Best Robotic Vacuums of 2023

CR’s take: The basic Eufy RoboVac 11S isn’t the strongest robotic vac you can buy, and it’ll struggle to thoroughly clean large areas. But this nimble, relatively affordable bot can be a great option for cleaning a few rooms at a time, or for patient owners. It’s one of the shortest and lightest robotic vacuums that CR has tested, which helps it drive under furniture and wiggle away from hazards like power cords and carpet fringe better than most robotic vacuums we’ve tested. It also earns an Excellent rating on our noise test, and sounds more like a small fan than a vacuum cleaner. The Eufy’s cleaning performance is respectable for its price, too. The main quirk is the semi-random navigation system. (This was the norm for robotic vacuums at one point but has become less common over time.) The randomness might be aggravating—it drives until it bonks into a wall or piece of furniture, pivots, and then repeats the process until the battery runs out. In bigger spaces, it will often miss an area—or even an entire room—in a given session.

Eufy sells at least a half-dozen variants of this robovac. The 11S is the most basic and one of the few still available that doesn’t connect to the internet. It does come with a remote control, though. Other RoboVac variants, including the 30C, 35C, and 15C Max, do have WiFi connectivity, which allows you to use a companion app to turn the appliance on or off, steer it, and set a cleaning schedule. They still navigate semi-randomly, though.

CR’s take: The iRobot Roomba i3+ Evo is a great option for homes of any size because it navigates in a grid pattern and keeps track of the spots it has or hasn’t cleaned. It can also learn the layout of one story of your home and save it as a two-dimensional Smart Map in a companion smartphone app. With this feature enabled, the bot won’t have to start navigating from scratch every time it runs, so it should finish the job faster and run into walls and furniture less often. You can also use the Smart Map to tell the Roomba i3 Evo to clean specific rooms and avoid others. The Roomba i3 Evo’s cleaning performance is strong, too. The brushless, rubberized rollers are great for pet hair—it earns an Excellent rating on that test. It’s also great at avoiding bot-snarling hazards like power cords.

The iRobot brand earned a Very Good rating for predicted reliability based on data from our member surveys. Maintenance and repairs are easy to perform at home, and iRobot has a track record for keeping spare parts available for every Roomba model it has sold. The Roomba i3 Evo’s cleaning performance is strong, too. The brushless, rubberized rollers are great for pet hair; it earns an Excellent rating on that test. It’s also great at avoiding bot-snarling hazards like power cords. The Roomba i3 Evo is also sold as the Roomba i4 (and Roomba i4+) or Roomba i2 from certain retailers.

CR’s take: The iRobot Roomba j7+ builds on the same robotic core as the Roomba i3 Evo above and earns similar scores on most of our tests. But the Roomba j7+’s navigation system is much more advanced. For starters, it can learn Smart Maps for multiple levels of your home (instead of just one floor, as with the i3 Evo), so you can use a smartphone app to tell it to clean certain rooms and skip others. But the most significant upgrade is the j7+’s obstacle-avoidance system. It uses a camera on the front of the bot to recognize certain hazards, including socks, clothes, towels, and—drumroll, please—pet waste. Once it spots a hazard, the j7+ adjusts its cleaning path to make sure it doesn’t snarl (or smear) the obstacle. CR has not tested this particular feature. Worth noting: iRobot promises that it’ll replace the vacuum if it fails to avoid pet waste in the first year after purchase. One downside of that front-facing camera: The Roomba j7+ is the only iRobot model that falls short of our top rating for data security.

Another option to consider is the lower-priced Roomba i7+, which has the same cleaning system and Smart Map capabilities as the j7+ but doesn’t have the obstacle-avoidance feature. It’s an older model, but it’s still available from many retailers.

CR’s take: If you’re after the maximum pickup that a robotic can offer, the Roomba s9+—iRobot’s top-of-the-line robotic vacuum—should be on your shortlist. The big upgrade here is the cleaning power. Thanks to stronger suction and wider brushes, it outperforms all the other Roomba models we’ve tested (and most robotic vacs from other brands, too) on our carpet and edge-cleaning tests. Another selling point: Once the vacuum is docked, a vacuum in the docking station automatically sucks the contents from the bin into an enclosed, disposable bag in the base. It still doesn’t clean rugs anywhere near as thoroughly as a traditional vacuum cleaner, but if strong cleaning is one of your priorities in a robotic vacuum, you should consider this pricey bot. 

CR’s take: The Roborock S7+ is another great option for homes of any size. Its laser-assisted nav system allows it to quickly and thoroughly clean a room, bumping into fewer walls and furniture legs than a lot of the other robotic vacuums we’ve tested. It has a Smart Mapping feature as well, and comes with a dock that can automatically empty the bin. Its cleaning performance is strong across the board, too—on carpets, bare floors, with pet hair, and even up against edges. The S7+ also has a clip-on mop that will wipe your bare floors and lift itself slightly when it senses rugs to avoid getting them wet. (We haven’t lab tested the mop, but some of our experts have used it at home and say it’s decent—and certainly more effective than not wiping your floors.) 

A version without the auto-emptying dock is available, too; it’s simply called the S7. Roborock makes several similar models, including the flagship S7 MaxV Ultra (a pricier model that’s loaded with extra features that, eh, won’t really change your life), as well as a bunch of lower-end models that we haven’t yet tested, including the Q5 and Q7.

CR’s take: The Samsung Jet Bot AI+ VR50T95735W is an all-around champ in our robotic vacuum tests, receiving high scores for its ability to clean carpet, bare floors, pet hair, and the edges of walls and corners. It also offers impeccable navigation and garners an Excellent rating for ease of use. It comes with a self-emptying dock for no additional charge. This vacuum also features WiFi connectivity with smartphone control via the SmartThings app. 

In our tests, its data security is quite strong, but its data privacy is middling. In CR’s latest member survey, Samsung robovacs receive a middling predicted reliability rating and a Poor owner satisfaction score.