The iRobot Roomba 980 cheap robot vacuum Vacuum Cleaner

Robot vacuums nab pet hair, lint and dust from floors before it can settle. They also can avoid obstacles like stairs and other obstructions, including tippy furniture.

The majority of robotic vacuums require maintenance, such as emptying (and occasionally, rinsing) the bin, and wiping cameras and sensors. They also need to be connected. Many have smartphone apps for scheduling, adjusting settings and more.

Roomba 960 by iRobot

The iRobot Roomba 980 is the most recent in the line of top-of-the-line robot vacuum cleaners that are a staple of any modern household. This model comes with a HEPA filter that can assist those who suffer from allergies. It also comes with a powerful battery which can be cleaned for up to two hours, and return to its dock automatically when the bin is full.

It also comes with the feature of smart mapping, which makes use of multiple sensors to help identify the areas of your home that need attention and then create a clean path around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does an excellent job of moving around toys placed on the floor, or furniture legs that stick out from under things. It also has a camera sensor that snaps the Roomba back to the real world when it begins to drift from its intended location.

iRobot has also added a set of rollers underneath the Roomba that do not have bristles, which makes them more likely to avoid knots than earlier models. They are also taller and can fit under beds or couches with low sides. They're designed to make the model more maneuverable on different flooring types.

The Roomba 980 differs from other high-end models due to its latest dirt detection feature, which makes use of cameras to detect embedded dirt. This is a nice improvement over the previous version, that relied on the sensor-driven pseudorandom coverage method to bounce around the room and clean at minimum three times from various angles.

In our tests of its performance it was found that the Roomba 980 did well on both hard flooring and best robot mop and vacuum combo carpets. It scored very well on carpets with low pile and on mid-pile. It did a good job picking up pet hair but struggled with long and thick pet hair that was stuck together.

Despite these small shortcomings, the Roomba 980 remains one of our best Robot mop and vacuum combo-performing robots, and it's not even nearly as expensive as some of the other top-of-the-line models on this list. It has a lot of features you would expect from a top 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 quickly and is available for use right away. After you have removed the pull tab for the battery 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, press its big "Clean" button, and let it get to work. It will automatically return to its dock when its battery runs out or it's full of debris, and it also has indicators on the top of the device to indicate that its bin is full, it needs to be recharged or its Wi-Fi signal has gone out.