What can stack up to the joy of returning home to a spotless house, really? While we’re not suggesting the latest robot vacuum cleaners can polish the silver and dust the dado rail, they are getting increasingly adept at sucking up dust and eliminating pet hair without you having to move a muscle.
Admittedly, there are some people out there who manage to vacuum every day, and we salute their domestic dedication, but if you resent having to turn your weekend over to chores, a good quality robotic vacuum could be a revelation.
Yes, they still can’t vacuum the stairs, they get stuck on deep pile rugs and will suck up Lego bricks, socks and phone charging cables with gusto, but set them up properly – read: clear the floors of stuff – and their mixture of powerful camera guided navigation and drop sensors will plot a methodical course around your rooms.
WIRED was frankly disgusted with just how much dust, debris and pet hair our test vacuums were able to collect from our ‘clean’ floors, and compared to the designs from just a few years ago, the technology has moved on at a pace and you can now find something that will clean every day, without complaining. We also suggest taking a look at our guide to the best cordless vacuums, as a robot and a cordless make perfect partners.
What’s the best robot vacuum in 2020?
The best robot vacuum cleaner you can buy right now is the iRobot Roomba i7+ (£1,149) because you rarely need to tend to it: it empties itself into a large dirt bag in the charging base when it docks. It also boasts intelligent room mapping and both app and voice controls.
View the iRobot Roomba i7+ for £1,149 on Amazon
Meanwhile, the excellent Roborock S5 Max (£499) is by far the best value design we’ve found, boasting Roomba quality navigation, impressive battery life, supremely simple set-up, and the added bonus of floor mopping. It’s the best budget robot vacuum.
View the Roborock S5 Max for £499 on Amazon
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iRobot Roomba i7+
WIRED Recommends: The best robot vacuum cleaner
Run time: 75 mins | Power levels: 1 | Bagged or bagless? Bagless robot, bagged base | Accs charging dock
This is the best robotic vacuum money can buy right now for one simple reason: it empties its own dirt container.
The iRobot Roomba i7+ (£1,149) has a standard 0.4 litre dirt canister but the contents are transferred to a big dirt bag in the charging base when it docks. The bag can hold 30 robot bins, so you won’t need to replace it for weeks on end. Your easy floor cleaning just got easier.
Roomba initially does training runs to create sophisticated maps of rooms. You then name them, set cleaning schedules and tell it which rooms to clean via app or even voice (Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant). So you can say: “Alexa, tell Roomba to clean the dining room.”
Its suction and rubber brushes lift dirt well for a robotic cleaner. There’s just one power level, but Roomba can be set to automatically detect dirt and make extra passes to clean more thoroughly. This works impressively well. As does its object detection: it calmly rejigs plans if there’s a piece of furniture in the way.
Little and often is key with robotic cleaners. The Roomba’s run time is 75 minutes, but charge time is only 90 minutes, so you can schedule it to clean up twice a day or more. Alternatively, command it ad hoc to pick up crumbs after mealtimes.
The self-emptying bin is our favourite feature for sheer convenience, but its smart maps come a close second. You know which rooms need cleaning and which are too cluttered. Simply tell it where to clean as you go out, then leave it to do the housework.
Pros: Self-emptying; smart room mapping; voice control
Cons: Expensive; base station hardly stylish
Price: £1,149 | Check price on Amazon | iRobot
Roborock S5 Max
Mopping, control and value in one budget robot vac
Run time: 150min (max) | Power levels: 5 | Bagged or bagless? Bagless | Accs: charging dock, mop plate, onboard detangle knife/brush
Roborock has been around for a few years now, but this is the first time we’ve reviewed one of their vacuum/mop hybrids, and we’re genuinely impressed with its ability to clean and combination of smooth set-up, impressive navigation and useful mapping skills.
The fact that the S5 Max (£499) can mop our floors and has a built-in water tank and washable scrubbing pad just adds to the appeal. It’s also solid value at £499 but hunt hard enough and you can find it for closer to £300, which is a total bargain.
The Mi Home app is nicely designed, and with just two buttons on the vacuum, needs to be intuitive. We had no issues connecting everything and navigating through the options, which, amongst other things, include being able to choose power levels and the amount of water used if you are mopping.
When you first clean a room the S5 Max uses its 32-bit quad-core processor to map out the space in impressive detail, and once completed, you can create ‘zones.’ We were able to direct the robot to clean at full power under a highchair at 8:30am on weekdays after what is always a crumb filled breakfast. You can also make certain areas no-go zones and adjust the water used for mopping or power levels as well as the time it cleans certain areas. It’s comprehensive compared to the competition.
Does it clean well? While it didn’t get as much pet hair up as the Miele or Roombas, it performed well, and adjusts power from carpet to hard floor to maximise results. It works tight to the edges or a room and rarely failed to find its way home again. How well it mops depends on your own cleaning standards, and while it can’t match elbow grease for deep cleaning, we appreciated the difference when returning home, and the filthy colour on the cleaning pad showed our standards up time and again.
We were concerned about leaving a wet mop on our wooden floors, but impressively, Roborock has included a plastic moisture-collecting tray that sits flush with the charger, protecting the surface until you can get home and rinse out the cleaning pad.
The combination of zoned cleaning using different power and mopping levels is impressive and should give the competition real food for thought. Roomba might just pip them still, but we wonder for how much longer.
