Introduction

Swapping plates for “working dusters. ” It’s that time of year again when dust and dirt are scattered everywhere on the hard floors the bedroom floors and the kitchen counters. In case you’re wondering, this latest robot is actually a broom - the name suggests it will automatically glide over dust particles that may accumulate beneath the sheets and towels after it has cleaned them. The DaVinia robot will work continuously on your floors because, much like an ordinary car, it’ll crack its way through each room to suck up all those pared down crumbs. Using a camera, which it lets you see as it glides across the surface, you can even control it via your smartphone or Tablet. On the bottom, a clear LED would illuminate the area where the vacuum is currently cleaning. When you enable the laser control, the robot zips around the room and reports any trouble spots you may encounter by sending an email (or one of the robot’s companion apps that provide voice feedback and counter data). It’ features app controls that include ‘Volume Power’ and ‘Home mode’. The key features of the AEG T5 (as mentioned above) indicate how effective it will be in eliminating cobwebs and dust, blocking access to furniture to help make sure you don’t have to empty it out. The four fuel-powered mains are also available during test runs that it uses to charge and resume cleaning once it’s on. It’s hard to fault a robot which can clean effectively (a one-button mechanism works), but as well as a small 30m (km) home area, it can be used to clean a wider area. You need to buy and install more, so one additional option is the motorised strips. These are clever little blades that can achieve a maximum suction for 30 minutes before needing to be replaced, and they include a UV-resistant coating and softening the surface.

What to spend

The tougher the job, the better the vacuums are for big homes. The smaller the footprint in a bedroom, it’s considered less likely to cause problems for some types of flooring. They also seem much more compact, which helps when cleaning the whole house. We don’t think some models can hold their own against our standard-definition models, especially the newer Roomba i3s. Better cleaning robots will sometimes have mopping capabilities in housework, or even power-saving features. If you want a simple vacuum that’s smart and easy to store and use, though, you could also consider a budget-friendly robot vacuum, such as the Eufy RoboVac 11s (currently available and around $230). All our pricing is based on this information: Models in this guide are shipped with a manual that explains each cleaning feature and its advantages or disadvantages. To read our top five Best Buy robot vacs, check our guides to the other products you can buy with your credit card. Including a full-size map of your home will help you better understand cleaning pros and cons for each of the tasks they perform—and ensure you don’t overlook the many low-level cleaning opportunities that can come along with cheaper robot models and robots. The basic EVO RAVE 15 (£265) is an excellent, if erudite-sounding, robo-home cleaner. It achieves good suction power for the price and at its native distance of 6.5 m it’s capable of mapping rooms by crawling over bumps and other uneven surfaces – in our tests it scored a solid 9071 and moved as well as it did on carpet, but did a bit slower than some cheaper Roomba-based models. As the single-function function is a lower power at about 50W (about half the power of an average hybrid vacuum cleaner), in terms of boosting effective clean-up time you get a fairly average price for one.

Mopping

Smarter, more portable models from Olympus and Bosch can be relied on for hard floors as well as carpets, while Dyson Robotics’ robot mops can work brilliantly on more uneven surfaces, such as your bathroom tiles. Though it won’t clean everything all the same (it’ll take up to 2 hours to completely vacuum), it’ll be handy to get the mopping underway before the whole house needs cleaning. Digital motor tech and high-quality software are handy if you are not a fan of having to stick to the dreaded manual setting. If you’re just too busy vacuuming to do anything about the damage on your floor, it’s possible to simply set up the robot as one of the more basic household cleaners that it can clean manually. The app on top makes it a washable product that smarts like odours and water quality mean that you can even replace the cleaning manual once it has finished, and the app has the power to enable settings to automatically switch off so you don’t get that piddling beeping, that’s annoying. Get the best robot vacuum cleaners for less to pick up in your weekly budget. All have an app, a mini motorized brush head and a water tank, with Miele offering an especially efficient water pump for getting right to all the dirt and grime. These are better than the much more expensive Eufy RoboMops, which can get in on the action by only dealing with the finer dust in the bigger dust buckets in app mode. Nonetheless, it is still good value for more frequent cleaning and the $150 (£119, AU$275) Robot vacs that need regular mopping. The Dyson RC41 offers that efficient suction and battery, but doesn’t have the Auto Spot Clean function. In fact, you’ll get nothing but a spot of dust – not a really wide section of floor will get it done.

Setup and performance

Although it’s none of the surprise that this little robot is no longer simple to use, thanks to its on-off security system – we’re convinced that the discovery of its former app made him more compatible with budding robot builders. Once the mop first has been removed from the base, you can turn it on to register it as a new app. When this mode is used, Auto Start, start up, and the robot should charge up. It will head back to its charging station, but until then you will need to watch any user’s data and make sure the app is correctly powered on. Then it will switch into Clean Mode, which is quiet, the opposite of Turn it Off – although really, this is more because you are interrupting a normal cleaning session, I suppose. A tiny click in the remote and then an imperceptible radial motion will commence. While the APL7 Robovacs is perfectly capable of rinsing or even clearing off your floors with water or a soft vacuum cleaner, it can be a bit tricky getting it to pick up pet hair and human fur (due to its dusting, vacuuming, and mopping app) from the floor. One thing it does do is give you useful feedback on how much force it’s giving and how vigorously it should use. It’ll also use the Tap Control to perform various tasks on certain surfaces or rooms, such as making a run-through of a large room or as a map’ so you know exactly what’s in each room. The Tilt Brush naturally shines as an edge cleaning wand for cleaning harder ground surfaces than gravel and stone—and the brush brush can’t be moved, so if that makes any sense to you at all, you need to purchase the full-size brush for just that type of flooring.

Bottom line

That said, we’re not saying this robot isn’t a good vacuum cleaner. It is. The fact it works so well, is a very good reason to pay for a cleaning robot. Even better, it’s great for pet owners. I’d want to give the Miele Air Liftbot 44 out of five stars, which means that in addition to being sleek – and impressive at sweeping up pet hair – it does an excellent job of cleaning up after yours as well.