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The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Robot vacuums sweep pet hair, lint and dust from floors before it can settle. They also can avoid obstacles such as furniture that is unstable and stairs.

Most robotic vacuums require regular maintenance. This involves emptying the bin (and sometimes rinsing it) and cleaning the cameras and sensors. They also need to be plugged in. Many have smartphone apps for scheduling, setting up settings and more.

iRobot Roomba 980

The iRobot Roomba 980 is the most recent in the line of top-of-the-line robotic vacuum cleaners that are an essential part in any modern home. This model has seriously strong suction and a HEPA filter that can assist anyone suffering from allergies. It also has a powerful battery which can clean for two hours before returning to its dock automatically once the bin is full.

It also comes with an option called smart mapping that uses multiple sensors to help it suss out the areas in your home that require attention and then create a clean route around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does a good job of moving around toys left scattered on the floor or furniture legs that are sticking out from under the furniture. It also has a camera that can snap the Roomba back to reality when it begins to drift away from its original location.


iRobot has also added an additional set of rollers beneath the Roomba that don't have bristles which makes them more likely to avoid the tangles that previous models. They're also taller than previous rollers and can better fit under beds and couches with low sides, and they're designed to let this model move more easily across a variety of floor types.

What makes the Roomba 980 stand out from other models of this class, though, is its integration of the new dirt detection feature that utilizes cameras to identify particles of dirt embedded. This is a significant improvement over the previous version which relied on a sensor-driven pseudorandom coverage method to bounce around the room and clean everything at minimum three times from various angles.

The Roomba 980 performed well in our tests on both carpets and hard floors. It scored very well on carpets with low pile and on mid-pile. It did a good job of picking up pet hair, but it struggled with very thick and long pet fur that was stuck together.

The Roomba 980 is still one of the best performing robots on our list, despite these minor limitations. It's also not as expensive as other top-of the-line models. It's still packed with a variety of features that we'd like to see in a top-of-the-line model however it lacks all the fancy apps or smart home integration that are found in other top contenders.

The iRobot Roomba is easy to set up and start up and running immediately. After taking off the pull tab for the battery and the yellow bin insert from its undercarriage, all that you need to do is plug it into its Home Base docking station or an outlet on the wall, press its big "Clean" button, and let it go to work. best affordable robot vacuum will automatically return to its dock when the battery runs out or it's stuffed with debris. It also has indicators on the top for when the bin is full, it requires recharging, or its Wi-Fi signal has gone out.