The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Robot vacuums remove pet hair, dust and lint off floors before they can settle. They also can avoid obstacles such as furniture that is slippery and staircases.

Most robotic vacuums require regular maintenance. This involves self emptying robot vacuum the bin (and sometimes, rinsing it) and wiping the sensors and cameras. Also, they need to be plugged into the power source. Many come with smartphone applications for scheduling, adjusting setting and more.

Roomba 980 from iRobot

The iRobot Roomba 980, the most recent of a series of top-of-the-line robot vacuums, Top 10 Robot Vacuums is a staple for every modern home. This model has seriously strong suction and it comes with a HEPA filter that will aid anyone who is concerned about allergies. It also comes with a powerful battery which can clean for two hours, and return to its dock automatically when the bin is full.

It also comes with a feature called smart mapping which uses multiple sensors to suss out the areas in your home that need 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 are left scattered on the floor or furniture legs that are sticking out from under the furniture. It also comes with a sensor that can snap Roomba to its real-world location if it starts to drift away from its original position.

iRobot has also added the option of rolling rollers under the Roomba which do not have bristles, which makes them more likely to withstand the tangles that previous models. These rollers are also taller and can be tucked under beds or couches with low sides. They're designed to make this model more maneuverable on different flooring types.

The Roomba 980 is distinguished from other high-end models by its new dirt detection feature, which makes use of a camera in order to detect dirt embedded. This is a nice improvement over the previous version, which relied on the sensor-driven pseudorandom cover method to bounce around a room and clean at least three times from different angles.

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

Despite these minor shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our best-performing robots, and it's even far from being as costly as the other top models on this list. It has many of the features you would expect from a flagship model but does not have all the fancy apps and smart home integrations you'll see in other top contenders.

The iRobot Roomba can be set up in a matter of minutes and is available for use right away. After you have removed the battery pull tab and yellow bin insert from its undercarriage, all that you need to do is plug it into its Home Base docking station or a wall socket, press its big "Clean" button and let it get to work. It will return to the dock when it is running out of battery or is full of sand. There are also indicator lights on top that show when the bin is empty, or when it is in need of recharging or when it loses its Wi-Fi.