The iRobot Roomba 980 robot vacuum Mops Vacuum Cleaner

Robot vacuums remove pet hair, lint and dust from the floor before they can settle. They also can stay clear of stairs and other obstacles, including tippy furniture.

The majority of robotic vacuums require regular maintenance. This involves emptying the bin (and sometimes, rinsing it) and wiping the sensors and cameras. They also require to be plugged in. A lot of them have apps for smartphones to schedule, adjust settings and more.

Roomba 980 from iRobot

The iRobot Roomba 980 is the most recent in the line of top-of-the-line robotic vacuum cleaners that are a staple of every modern household. This model is equipped with a HEPA filter that can aid those suffering from allergies. It also comes with a large battery that can be cleaned for up to two hours, and return to its dock automatically when the bin is full.

Smart mapping is another feature that helps it identify areas of your home that require attention and provides a cleaning path to get around them. This technology is very efficient in navigating around toys left on the floor, or furniture legs sticking out underneath objects. Roomba also comes with a sensor that can snap Roomba to reality if it begins to move away from its original position.

iRobot also added a set of rollers underneath the Roomba that do not have bristles and are therefore more likely to avoid knots than earlier models. They're also higher than the older rollers and are able to fit under beds and couches that are low and are designed to let this model move more easily across a variety of flooring types.

The Roomba 980 is distinguished from other models with a high-end price tag due to its latest dirt detection feature that makes use of cameras to detect embedded dirt. This is a significant improvement over the previous version that relied on an algorithm that was driven by sensors to bounce around the room and clean the entire area three times at various angles.

The Roomba 980 performed well in our tests on carpets and hard floors. It scored very well on carpets with a low pile, and on mid-pile. It did a decent job of removing pet hair, but it struggled with very thick and long pet fur that was stuck together.

Despite these slight limitations, the Roomba 980 remains one of our best-performing robots, and isn't even close to being as expensive as some of the other top-of-the-line models in this list. It's got plenty of features that we'd expect to find in a flagship model however it lacks all the fancy apps or smart home integration you'll find in other top contenders.

The iRobot Roomba is easy to set up and get working immediately. After removing the battery pull tab and yellow bin insert from undercarriage, all you need to do is plug it into its Home Base docking station or a wall socket, hit its big "Clean" button, Robot Vacuum Mops and let it get to work. It will automatically return to the dock when it runs out of battery or becomes full of trash. There are also indicators at the top of the bin that let you know when the bin is empty, when it requires recharging, or when it loses its Wi-Fi.