Best Robot Vacuums of 2026: 7 Picks Ranked and Explained

The best robot vacuums in 2026 are not the ones with the biggest number on the box – they are the machines whose docks you can ignore for two months and whose brushes survive a house with long hair. We ranked seven robots you can buy on Amazon right now, from a $169.99 bump-and-go machine to a $599.99 pet-hair specialist, and checked every suction, bag-life and filtration claim against the live listing. Two claims did not survive that check.

Affiliate disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. We earn commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page. This never affects our rankings or what we recommend.

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In this guide

• The seven picks at a glance
• How to choose a robot vacuum in 2026
• The picks, reviewed
• What you pay at each price tier
• What actually goes wrong
• Spec-claim reality checks
• Where we disagree with the big testers
• How we chose and what we verified
• FAQ
• The bottom line

The seven picks at a glance

Every price, rating and rank below was pulled from Amazon’s product API and the live product pages on September 23, 2026. Each pick was checked as a first-party brand listing with the brand as the first word of the product title, an active buy box and a real rating pool. Robot-vacuum prices move constantly – every one of these seven carried a discount on the day we checked, from 14% to 40% – so treat the numbers as a snapshot and let each card check the live price.

How to choose a robot vacuum in 2026

Navigation decides how much of your floor actually gets cleaned. A LiDAR machine maps the room and cleans it in neat rows; a bump-and-go machine like the eufy 11S MAX drives until it hits something and turns. Bump navigation covers a simple open room acceptably well and a cluttered one badly, which is the entire performance gap between our $169.99 pick and the $299 machine above it. Cameras and structured light add obstacle avoidance on top of the map, which is what the Roomba Max 715’s PrecisionVision system and the dreame’s dual AI cameras are for.

The dock is the part you live with. Three numbers matter: how large the dust bag is (2.7 L to 3 L here, quoted as 70 to 90 days), whether the dock washes the mop, and whether it dries it. A mop pad that stays damp between runs is a smell problem, which is why the E25 blows 50 °C air over its roller and the Qrevo S Pro washes at 167 °F and dries at 113 °F. Self-emptying is also a filtration event: you are not there when the bin is tipped out, so what the bag captures matters more than what the robot picked up. iRobot publishes that figure – 99% of allergens down to 0.7 microns for the Roomba 105 Combo – and almost nobody else does.

Filtration is the most abused word in this category. The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines a HEPA filter – short for “high efficiency particulate air”, as officially defined by the U.S. Department of Energy – as one that can remove “at least 99.97% of dust, pollen, mold, bacteria, and other airborne particles with a size of 0.3 microns”, and it explains why 0.3 microns is the number to quote: it is the most penetrating particle size, the worst case. Particles larger or smaller than that are trapped more efficiently. MERV, the other number you will see, is a different scale that reports capture of particles between 0.3 and 10 microns. A vacuum listing that says “HEPA” is asserting a filter class, not a measured result – and because a robot vacuum leaks air around its own chassis, a HEPA filter on board does not mean HEPA air in the room.

Why the filter claim is worth caring about at all: the EPA’s indoor particulate-matter guidance notes that particles of 10 micrometers and below are inhalable, that smaller ones “can get deep into your lungs, and some may even get into your bloodstream”, and that people with asthma, COPD or heart conditions, along with children and older adults, are at greater risk. Vacuuming is one of the few routine household activities that lifts settled dust back into the air, so whether it leaves through a sealed bag or through a cheap filter is a real question rather than a marketing one.

Then match the robot to the floor you have. Roller mops – the E25 and the Qrevo S Pro – scrub with fresh water and handle dried spills; vibrating pads like the Roomba 105 Combo’s lift dust and stop there. If your home is carpet throughout, skip the mop and spend the money on suction and anti-tangle brushes instead: the Roomba Max 715’s dual rubber brushes exist because hair wrap, not suction, is the failure people actually complain about.

