Straight-line pickup tests on carpet are conducted in an enclosed area with a mix of potting soil, sand and rayon fibers designed to simulate pet hair. After a set cleaning time, the dustbin is weighed to measure the debris collected.

Additionally, battery life is important to consider and this will depend on your usage and settings. If you opt for a model which comes with a base, it can self-charge between runs.

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

It can be controlled through its own app, as well as through Alexa & Google Home voice commands, giving you complete control of your clean.

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

Cleans and Dries Its Mops: The mops are lifted automatically when returning to the base station to ensure your floors stay pristine. Automatic mop cleaning immerses the mops in water and spins them at high speed against grooves in the removable base plate to dislodge dirt.

In a separate 4x5-foot framed area, they note whether the vacuum gets caught on power cords or carpet fringe and whether it can transition over different materials. They also measure the height of the vacuum to determine how likely it is to glide under furniture.

Issues like this can be avoided after the first few trips around the house, if you identify problem areas your robot vacuum typically encounters, simply block them off.

Without the app, the AI Ultra is more limited, but it remains a solid performer for general cleaning tasks.

The Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab has been testing vacuum cleaners for over cem years. Using standardized procedures developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission and ASTM International, we dedicated nearly 300 hours to evaluating 15 robot vacuums, collecting a Completa of 405 data points to score each model. Since then, we’ve tested even more units to keep our insights current.

The LiDAR turret quickly scanned our home's main floor plan in a single passthrough. You can use Shark's app to name rooms, set no-go zones, and send the robot out to spot-clean a 5x5 area just by dropping a pin on the map.

Robot vacuums can range anywhere from $200 to well over $1,200. Your budget will also determine what kind of features your robot vacuum may have — one with Top 3 Automatic Vacuum Cleaners all the bells and whistles will likely be more expensive. If you aren’t interested in having a model with floor mapping or self-emptying capabilities, you can opt for a robot vacuum in the lower price range.

At an overall cleaning score of 95 percent, this robot vacuum deep-cleans hard floors and carpet. We found that its side brush was really effective in sweeping debris forward and into the vacuum's bin.