The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner
Robot vacuums remove pet hair, lint, and dust off floors before they can settle. They can also avoid obstacles such as furniture that is slippery and staircases.
Most robotic vacs require some maintenance, such as emptying (and occasionally rinsing) the bin, and wiping sensors and cameras. They also need to be plugged in. Many come with smartphone applications for scheduling, adjusting setting and more.
Roomba 980 from iRobot
The iRobot Roomba 980 is the most recent in the line of top-of-the-line robot vacuum cleaners that are an essential part of any modern household. This model comes with a HEPA-filter that will help those who are allergic. It also comes with a large battery that can be cleaned for up to two hours before returning to its dock automatically when the bin is full.
It also comes with an option called smart mapping, which makes use of multiple sensors to help it suss out the areas of your home that require attention and then create a clean route around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does a good job of moving around toys that are placed on the floor, or furniture legs that are sticking out from under things. It also has a camera sensor that can snap the Roomba back to its original position when it starts drifting away from its original 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 previous models. They're also taller than previous rollers and are able to fit under beds and couches that are low and are designed to allow this model to move more easily across a variety of floor types.
What sets the Roomba 980 apart from other models of this class, though, is its inclusion of a new dirt detection feature, which uses cameras to detect particles of dirt embedded. This is a significant improvement over the previous model, which relied on a sensor-driven pseudorandom cover method to bounce around a room and clean it at least three times from different angles.
In our tests of its performance it was found that the Roomba 980 did well on both hard flooring and carpets. It scored highly on carpets with low pile and on mid-pile. It was successful in picking up pet hair however it struggled with the thick and long pet hair that was stuck together.
Despite these minor shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our best robot mops for hardwood floors-performing robots, and it's even close to being as expensive as the other top models on this list. It's still packed with a variety of features we'd expect to see in a flagship model, but it doesn't have all the fancy apps or smart home integration you'll find in other top models.
The iRobot Roomba can be set up in a matter of minutes and is ready for use right away. After you have removed the battery pull tab and yellow bin insert from undercarriage, all that you need to do is plug it into its Home Base docking station or a wall socket, hit its large "Clean" button and let it get to work. It will return to the dock when it has run out of battery or becomes full of sand. There are also indicators at the top of the bin that let you know when its bin is empty, when it is in need of recharging or if it loses Wi-Fi.