The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

homekit robot vacuum vacuums take pet hair, lint and dust from the floor before they settle. They can also avoid obstacles such as furniture that is tippy and stairs.

Most robotic vacuums require maintenance. This includes emptying the bin (and sometimes, rinsing it) and wiping the sensors and cameras. They also require to be connected. Many have smartphone apps to schedule, robot mop vacuum combo adjust settings and more.

Roomba 960 from irobot roomba vacuum mop

The iRobot Roomba 980 is the latest model in the series of top-of-the-line robot mop vacuum combo vacuum cleaners that are an essential part of any modern household. This model is incredibly powerful suction as well as an HEPA filter that will assist anyone suffering from allergies. It also comes with a powerful battery which can be cleaned for up to two hours before returning to its dock automatically when the bin is full.

It also comes with a feature called smart mapping, which makes use of multiple sensors to help it determine the areas in your home that need attention and make a tidy path around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does a great job of moving around toys 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 reality when it starts drifting from its actual location.

iRobot has also added a new set of rollers beneath the Roomba's bottom that don't have bristles and, therefore, tend to be more resistant to tangles than the previous models. These are also a little higher than the older rollers and can better fit under low couches and beds, and they're designed to help this model navigate more easily on varying floor kinds.

What makes the Roomba 980 stand out from other models with a higher-end price tag however, is its incorporation of the latest dirt detection feature that uses cameras to identify particles of dirt embedded. This is a significant improvement over the previous version, which relied on a sensor-driven pseudorandom cover method 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 carpets and hard flooring. It scored highly on carpets with a low pile, and on mid-pile. It did a fair job of removing pet hair, but it was struggling with very long and thick pet fur that was clumped together.

Despite these small shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our most efficient robots, and it's not even far from being as costly as the other top-of-the-line models on this list. It comes with many of the features you would expect from a top model, but doesn't come with all the fancy apps or home integration you'd find in other top models.

The iRobot Roomba is easy to set up and start running right away. After removing the pull tab for the battery and the yellow bin insert from its undercarriage, all you need to do is plug it into its Home Base docking station or a wall socket, hit its large "Clean" button and let it go to work. It will return to its dock when its battery is out or it's full of debris, and it also has indicators on the top of the device to indicate that its bin is full, it requires recharging or if its Wi-Fi signal is lost.