Pros: Simple setup; great coverage; smart mapping; mopping
Cons: White is a terrible colour for a dust collector; limited charger positions
Price: £499 | Check price on Amazon | Gearbest
Dyson 360 Eye
Your best bet for carpets and rugs
Run time: 40min | Power levels: 1 | Bagged or bagless? Bagless | Accs: charging dock
Unmistakably a Dyson, the 360 Eye (£799) is quite the looker, with a feel and heft which fans of their handheld cleaners will instantly appreciate. And being a Dyson it, predictably, boasts of having ‘twice the suction of any other robot vacuum,’ with a superb full-width carbon fibre brush bar.
Navigation is via a 360-degree camera on top of the unit that maps out a comprehensive path to follow. When this model first launched, we were impressed with its ability to get the job done without bumping into things, but in truth the competition has caught up and you’ve got to head to the very bottom of the market to find a bump-and-move machine these days. As a result, you can now find better for the price.
But it’s still a great cleaner if you have wide open spaces and a mixture of hard floors, rugs and carpets. The caterpillar style tracks can get onto even the deepest shag, and the brush bar deep cleans thoroughly, although don’t sit and watch it work, as it takes an absolute age, and with a 45min run time, it will probably head back to base for a charge before finishing a large open plan downstairs.
The transparent dust collector is easy to empty without creating a mess, the filters can be rinsed under the tap and the docking station sits flush with the wall.
The camera works best in daylight hours, or well-lit rooms, and can get confused in the dark, and while the small diameter means it can fit between smaller spaces, the extra height stops it going under most standard sized sofas.
Pros: Powerful suction; great on carpets; easy to maintain
Cons: Can’t see in the dark; too tall for some furniture
Price: £799 | Check price on Dyson
iRobot Roomba 980
The most reliable of robot vacs
Run time: 120min | Power levels: 2 | Bagged or bagless? Bagless | Accs: charging dock, digital fencing
When it launched way back in 2015 the Roomba 980 (£799) was iRobot’s top-of-the-range Wi-Fi connected design, and while it now somewhat eclipsed by the i7+, it has more enough cleaning smarts to deserve a place on this list.
The 350dia x H91mm lozenge can get right under all but the lowest furniture, and when it moves from hard floors to rugs and carpet it boosts the motor speed for better cleaning results. The twin rubber brush bar is easy to untangle and exceedingly good at picking up pet hair. This bar doesn’t extend right to the edge of the vacuum like they do on the Dyson, but two spinning brushes sweep dust into its path, so it can clean right up to the skirting boards.
It comes with two battery powered digital fencing devices that prevent the Roomba going where it shouldn’t. We can attest to them working well, but in truth, if the floors are clutter free and there are no trailing wires, the 980 didn’t need the help, and cleaned reliably well day-after-day.
It’s excellent across all floors and while not as simple to empty as some, the robot’s ability to go out and clean according to schedule and make it back to charge without picking up a wayward sock or two, is the best we’ve come across. It is loud though, so being out is a must when it works its magic.
Irritatingly the docking base can only be plugged in from one side, which limits where you can position it. We resorted to using blue tack to keep it in the right position, rather than having it flush against a wall.
According to iRobot, it makes 60 navigational decisions per second, and having watched it work through a tangle of chair legs we’re happy to believe it.
Pros: Reliable; loves pet hair; impressive cleaning on all floor types; auto switches power
Cons: Dock positioning awkward; expensive
Price: £799 | Check price on Amazon | John Lewis
Miele Scout RX2
The best robot vacuum for big houses
Run time: 2hrs (on min) | Power levels: 4 | Bagged or bagless? Bagless | Accs: charging dock, control tape, remote control
Miele make fantastic quality appliances, and their compact vacuum cleaners sweep (ahem) the floor with most of the competition. When it comes to cleaning prowess the Scout RX2 (£499) keep up this tradition.
With two extra-long sweeper arms, a powerful brush bar and maximum two-hour battery life it picks up dust and pet hair brilliantly and the low-profile design scoots under furniture with ease. Admittedly, if you watch it work around a room it resembles a drunk uncle at a wedding reception; bouncing aimlessly around and clattering into furniture. But to give it credit, despite the haphazard approach, we were hugely impressed by the overall results.
The bin is easy to empty, and even comes with an onboard brush to keep the filter clean, the design is neat – with the two front mounted cameras giving it a nice friendly face – and the charging dock is inconspicuous.
It’s a shame then, that the app control is so appalling, and if the cleaning results weren’t so good, we wouldn’t be able to recommend this design. Connectivity is patchy, set-up is overly complicated and the app nowhere near as intuitive as we have come to expect. Embarrassingly we were forced to call the Miele service centre for advice, who told us, “yeah, pairing those things is really annoying.”
Once you do connect to the app, you can watch images of your robot going about its business, which is fun, but be warned, the image quality is blurry at best.
It does come with a remote control that lets you set a very basic timer schedule and start/stop or manually control the Scout, which might appeal to anyone without a smartphone who demands remote deep cleaning. If performance on a budget is what you’re looking for, though, we’d suggest first looking at the identically priced Roborock S5 Max (above).
Pros: Superb deep cleaning; edge clean; 2hr run time
Cons: Awful app; haphazard navigation; blurry video
Price: £499 | Check price on Amazon | John Lewis
For more advice, read our guide to the best vacuum cleaners in every category