The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner
Robot vacuums nab pet hair, lint and dust off floors before they can settle. They can also avoid stairs and other obstacles such as furniture that is tippy.
The majority of robotic vacuums require maintenance. This involves emptying the bin (and occasionally, rinsing it) and cleaning the cameras and sensors. They also need to be plugged in. A lot of them have apps for smartphones to schedule, adjust settings and more.
iRobot Roomba 980
The iRobot Roomba 980, the most recent of a series of top-of-the-line robot vacuums, is an essential for every modern home. This model has serio us ly strong suction as well as it comes with a HEPA filter that will assist anyone suffering from allergies. It also has a large battery that can clean for two hours before returning to its dock automatically when the bin is full.
It also has an option called smart mapping that uses multiple sensors to suss out the areas in your home that need attention and create a cleaning route around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does an excellent job of moving around toys that have been left scattered on the floor or furniture legs that are sticking out from under things. It also comes with a sensor that can snap Roomba back to reality when it begins to wander away from its original location.
iRobot has also included the option of rolling rollers under the Roomba which do not have bristles and are therefore more likely to resist tangles than previous models. They are also taller and can fit under beds or couches with low sides. They're designed to make this model more movable on various flooring types.
The Roomba 980 stands out from other high-end models due to its latest dirt detection feature, which makes use of a camera in order to detect embedded dirt. 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 it at least three times from different angles.
In our tests of its performance it was found that the Roomba 980 did well on carpets and hard flooring. It scored highly on carpets with a low pile, and on mid-pile. It was successful in getting rid of pet hair, but struggled with long and thick pet hair that was stuck together.
Despite these small shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our top-performing robots, and isn't even far from being as costly as some of the other top models on this list. It's got plenty of features that we'd like to see in a top-of-the-line model however it lacks all the fancy apps or smart home integration are found in other top models.
The iRobot Roomba is simple to set up and get up and running immediately. After removing the yellow bin insert and pull tab from the undercarriage, it is simply connected to an outlet on the wall or to its Home Base docking stations, hit the "Clean button" and let it do the job. It will return to its dock when it runs out of battery or becomes full of sand. There are also indicators on top that show when its bin is empty, when it requires recharging, or if it loses Wi-Fi.