The iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner
Robot vacuums take pet hair, lint and dust from the floor before they settle. They can also avoid stairs and other obstacles such as furniture that is tippy.
Most robotic vacuums require regular maintenance. This includes emptying the bin (and occasionally, rinsing it) and cleaning the cameras and sensors. Also, they have to be plugged into a power source. A lot of them have apps for smartphones for scheduling, adjusting settings and more.
Roomba 980 from iRobot
The iRobot Roomba 980 is the latest in the line of top-of-the-line robotic vacuum cleaners that are an essential part of every modern household. This model has seriously strong suction and a HEPA filter that'll assist anyone suffering from allergies. It also has a powerful battery which can clean for two hours, and return to its dock automatically when the bin is full.
It also has a feature called smart mapping which uses multiple sensors to help suss out the areas of your home that need attention and create a cleaning route around them. We've seen this technology in action and it does a good job of maneuvering around toys placed on the floor, or furniture legs that are sticking out of the ground. It also has a camera that can snap the Roomba back to reality when it starts to drift away from its original location.
iRobot has also added a new set of rollers underneath the Roomba's bottom, which don't have bristles and, therefore, tend to resist tangles better than the previous models. These rollers are also taller and can be placed under low couches or beds. mop robot vacuum designed to make this model more adaptable to different flooring types.
The Roomba 980 differs from other models with a high-end price tag due to its latest dirt detection feature that makes use of cameras to detect embedded dirt. This is a nice improvement over the previous version, which relied on a sensor-driven pseudorandom cover method to bounce around the room and clean at minimum three times from various angles.
The Roomba 980 performed well in our tests on both carpets and hard floors. Its score on low pile carpet was impressive, and it got a very excellent score on mid pile, too. It did a decent job of picking up pet hair, but it had a difficult time with very long and thick pet fur that was clumped together.
The Roomba 980 is still one of the top performing robots we've reviewed despite the minor drawbacks. It's also not as expensive as 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 app-enabled functions or smart home integration that you'll find in other top contenders.
The iRobot Roomba is simple to set up and start up and running immediately. After you have removed the pull tab for the battery and yellow bin insert from undercarriage, all you have to do is plug it into its Home Base docking station or a wall socket, hit its large "Clean" button and let it get to work. It will automatically return to its dock when its battery runs out or it's stuffed with debris, and it has indicators at the top for when its bin is full, it requires recharging or if its Wi-Fi signal is lost.