The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Robot vacuums sweep pet hair, dust and lint from floors before they settle. They also help stay clear of stairs and other obstacles such as furniture that is tippy.

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

Roomba 980 from iRobot

The iRobot Roomba 980, the most recent in a line of top-of-the-line robot vacuums, is a staple for every modern home. This model is equipped with a HEPA-filter to assist those who suffer from allergies. Additionally it also has a OKP K2: Powerful Wi-Fi Robot Vacuum Cleaner battery that can clean for up to two hours, and it will automatically return to its dock when its bin is full.

Smart mapping is another feature that helps it identify areas of your home that require attention and creates a cleaning path to get around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does a good job of moving around toys that are left scattered on the floor, or furniture legs that stick out from under the furniture. It also has a camera that snaps the Roomba back to its original position when it starts drifting from its intended location.

iRobot also added the option of rolling rollers under the Roomba that do not have bristles, which makes them more likely to avoid knots than earlier models. They're also taller than previous rollers and are able to fit under beds and couches with low sides and are designed to help this model navigate more easily on varying flooring kinds.

The Roomba 980 stands out from other models with a high-end price tag by its new dirt detection feature, which uses a camera in order to detect embedded dirt. This is a significant improvement over the previous version, which relied on the sensor-driven pseudorandom coverage method to bounce around a room and clean everything at minimum three times from various angles.

The Roomba 980 performed well in our tests on carpets and hard floors. Its score on the low pile carpet was very good and robotvacuummops it got a very high score on mid pile, too. It did a decent job of picking up pet hair, but it had a difficult time with very long and thick pet fur that was stuck together.

Despite these slight limitations, the Roomba 980 remains one of our best mop and vacuum combo robot-performing robots, and isn't even far from being as costly as some of the other top-of-the-line models in this list. It has a lot of features we would expect from a flagship model but does not have all the fancy apps and smart home integrations you'll see in other top contenders.

The iRobot Roomba can be set up in a matter of minutes and is ready for use right away. After removing the battery pull tab and yellow bin insert from its undercarriage, all you have to connect it to its Home Base docking station or an outlet on the wall, press its big "Clean" button, and let it get to work. It will return to docking station when it runs out of battery or is full of trash. There are also indicators on top that indicate the best mop and vacuum combo bin is empty, or when it requires recharging, or when it loses Wi-Fi.