The cheapest robovacs will only have a dock for charging. Pricier models incorporate self-emptying of the onboard dustbin, and draining/refilling of the onboard water tanks. The very fanciest models offer automatic mop pad cleaning, and detergent dispensing for the mopping fluid.

The iRobot s9+ is simple to operate and provides strong pick up across hard floors and carpet. Its high-end performance especially excels in picking up strands of pet hair. Roomba's self-emptying base saves you time and effort on maintenance too.

To help you find the best vacuums, I've gathered a list of top-performing vacuums from our tests. In the Lab, we put all types of vacuums through extensive testing based on ASTM International industry-standard methods and use a custom-built machine to quantify the amount of embedded dirt that the vacuum cleaners remove from medium-pile carpeting. In addition, we assess bare floor cleaning, pet hair pick up, ease of use and more.

While the app is intuitive, and the mapping good, there is a major issue for anyone with an open plan living space. Namely, you can't separate it into different zones. It won't be a problem for everyone, but if you live in an open plan home, you'll probably want to opt for a different brand.

Any special features such as app control, mopping functions, and self-emptying bases are factored in too. This all adds up to days of testing; it takes time, but helps ensure we're evaluating them all properly. After extensive testing, we’ve compiled several buying guides to showcase our results, including the best Roombas, the best cheap robot vacuums and the best robot mops. We can even tell you what it's like when you use a robot vacuum in your home for the first time. So if you want to know more about robot vacuums so you can decide if one is right for you, you’ve come to the right place.

If your priority is size, though, this is a solid choice. Our reviewer felt it would be a great choice as an 'upstairs' robot vacuum, away from the tougher challenges of kitchens and living rooms.

All the robot vacuums in this ranking have been rigorously tested, either by one of the TechRadar Homes team or an experienced reviewer. Meet some of the expert reviewers who tested the robovacs that feature in this guide.

That might feel like overkill, but if you're planning to use the L40 Ultra regularly then it's going to save you a significant amount of time and effort.

After at least two weeks of testing, we consolidate our findings and use them to judge who (if anyone) we'd recommend the robot vacuum to. We also compare the features and build quality to the price, to assess if the robot vacuum is good value for money.

It can also offer alternative cleaning patterns, so you can choose the route you want it to take. At 4.75 inches, it's taller than many other robot vacuums — it could just reach under our kitchen baseboards, but failed to get under the dishwasher, which the majority of others models could clear.

It’s quick to map out the home and Top 3 Automatic Vacuum Cleaners easy to create pelo-go zones or select specific rooms to clean. This model also comes with a self-emptying base, which makes it low maintenance, but it is just as noisy as other vacuums when it empties.

The impressive suction pulled huge volumes of hair from carpet, and handled hard floors extremely well too. We had no issues with the hair clogging the self-empty mechanism, and a larger-than-usual dock dustbin also means you won't need to replace the dust bags too frequently.

cem% of the fees we collect are used to support our nonprofit mission. Learn more. The best robot vacuums complement regular vacuuming and require little attention, though their built-in smarts raise privacy concerns.

Why we love it: This two-in-one model sucks up both dry and wet spills and wash your floors all during the same cleaning session. Its edge-to-edge cleaning gets into corners and along baseboards, and a voice assistant provides cleaning and status updates.