The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot vacuum and Mop in 1 Cleaner

mop robot vacuum vacuums nab pet hair, lint and dust off floors before they can settle. They can also avoid obstacles like stairs and other obstructions, including tippy furniture.

The majority of robotic vacuums require maintenance, like emptying (and occasionally rinsing) the bin, and wiping cameras and sensors. They also require to be plugged in. A lot of them have apps for smartphones for scheduling, setting and more.

Roomba 960 from iRobot

The iRobot Roomba 980, the most recent in a line of top-of-the-line best robot vacuum cleaner vacuums, is an essential for any modern home. This model is equipped with a HEPA filter that can help those who are allergic. It also comes with an extremely powerful battery that can be cleaned for up to two hours and returns to its dock automatically once the bin is full.

It also has an option called smart mapping, which makes use of multiple sensors to help it identify the areas in your home that require attention and create a cleaning route 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 from under things. It also has a camera that snaps the Roomba back to reality when it starts to drift from its intended location.

iRobot also added the option of rolling rollers under the Roomba that don't have bristles and are therefore more likely to avoid knots than earlier models. The rollers are also larger and can be tucked under low couches or beds. They're specifically designed to make this model more movable on various floor types.

What makes the Roomba 980 stand out from other models of this class, though, is its incorporation of the latest dirt detection feature that utilizes cameras to detect bits of embedded dirt. This is an improvement over the previous version that relied on a sensor-driven pseudorandom cover method to bounce around the room and clean everything three times at different 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 scored a high score on mid pile, too. It did a fair job of removing pet hair, but it had a difficult time with extremely thick and long pet fur that was stuck together.

Despite these small shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our top-performing robots, and isn't even far from being as costly as some of the other top models on this list. It's still packed with a variety of features we'd expect to see in a top-of-the-line model, but it doesn't have all the fancy app-enabled functions or smart home integration that you might find in other top models.

The iRobot Roomba can be set up in a matter of minutes and is ready to use as soon as you are ready to. After taking off the pull tab for Vacuum and mop In 1 the battery and the yellow bin insert from undercarriage, all you need to connect it to its Home Base docking station or a wall socket, press its large "Clean" button, and let it go to work. It will return to its dock when the battery runs out or it's stuffed with debris, and it also has indicators at the top of the device to indicate that its bin is full or it needs to be recharged or its Wi-Fi signal has gone out.