The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

best robot vacuum for hard floors vacuums remove pet hair, lint and dust from the floor before they settle. They can also avoid obstacles like furniture that is unstable and stairs.

The majority of robotic vacuums require maintenance. This includes emptying the bin (and sometimes, rinsing it) and wiping the sensors and cameras. Also, they have to be connected to an electrical source. Many come with smartphone apps to schedule, adjust settings, and more.

Roomba 980 from iRobot

The iRobot Roomba 980 is the most recent in the series of top-of-the-line robot vacuum cleaners that are an essential part of any modern household. This model is equipped with a HEPA filter that can aid those suffering from allergies. Additionally it also has a powerful battery that can clean for up to two hours, and it automatically returns to its dock when its bin is full.

It also comes with an option called smart mapping which uses multiple sensors to help it suss out the areas in your home that need attention and make a tidy route around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does a good job of maneuvering around toys that are placed on the floor, or furniture legs that are sticking out of the ground. It also has a camera sensor that will snap the Roomba back to its original position when it starts drifting away from its original location.

iRobot has also added a new set of rollers underneath the Roomba's bottom, which don't have bristles and, therefore, tend to resist tangles better than previous models. They are also taller and can be tucked under low couches or beds. They're specifically designed to make this model more adaptable to different floor types.

What sets the Roomba 980 apart from other models with a higher-end price tag Its main feature is the integration of the new dirt detection feature, which uses cameras to identify bits of embedded dirt. This is a significant improvement over the previous model, that relied on the sensor-driven pseudorandom coverage method to bounce around a room and clean it at least three times from different angles.

The Roomba 980 performed well in our tests on both carpets and hard floors. Its score on 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 was struggling with very thick and long pet fur that was stuck together.

Despite these slight limitations, the Roomba 980 remains one of our top-performing robots, good and it's even close to being as expensive as the other top models on this list. It has many of the features you'd expect from a flagship model, but it doesn't 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 start up and running immediately. After removing the battery pull tab and yellow bin insert from undercarriage, all you have to connect it to its Home Base docking station or a wall socket, press its big "Clean" button, and let it go to work. It will return to its dock when its battery runs out or it's full of debris, and it has indicator lights on the top of the device to indicate that its bin is full, it needs to be recharged or if its Wi-Fi signal is lost.