The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner
Robot vacuums eliminate pet hair, lint and dust from the floor before they settle. They can also stay clear of obstacles such as furniture that is unstable and stairs.
The majority of robotic vacuums require maintenance. This includes emptying the bin (and sometimes rinsing it) and wiping the cameras and sensors. They also need to be connected. Many have smartphone apps for scheduling, 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 a staple of every modern household. This model comes with a HEPA-filter to help those who are allergic. It also has a powerful battery which can be cleaned for up to two hours, and return to its dock automatically once the bin is full.
It also has the feature of smart mapping, which makes use of multiple sensors to identify the areas of your home that need attention and make a tidy path around them. This technology is very efficient at navigating around toys left on the floor or furniture legs sticking out under things. vacuum and mop combo has a camera that can snap the Roomba back to the real world when it starts to drift away from its original location.
iRobot has also added a new set of rollers under the bottom of the Roomba that don't have bristles and therefore tend to resist tangles more than previous models. These rollers are also taller and can fit under beds or couches with low sides. They're designed to make the model more adaptable to different flooring types.
What makes the Roomba 980 stand out from other models with a higher-end price tag, though, is its integration of the new dirt detection feature, which uses a camera to spot bits of embedded dirt. This is a significant improvement over the previous model which relied on an algorithm that was driven by sensors to bounce around the room and clean the area three times, at different angles.
In our tests of its performance, the Roomba 980 did well on carpets and hard flooring. It scored extremely well on carpets with a low pile, and on mid-pile. It did a fair job of picking up pet hair, but it struggled with very long and thick pet fur that was clumped together.
Despite these slight limitations, the Roomba 980 remains one of our best-performing robots, and it's not even close to being as expensive as some of the other top models on this list. It has a lot of features you'd expect from a top model but does not have all the fancy apps or home integration you'd find in other top contenders.
The iRobot Roomba can be set up quickly and is ready to use right away. After taking the yellow bin insert and pull tab from its undercarriage you just plug it into an outlet on the wall or to its Home Base docking stations, press the "Clean button" and let it do the job. It will automatically return to docking station when it runs out of battery or becomes full of sand. There are also indicator lights at the top of the bin that let you know when the bin is empty, when it is in need of recharging or if it loses Wi-Fi.