Just watch the above GIF, which shows what happened when we put the iRobot Roomba J7 Plus to the test — specifically, its promise of identifying and avoiding pet waste. With a variety of (I assure you, fake) dog poop scattered about a small, enclosed test floor, the Roomba did its best to vacuum the area without touching any of them. It succeeded, never bumping into any of shark canister vacuum our disgusting-looking test turds at all. The new Roomba Combo j7 Plus can easily move from mopping your hardwood floor to vacuuming your carpet. Aided by multiple sensors and lasers, efficient navigation is the S7’s other strong suit. The vacuum cleaner covered the entire floor of our test room without missing any spots across multiple runs in an average of just 16 minutes.
That’s a full 9 minutes shorter than the Roomba S9 Plus required for the same job. Next to each product on this list, you may have noticed a Real Simple Selects seal of approval. Any product appearing alongside that seal has been vetted by our team—put through tests and graded on its performance to earn a spot on our list. Although we buy most of the products we test, sometimes we do get samples from companies if purchasing a product ourselves isn’t an option. All products go through the same rigorous process, whether they are purchased or sent by the company. Pullins says to consider the features you need and the ones you don’t.
The iRobot Roomba i3+ is the company’s least-expensive robot vacuum with a self-cleaning feature. Thanks to the self-emptying base, you don’t have to dump out its contents after every run—very convenient. The Roomba i3+ excelled at most of our tests, except for picking up kitty litter on carpet, for which it scored a low mark of 58. Otherwise, its performance was strong, so this area was all that really let it down.
There are different suction modes you can adjust for specific cleaning needs. For example, we noticed that nail file droppings needed extra suction, but once we revised the settings, they were all picked up. For a basic, reliable robot vacuum that can handle hardwood, your go-to should be the the Roomba 694. This relatively affordable vacuum doesn’t have the bells and whistles of other models, but it’s highly effective and works well on both hardwood and carpet.
On the other hand, for any rooms that have doors, I could just stick the vacuum in there, close the door, leave it for 10 minutes, and come back to completely cleaned floors. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form. Conflating the two is convenient, Caltrider adds, because “security has gotten better, while privacy has gotten way worse” since she began tracking products in 2017.