They’ve knocked plants over, rammed into objects and startled me at work, and never seem to grasp the mapping of my living spaces. The size of the dustbin in a Shark robotic vacuum matters, especially if you have a large home or pets with lots of dander. If you were to choose a model with a smaller dustbin, you’d need to empty it more often to keep the suction power at maximum efficiency. With a larger dustbin, however, you don’t have to worry about this as much.
The iRobot Roomba Combo j7+ is the first floor-cleaning robot with a fully retractable mop. When the pricey 2-in-1 detects carpet, it automatically lifts its mopping plate out of the way, rests it on top of the device where it has no risk of wetting carpets, and continues vacuuming. For comparison, Roborock’s similar VibraRise mop-lifting system only works well on low-pile carpets because it doesn’t lift high enough to avoid medium- and high-pile rugs. If you’re deciding between this Roborock model and the similar X1 Omni, go with the former if you have a lot of hard flooring and you mainly care about mopping performance. Roborock’s ‘bot uses sonic vibration technology to scrub your floors 3,000 times per minute, while the X1 Omni’s circular mopping pads spin at just 180 revolutions per minute. Both robots left our test floors spotless, but the S7 MaxV Ultra is slightly better at deep cleaning.
The vac picked up dog hair in hard-to-reach places (such as under the bed!), which was a highlight. It struggled under some lower furniture, and uneven flooring and bumps proved challenging, too. Still, despite its lack of smart features, there’s lots to appreciate about this easy-to-use and effective machine. It’s really up to you, but the advantage shark dustbuster of a robot vacuum is that it can clean floors more often than many people are willing to vacuum. If you schedule it to run every few days, or even every day, dust and crumbs never have a chance to accumulate, leaving your floors feeling cleaner than they would without a bot. Tons of engineering choices affect the way robot vacuums handle obstacles.
The 11S is quiet enough that you could easily forget that it’s running if you’re home at the time. We measured the volume on the bot’s maximum suction setting and found that it was just 57 dBc, a full 5 decibels quieter than the Roomba 694—that’s a major difference. On its normal suction setting, the 11S operates at just 53 dBc, sounding more like a fan than a vacuum cleaner (traditional vacuums are often 70 dBc or louder because of their much stronger suction).
When she’s not scouring the internet for the best deals on new luggage or robot vacuums, she spends time with her goldendoodle, Harley, our resident canine correspondent and dog treat expert. While this more affordable Jet Bot+ robot vacuum by Samsung doesn’t feature 3D recognition with AI, it does have LiDAR sensor navigation, five watts of adjustable suction and the all-important self-emptying Clean Station. The experts at CBS Essentials have found plenty of on-sale robot shark dustbuster vacuum options for you to choose from. All of these robot vacs have a four-star rating or higher and feature many positive reviews. Jodhaira Rodriguez has been researching and testing cleaning appliances and other products in the Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab since 2021. She recently tested all of the robots that were submitted for awards in this year’s Best Cleaning and Organizing Awards and contributed new information for this story’s most recent update.
The main page shows your home’s map along with the battery level, cleaning time, cleaning area in feet, and buttons that let you quickly start a cleaning job and empty the dustbin. You’re also able to select specific rooms or zones to clean, but the rest of the control options live in the menu accessible by the three-dot icon at the top-right corner of the app. Things are a little buried, and that might make the S7+ harder for robot-vacuum newbies to use.
You just clip on a water reservoir (no cleaning solution allowed with most models) and a microfiber pad behind the vacuum intake, and the bot wipes the floors while it vacuums. Some high-end robot vacuums now include advanced obstacle recognition in their navigation systems. In theory, these systems should help the robots drive around any floor clutter they find, and even assist them in avoiding hazards like dog turds. Of the three, we’ve tested only the AI+, and we wouldn’t recommend it based on its cleaning abilities.