The picks, reviewed

1. eufy E25 — the best robot vacuum for most people

The E25 is the machine we would hand to someone who wants the floors handled and does not want to think about it. Its HydroJet roller mop is rinsed with clean water twice a second while it works, its dock empties into a 3 L bag rated for about 75 days, it washes the mop and hot-air dries it at 50 °C, and it will hold up to five floor plans so one dock can cover a house with more than one level. Suction is rated at 20,000 Pa with an automatic carpet boost. At $599.98 it is 40% off a $999.99 list, and that discount is doing a lot of the work in this recommendation.

What we like:

• A roller mop that is refreshed with clean water twice every second, which is the part pad-based mops get wrong
• 20,000 Pa suction with automatic carpet boost, and a 3 L bag rated for roughly 75 days
• The dock self-washes the roller and hot-air dries it at 50 °C, so the mop does not sit damp
• Up to five floor plans, so a single dock can serve a house with more than one level

Who should skip it: Skip it if every room in your home is carpet. You are paying for a roller mop that will have almost nothing to do.

Flaws but not dealbreakers:

• $599.98 today, but that is 40% off a $999.99 list – the discount, not the list price, is the deal
• Amazon’s review widget reports the same 50,000-plus pool on more than one eufy listing, so we round the count rather than quote it exactly
• The all-in-one dock is a piece of furniture – measure the footprint and the clearance before you commit
• About 580 reviews specific to this model sit inside that shared pool, so the per-model track record is thinner than the headline number suggests

2. iRobot Roomba 105 Combo — the best value if you want a self-emptying dock

At $299.00 – 36% off a $469.99 list – this is the cheapest way to get a LiDAR-mapped robot with a dock that empties itself, and it is the second-most-reviewed machine in this roundup. iRobot rates the AutoEmpty bag for up to 75 days and says it traps 99% of allergens as small as 0.7 microns, which is the closest thing to a filtration claim you will find at this price. ClearView LiDAR maps the room and the robot cleans in neat rows rather than bouncing around. The mop is a microfiber pad that lifts over carpet, not a roller.

What we like:

• Empties itself into a bag rated for up to 75 days, so you handle a dustbin roughly four times a year
• The dock bag traps 99% of allergens down to 0.7 microns – the only filtration figure published in this price band
• ClearView LiDAR maps the home and cleans in neat rows, with sensors that stop it falling down stairs
• 4.4 stars across roughly 49,000 ratings, the second-deepest buyer pool of any pick here

Who should skip it: Skip it if you need real scrubbing on dried stains. The roller-mop machines in this roundup do that job, and this one does not.

Flaws but not dealbreakers:

• The headline ’70X more suction’ is measured against iRobot’s own Roomba 600 series, not against anything in this roundup
• Stock was down to 15 units at the dock-included price when we checked on September 23
• The mop is a vibrating pad, not a roller – fine for dust, weak on dried spills
• 75 days is iRobot’s modelling, not a measurement of your home

3. roborock Q10 S5+ — the current #1 best seller in Robotic Vacuums

Amazon’s live Robotic Vacuums chart listed the Q10 S5+ at number one when we checked on September 23, 2026, and at $329.99 – 40% off a $549.99 list, the steepest discount in this roundup – it is easy to see why. You get 10,000 Pa of suction, a 2.7 L self-empty bag roborock rates at up to 70 days, and a dual anti-tangle system that pairs a JawScrapers comb main brush with an anti-tangle side brush. What you do not get is a dock that washes the mop, or a roller mop at all.

What we like:

• The chart leader in Amazon’s Robotic Vacuums category on the day we checked
• 40% off a $549.99 list – the steepest discount of any pick we ranked
• A 2.7 L bag rated for up to 70 days, plus a dual anti-tangle brush system built for long hair
• 20,000-plus ratings at 4.0 stars, one of the deepest track records in this roundup

Who should skip it: Skip it if you want the dock to wash the mop as well. That is what the extra $170 for the Qrevo S Pro buys you.

