore are more likely to withstand 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 flooring types.

What makes the Roomba 980 stand out from other models with a higher-end price tag, though, is its incorporation of the latest dirt detection feature, which uses cameras to identify tiny bits of dirt. This is an improvement over the previous version that relied on the use of a sensor-driven pseudorandom cover to bounce around the room, and then clean the entire area three times at various angles.

In our tests of its performance in our tests of its performance, the Roomba 980 did well on both hard flooring and carpets. Its score on the low pile carpet was very good and it also scored a high score on mid pile, too. It did a good job of removing pet hair, but it was struggling with extremely thick and long pet fur that was stuck together.

The Roomba 980 is still one of the top performing robots we’ve reviewed, despite these minor limitations. It’s also not as expensive as other top-of-the-line models. It comes with many of the features you’d expect from a flagship model, but it doesn’t have all the fancy apps or home integrations you’ll see in other top contenders.

The iRobot Roomba can be set up quickly and is available for use right away. After taking off the pull tab for the battery and yellow bin insert from the undercarriage, all that you need to connect it to its Home Base docking station or a wall socket, hit its large “Clean” button and let it get to work. It will automatically return to its dock when it has run out of battery or is full of debris. There are also indicator lights at the top of the bin that let you know when the bin is empty, when it needs to recharge, or when it loses its Wi-Fi.