I’ve recently introduced a few friends to the power of a great robot vacuum. One of my friends calls hers a marriage saver, while the other was both thrilled and horrified by how many stains the vacuum’s AI found on her floors. Personally, my robot vacuums keep me from wanting to set the litter box on fire, since my cat is on a mission to create his own navigational trail of litter through my home.
The best robot vacuums these days aren’t just vacuuming your floors, nor are they blindly bumping around your house like they used to. These gadgets are mopping, scrubbing away stains, lifting themselves off of obstacles, and even reminding you to clean the dirtier areas in your home more frequently. A good robot vacuum can cost a pretty penny, but it doesn’t have to, depending on what you’re looking for. Curious what’s the best model for you? I’ve been testing every new robot vacuum I can in my three-story home filled with three adults, a preschooler, and a cat who’s on a mission to get litter all over the house.
Here are the best robot vacuum cleaners I’ve tried this year, and everything we really liked from recent years. Looking for more vacuum ideas? Don’t miss our guides to the Best Dyson Vacuums, Best Cordless Vacuums, Best Vacuums for Pet Hair, Best Carpet Cleaners, and Best Vacuums.
Table of Contents
What’s a Robot Vacuum?
A robot vacuum is an automated vacuum, usually shaped like a round disc, that moves around your house to vacuum (and mop, as many models these days include mopping) on your behalf. You might’ve heard some call these devices a “Roomba,” which is the brand that made the concept popular, but today just about every cleaning brand—from high-end Dyson to affordable Bissell—makes some kind of robot vacuum. They come with either a charging station or a larger docking station that can self-empty.
Can You Use Robot Vacuums on All Kinds of Floors?
You can, especially since there are so many mopping models now to better clean hard flooring. You can use these devices on anything from hardwood to LVP and tile, though I wouldn’t recommend leaving smaller rugs out for these autonomous gadgets to get stuck on. Large, set rugs are fine, but bathroom and kitchen mats or any thin, easily moved rugs should be cleared out of the way and put in the wash instead of vacuumed by your robot vac.
What Will Your Robot Vacuum Need?
There are a few things most robot vacuums will need to work properly:
- Space around the base station. Many robot vacuum manuals recommend at least a foot of clearance on three of the four sides of the vacuum’s base station to ensure it has room to return home.
- A good Wi-Fi signal. If your robot vacuum connects to Wi-Fi, as many do these days for app control and software updates, it’ll need a strong connection wherever it’s placed. Most of them can only connect to the 2.4 GHz wireless band, so make sure you have that (and choose only that band when you’re setting up if your Wi-Fi shows those bands separately). Confused? Check out our guide to setting up your smart home.
- Regular maintenance. It might be a robot, but it can’t take care of itself. See below for my tips for basic robot vacuum maintenance, and make sure to read your vacuum’s manual to know what your specific model requires.
How Often to Maintain Your Robot Vacuum
Taking good care of your robot vacuum will help it last. Here’s the debris-removal process you should follow for each robot vacuum style.
- If it has a charger-only base: This means the debris is stored inside the vacuum. You’ll likely want to empty it after each use. If your vacuum has a fill line you can watch, you can empty it when it reaches that line, but after each use is really best practice.
- If it has a self-emptying docking station: Each manufacturer will have different advice about when a self-emptying station needs to be emptied, but it’s usually between 30 and 60 days, depending on design and use. If you run your vacuum daily and have a lot of debris, like pet hair, you might need to aim for 30 days or less.
- If it has water tanks: Dirty-water tanks should be cleaned after each mopping run of your vacuum. Clean water can stay filled in the station.
Make sure to review your robot vacuum’s manual for any other steps the manufacturer recommends you take regularly to keep the vacuum running for as long as possible. Many brands also have replacement parts, so you can swap out individual pieces like brushes without needing an entirely new vacuum.
The Best Robot Vacuums of 2026
I’ve been testing the latest models from our favorite cleaning brands. Here are the top three I’d buy right now.
I was surprised how much I liked the AI-powered Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal. Its UV light revealed spots on my floor where I know I previously had spills, and its built-in AI had the vacuum go back over to deep-clean those spots in a way I clearly hadn’t before. The UV Reveal also did a great job on my hard floors (both LVP and tile) as a mop-and-vacuum combo, as well as on my builder-grade carpet and a large rug in the living room. I was impressed that the rug actually felt just as fluffy and well-vacuumed, as if I had cracked out my favorite Dyson stick vacuum instead of just sending a robot vacuum to do the work for me.
It has an extendable arm, which did a good job passing my corner test. I stuck three Cheerios in tricky corners of my home, and it got two out of three, doing better than the latest Dyson vacuum. It managed to get the trickier two corners, too; it skipped the third Cheerio to avoid bumping my bar stools. I also did a spill test with two spots of cherry juice in my home. It mopped away the first spill with no problem, but I did have to send it back out to finish cleaning the second spill. The UV Reveal did great with obstacle avoidance and has “NeverStuck Technology” to lift itself off of obstacles, and it worked to get itself off the flat, long legs of one of my side tables. The vacuum finished a cleaning run in a good amount of time, cleaning my entire main floor in about 60 minutes, but it does go back out to scrub all the spots it sees on the floor. That took another 30 minutes for me, but I assume that would get shorter over time, the longer you live with this vacuum and have it cleaning up. Still, 93 minutes to run through four rooms and go back to do some scrub work is a solid time window.
Overall, this vacuum really shines on hard floors, but I also did like it on rugs and carpet if you have a mix of these in your home. It has an auto-empty base with a bagless debris system, so you won’t need to worry about purchasing debris bags to empty the docking station. The only downside is that the vacuum can only learn a single map, so it doesn’t work for multiple floors of your home unless you’re game for it to remap every time (which only takes a couple minutes, so it’s not a horrible experience, but the vacuum will also want the base station lugged up or down the stairs, too.) The suction is also a mystery; Shark has declined to comment on the exact suction. Still, we’ve loved low-suction vacuums before, and the results have been great.
Read the full article here