Robot Vacuum Review

If you believe robots will take over the world someday, you may not be far off. Robot vacuum cleaners are flooding the market, cleaning floors and silently waiting for the robot apocalypse. Despite the risk of world domination, we’re totally on board with any product that does housework for you, and a robot vacuum is designed to do just that. Schedule it to clean when you head to bed and wake up in the morning to an expertly vacuumed floor. We’ve researched the best products on the market and have even written several articles on robot vacuums to assist you in picking your next vacuum.

Robot Vacuum Cleaners: What to Look For

Different features are held in higher regard depending on which robot vacuum manufacturer you look at. The Roomba 770 touts its HEPA filter as the reason to buy; the CleanMate QQ3-T offers the longest available run time; and the Neato XV-21 swears by its back and forth sweeping pattern. Because the selling points are so different for each cleaning robot, we’ve organized them into four different categories: functionality, performance, features, and help and support.

Functionality
To get a spot in our top 10 products, a robot vacuum cleaner has to do more than just vacuum. Infrared sensors are a must, ensuring the vacuum runs in a logical cleaning path and avoids obstacles. In case of slip-ups, it must also have a soft bumper to cushion blows to your furniture and walls. We’re also partial to those robot vacuum cleaners with acoustic sensors that indicate particularly dirty areas. These sensors allow the vacuum to focus cleaning action on that spot before moving on. If allergens, pet dander and dust bother you, look for a cleaning robot with a HEPA filter that not only cleans the floor, but also removes particles from your air.

Performance
Because robot vacuums operate wirelessly, they are all equipped with a rechargeable battery. Don’t purchase a vacuum unless it can run for at least 50 minutes before it needs to be recharged. The best robot vacuums can run for more than 90 minutes before returning to their charging base. Yes, you read correctly. The best robot vacuums know when they’re running low and will return to a charging base on their own. If that isn’t cool enough, you can also schedule the vacuum to run whenever is most convenient for you.

Features
Included features set a robot vacuum above and beyond its competitors. Our favorite feature is room memory. Room memory means the vacuum, after charging, will return to the spot it left off and continue cleaning. It may take a few times for your robot to remember the layout of your home, but once it has mapped it out, you needn’t worry about telling it where to clean – it will know. This feature goes hand in hand with multi-room navigation. While robot vacuums can’t go up stairs, the best can travel from room to room on a single floor without any direction from you. The only time you’ll need to check on the cleaning vacuum is when the full bin indicator lights up, telling you it needs to be dumped.

Help & Support
Because robot vacuums aren’t the norm in every household, we appreciate those manufacturers who have taken the time to include instructional videos about their product. The best robot vacuum cleaners include an instructional DVD, user manual, and online and phone support. Also look for a robot vacuum that includes a one-year warranty.

There are so many robot vacuums to choose from, we hope you’ll use these categories and our side-by-side matrix to help in your product research. After all, if robots are destined to take over the world, why not take advantage of their cleaning power now? At least when they rise up you’ll have the cleanest floors possible.

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