The iRobot Roomba 980 Self-cleaning robot mop mop vacuum robot Cleaner

Robot vacuums remove pet hair, lint, and dust from floors before they settle. They also can avoid obstacles such as furniture that is slippery and staircases.

Most robotic vacuums require maintenance, such as emptying (and occasionally, rinsing) the bin, and wiping sensors and cameras. They also need to be plugged in. A lot of them have apps for smartphones for scheduling, setting up settings, and more.

iRobot Roomba 960

The iRobot Roomba 980 is the latest model in the line of top-of-the-line robotic vacuum cleaners that are an essential part of every modern household. This model comes with a HEPA-filter to assist those who suffer from allergies. In addition it also has a strong battery which can clean for up to two hours, and it automatically returns to its dock when it is full.

It also has a feature called smart mapping, which makes use of multiple sensors to help it identify the areas of your home that need attention and then create a clean route around them. This technology is very efficient in navigating toys that have been left on the floor, or furniture legs sticking out from under things. It also has a camera sensor that can snap the Roomba back to the real world when it begins to drift away from its original location.

iRobot has also introduced a new set of rollers beneath the Roomba's bottom that do not have bristles, and thus tend to be more resistant to tangles than the previous models. They're also taller than previous rollers and can better fit under beds and couches with low sides and are designed to help this model navigate more easily across a variety of floor types.

The Roomba 980 stands out from other high-end models due to its latest dirt detection feature, which uses cameras to identify dirt that has been embedded. This is an improvement over the previous version which relied on an algorithm that was driven by sensors to bounce around the room and clean the area three times, at different angles.

In our tests of its performance, the Roomba 980 did well on carpets and hard flooring. It scored very well on carpets with a low pile, and on mid-pile. It did a good job of picking up pet hair, but it had a difficult time with very long and thick pet fur that was clumped together.

Despite these small shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our best-performing robots, and isn't even nearly as expensive as the other top-of-the-line models on this list. It's got plenty of features we'd expect to see in a top-of-the-line model however it lacks all the fancy apps or smart home integration that you might find in other top contenders.

The iRobot Roomba is simple to set up and get up and running immediately. After taking the yellow bin insert and battery 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 job. It will return to its dock when its battery runs out or is full of debris, and it has indicator lights on the top of the device to indicate that its bin is full or it needs to be recharged, or its Wi-Fi signal has gone out.