The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Robot vacuums nab pet hair, dust and lint off floors before they can settle. They can also avoid obstacles like furniture that is tippy and staircases.

Most robotic vacs require some maintenance, like emptying (and occasionally rinsing) the bin and wiping cameras and sensors. Also, they need to be plugged into the power source. Many have smartphone apps for scheduling, adjusting setting and more.

Roomba 980 from iRobot

The iRobot Roomba 980 is the latest model in the line of top-of-the-line best mop vacuum cleaner i robot vacuum and mop (Read Much more) vacuum cleaners that are a staple in any modern home. This model comes with a HEPA-filter that will aid those suffering from allergies. On top of that, it also has a powerful battery that can clean up to two hours, and it will return to its dock once its bin is full.

It also has a feature called smart mapping which uses multiple sensors to help it suss out the areas of your home that need attention and create a cleaning path around them. This technology is extremely effective at navigating around toys that are left on the floor or furniture legs that are sticking out from underneath objects. It also comes with a sensor that can snap Roomba to its real-world location if it starts to wander away from its original location.

iRobot has also added an additional set of rollers beneath the Roomba that don't have bristles, which makes them more likely to withstand tangles than previous models. The rollers are also larger and can be placed under low couches or beds. They're specifically designed to make this model more movable on various floor types.

What sets the Roomba 980 apart from other models with a higher-end price tag, though, is its inclusion of a new dirt detection feature that utilizes cameras to identify bits of embedded dirt. This is a significant improvement over the previous version, which relied on a sensor-driven pseudorandom coverage technique to bounce around a room and clean everything at least three times from different angles.

In our tests of its performance it was found that the Roomba 980 did well on both hard flooring and carpets. It scored extremely well on carpets with a low pile, and on mid-pile. It did a good job getting rid of pet hair, however it struggled with the long and thick pet hair that was stuck together.

Despite these minor shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our top-performing robots, and it's not even far from being as costly as some of the other top-of-the-line models in this list. It's still packed with a variety of features that we'd like to see in a top-of-the-line model however it lacks all the fancy app-enabled functions or best i robot vacuum and Mop smart home integration you'll find in other top contenders.

The iRobot Roomba is easy to set up and start up and running immediately. After taking off the yellow bin insert and the battery pull tab from its undercarriage it is simply connected to an outlet on the wall or to its Home Base docking stations, hit the "Clean button" and let it work. It will return to its dock when it is running out of battery or becomes full of debris. There are also indicators on top that show the bin is empty, or when it is in need of recharging or when it loses Wi-Fi.