The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Robot vacuums eliminate pet hair, lint and dust from the floor before they settle. They also help avoid obstacles like stairs and other obstructions, including tippy furniture.

Most robotic vacuums require regular maintenance. This involves emptying the bin (and occasionally, rinsing it) and cleaning the cameras and sensors. They also need to be plugged in. Many come with smartphone applications to schedule, adjust settings and more.

iRobot Roomba 960

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

Smart Vacuum Cleaner mapping is a different feature that helps it identify areas of your home that require attention and provides an easy path to get 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 under things. It also comes with a sensor that can snap Roomba to reality if it begins to wander away from its original position.

iRobot has also introduced a new set of rollers underneath the bottom of the Roomba that don't have bristles and, therefore, tend to resist tangles more than earlier models. They are also taller and Smart vacuum cleaner can be tucked under beds or couches with low sides. They're designed to make this model more movable on various floor types.

The Roomba 980 is distinguished from other models with a high-end price tag by its brand new dirt detection feature that makes use of a camera in order to detect embedded dirt. This is a significant improvement over the previous version that relied on the sensor-driven pseudorandom coverage technique to bounce around a room and clean at minimum three times from various angles.

The Roomba 980 performed well in our tests on carpets and hard floors. Its score on the low pile carpet was very good and it also scored a high score on mid pile too. It did a fair job of removing pet hair, but it had a difficult time with very long and thick pet fur that was clumped together.

Despite these small shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our best-performing robots, and it's even close to being as expensive as some of the other top models on this list. It has many of the features we would expect from a top model but does not have all the fancy apps or home integration that you'll see in other top contenders.

The iRobot Roomba is easy to set up and get working immediately. After removing the pull tab for the battery and the yellow bin insert from undercarriage, all that you need to connect it to its Home Base docking station or a wall socket, hit its large "Clean" button and let it get to work. It will return to its dock when it is running out of battery or is full of sand. There are also indicator lights on top that indicate the bin is empty, or when it is in need of recharging or when it loses its Wi-Fi.