During our testing of a similar model, we found that the HEPA filter makes the device perfect for pet lovers. Also, when we tested it on various flooring, we found that the AI Ultra works equally well on both carpeted and hard surfaces. Although this robot vacuum isn’t the exact same product that we tested, it has many of the same features, which are what make Shark’s AI robot vacuum series so great. While the Roomba j7 is the best bot if you want all the bells and whistles, the Roomba i3 Evo is the best pick for a more affordable robot vacuum.
With 40x the suction power, the superior 3-Stage Cleaning System lifts, loosens, then eliminates debris and pet hair from deep within your carpets. The Braava jet m6 mop has Precision Jet Spray to help tackle sticky messes and kitchen shark robotic vacuums grease. The 3-Stage Cleaning system lifts dirt, dust and debris from carpets and hard floors while an Edge-Sweeping brush takes care of corners and edges. The Shark ION AV751 didn’t have any issues going between different floorings.
The following table is a cheat sheet outlining the most popular Eufy bump bots (not a full list of all Eufy models) as of November 2022. It may end up cleaning more of your home than other bots just because it fits beneath more stuff. Also, the Q5 would regularly say that it had completed a job, when a quick look told us otherwise and we knew that we would have to restart the cleaning cycle.
These cleaners are an investment, which is why Pullins recommends taking stock of your lifestyle and cleaning needs before committing to a purchase. “If you have pets, children, or allergies, a robot vacuum can be a valuable investment,” he says. “Robotic vacuum cleaners are supposed to take the stress and work out of daily chores, leaving no tasks behind for the humans,” Jones says.
Unlike the more expensive Roomba i7+ and s9+, though, the i3+ can’t be directed to map individual rooms. The S7’s killer combo is a mop that vibrates 3,000 times a second to simulate some good old-fashioned scrubbing, which is paired with an extra-large water tank so the mop can actually get wet enough to be effective. Despite being a budget bot, it doesn’t do the classic bump-and-roll navigation of most budget bots. Instead, it uses gyroscopic navigation to divide the space into individual areas and clean each one methodically. Watching it go to work as it moves up and down in neat rectangular boxes is quite soothing.
Unlike our other midrange picks, the X8 Hybrid doesn’t come with a clean base, nor is there one you can purchase separately. It’s just a standalone robo-vac, but the “hybrid” indicates that it’s also a robot mop. It has both a dustbin for collecting debris and a 250-milliliter water tank that you can fill whenever you want to run a mopping cycle. Plenty of other robot vacuums have this feature, and it could be even more useful than a clean base if you have lots of tile or hardwood floors throughout your home. In fact, the “brushes” on the i4 EVO are really rubber-nubbed extractors, which are particularly good at picking up pet hair, especially from thicker and higher-pile rugs, without much hair getting wrapped around the roller.
Apart from that, there’s not much that you’re missing here, making this an excellent midrange pick, especially for homes with an abundance of area rugs and other low-pile carpets. No other cleaner we’ve tested cleans carpets shark pet hair vacuum like those better than the S7. A robot vacuum might stop in its tracks with an error message if it gets caught on something—this is the tricky part of having a vacuum that you don’t control with your own hands.
The Roomba j7 has Imprint Smart Mapping, but unlike the Shark, it took more than one runthrough of my home for it to create a complete map. IRobot’s app distinguishes between a regular cleaning job and a “mapping run,” so make sure you’re choosing the latter the first few times you run the machine. Setting up the Shark is as simple as taking it and its base out of the box, plugging the base in and downloading the companion mobile app to finish things up. The machine connects to WiFi, allowing you to control it via the app when you’re not at home, or using Google Assistant and Alexa voice commands.
It got stuck in that spot every time it traveled to the area, and we had to move furniture around to eliminate the issue. The vacuum also frequently got tangled in power cords, though it was always able to extract itself after a few minutes without intervention. Here’s the table on which robot vacuums are best at picking up dirt and pet hair. Note that while all of the robot vacuums were tested by picking up the same material on the same surfaces, those with an asterisk were tested in a 15 x 15-foot square, whereas the other models were tested in a 5 x 5-foot square. Because robot vacuums are designed to clean, most of us forget that these too need regular maintenance. They have surprisingly small bins (some less than 400ml) and so, unless you’re lucky enough to own a self-emptying model, these will need emptying after each run.
I would say, though, that if you want a powerful, deep clean, you might be better off scrubbing hard with a handheld mop. But the vac-mop is great for quick mopping sessions and touch-ups when you don’t have the time to do it manually. Some clues about other methods of data collection come from Giese, the IoT hacker, whose office at Northeastern is piled high with robot vacuums that he has reverse-engineered, giving him access to their machine-learning models.