The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Robot vacuums remove pet hair, lint and dust from floors before it can settle. They can also stay clear of obstacles such as furniture that is slippery and stairs.

The majority of robotic vacuums require maintenance. This includes emptying the bin (and sometimes rinsing it) and cleaning the cameras and sensors. They also need to be plugged in. A lot of them have apps for smartphones for scheduling, adjusting setting and more.

Roomba 960 from iRobot

The iRobot Roomba 980 is the latest model in the line of top-of-the-line robotic vacuum cleaners that are an essential part in any modern home. This model has seriously strong suction and a HEPA filter that will assist anyone suffering 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.

Smart mapping is another feature that allows it to identify areas of your home that require attention, and then creates an easy path to get around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does a great job of maneuvering around toys left scattered on the floor, or furniture legs that are sticking out from under things. It also has a camera sensor that will snap the Roomba back to reality when it begins to drift from its intended location.

iRobot has also added a new set of rollers underneath the bottom of the Roomba that don't have bristles and therefore tend to be more resistant to tangles than earlier models. These rollers are also taller and can be placed under beds or couches with low sides. They're designed to make this model more movable on various floor types.

The Roomba 980 is distinguished from other models of high-end quality by its new dirt detection feature, which makes use of cameras to detect embedded dirt. This is an improvement over the previous version which relied on a sensor-driven pseudorandom cover method to bounce around the room, and then clean the entire area three times at various angles.

In our tests of its performance it was found that the Roomba 980 did well on carpets and hard flooring. Its score on the low pile carpet was excellent and it also scored a good score on mid pile too. It did a decent job of picking up pet hair, but it struggled with very thick and long pet fur that was stuck together.

Despite these small shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our best-performing robots, and it's even close to being as expensive as some of the other top-of-the-line models in this list. It comes with many of the features we would expect from a flagship model, but doesn't come with all the fancy apps or www.robotvacuummops.com smart home integration that you'll get from other top models.

The iRobot Roomba is simple to set up and start up and running immediately. After you have removed the pull tab for the battery and yellow bin insert from the undercarriage, all you need to do is plug it into its Home Base docking station or an outlet on the wall, press its large "Clean" button, and let it get to work. It will return to docking station when it runs out of batteries or is full of sand. There are also indicator lights at the top of the bin that let you know the bin is empty, or when it requires recharging, or if it loses Wi-Fi.