The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Shark Vacuum Mop Robot Cleaner

consumer reports robot vacuum vacuums nab pet hair, lint and dust off floors before they can settle. They can also avoid obstacles such as furniture that is unstable and staircases.

Most robotic vacuums require maintenance. This includes emptying the bin (and sometimes, rinsing it) and cleaning the cameras and sensors. They also need to be plugged in. Many come with smartphone applications for scheduling, adjusting setting and more.

Roomba 960 by iRobot

The iRobot Roomba 980, the most recent of a series of top-of the-line robot vacuums, is an essential for any modern home. This model comes with a HEPA filter that can aid those suffering from allergies. On top of that, it also has a powerful battery that can clean for up to two hours and it will automatically return to its dock once its bin is full.

It also comes with a feature called smart mapping which uses multiple sensors to help it suss out the areas of your home that require attention and then create a clean path around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does a good job of moving around toys that have been left scattered on the floor or furniture legs that stick out of the ground. It also has a camera sensor that will snap the Roomba back to the real world when it begins to drift from its actual location.

iRobot has also included a set of rollers underneath the Roomba which do not have bristles, and are therefore more likely to withstand the tangles that previous models. The rollers are also larger and can be tucked under beds or couches that are low. They're designed to make the model more movable on various flooring types.

What sets the Roomba 980 apart from other high-end models, Shark Vacuum Mop Robot though, is its incorporation of the latest dirt detection feature that utilizes cameras to identify tiny bits of dirt. This is a significant improvement over the previous version which relied on the sensor-driven pseudorandom coverage technique to bounce around the room and clean at minimum three times from various angles.

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 got a very good score on mid pile, too. It did a fair job of removing pet hair, but it had a difficult time with very thick and long pet fur that was clumped together.

Despite these slight limitations, the Roomba 980 remains one of our top-performing robots, and it's not even far from being as costly as the other top-of-the-line models in this list. It's got plenty of features that we'd like to see in a top-of-the-line model however, it doesn't come with all the fancy apps or smart home integration that you might find in other top contenders.

The iRobot Roomba is simple to set up and get working immediately. After removing the yellow bin insert and the battery pull tab from its undercarriage you simply plug it into an outlet on the wall or to its Home Base docking stations, press the "Clean button" and let it job. It will return to docking station when it is running out of batteries or is full of debris. There are also indicators on top that indicate when its bin is empty, when it is in need of recharging or when it loses its Wi-Fi.