Flaws but not dealbreakers:

• 4.0 stars is the joint-lowest rating of any pick here – read the critical reviews before you buy
• 10,000 Pa is half the suction of the E25 and a third of the Roomba Max 715
• No mop washing or drying on the dock, and the mop is a lift-and-drag pad rather than a roller
• 70 days assumes an ordinary household; a home with pets will empty it far sooner

4. roborock Qrevo S Pro — the best dock for a big, busy home

The Qrevo S Pro is the machine to buy when the maintenance interval matters more than the suction number. Its dock empties into a sealed 2.7 L bag that roborock rates for seven to nine weeks, washes the mops at 167 °F – the hottest mop wash of any dock in this roundup – and then dries them with 113 °F warm air. Suction is 18,500 Pa, and the brush set is designed for hair: a zero-tangle side brush, an all-rubber main brush and an easy-to-clean omnidirectional wheel. At $499.99 it is 29% off a $699.99 list.

What we like:

• 167 °F mop self-cleaning plus 113 °F warm-air drying – the hottest wash of any dock here
• A sealed 2.7 L bag rated for 7-9 weeks, so dust stays sealed when you change it
• Zero-tangle side brush and an all-rubber main brush, aimed squarely at long hair and pets
• 18,500 Pa, with an easy-clean omnidirectional wheel – the maintenance details are thought through

Who should skip it: Skip it if you have hard floors, no pets and a small flat. The value here is the self-cleaning dock, and a $299 machine covers that home just as well.

Flaws but not dealbreakers:

• 4.1 stars across about 6,300 ratings is a solid but not overwhelming buyer pool
• The mop is washed on the dock rather than refreshed in real time, unlike the E25’s roller
• It is a 2026 model, so there is no long-term reliability record yet
• At 29% off it is the shallowest discount in the top four picks here

5. iRobot Roomba Max 715 Pet — the best pick for pet hair

This is the only machine here that iRobot builds specifically for pet hair, and it carries the highest suction rating in the roundup at 30,000 Pa. The engineering argument is in the brushes: upgraded anti-tangle dual rubber brushes and a side brush intended to stop hair wrap before it starts, plus Carpet Boost to raise suction on rugs. There is PrecisionVision AI obstacle avoidance, 3D mapping, AllergenLock odour-control bags and up to 90 days of hands-free operation – the longest interval here. It is also the most expensive pick at $599.99, and only 14% off.

What we like:

• 30,000 Pa – the highest suction rating of any pick in this roundup
• Dual rubber anti-tangle brushes and a side brush designed to stop hair wrap before it starts
• Up to 90 days of hands-free operation, the longest interval we found here
• PrecisionVision AI obstacle avoidance and 3D mapping, plus AllergenLock bags for odour control

Who should skip it: Skip it if you have no pets and mostly hard floors. The anti-tangle engineering is the entire point, and you would be paying for it without needing it.

Flaws but not dealbreakers:

• 14% off is the smallest discount of any pick, and $599.99 is the highest price here
• About 2,800 ratings is a thin pool for a $600 machine
• It is a vacuum first – there is no roller mop to justify the price if you wanted one
• The 30,000 Pa rating is iRobot’s own figure and, like every Pascal number in this category, is not measured against a shared standard

6. dreame L40 Ultra Gen 2 — the best machine for edges and corners

Most robot vacuums clean the middle of the room and miss the last two inches. The L40 Ultra Gen 2 is built around that problem: its brush and mop both extend outwards to reach corners and to slide under furniture. Suction is 25,000 Pa across five levels – second only to the Roomba Max 715 here – and the carpet handling is the most configurable in this roundup, with four modes including carpet avoidance, suction boost, intensive carpet cleaning and 0.41 in mop lifting. At $569.99 it is 24% off a $749.99 list, and it shares the highest rating here at 4.4 stars.

What we like:

• The brush and mop extend out to reach corners and under furniture, where most robots miss
• 25,000 Pa across five suction levels – second only to the Roomba Max 715 here
• 0.41 in mop lifting and four carpet modes, including carpet avoidance and intensive carpet cleaning
• 4.4 stars, the joint-highest rating of any pick we ranked

Who should skip it: Skip it if your furniture sits flush to the floor and your rooms are open. The extending arm is worth the money only when there are corners to reach.

Flaws but not dealbreakers:

• Only about 570 ratings – a newer listing, so the buyer pool is small for the money
• 24% off a $749.99 list still leaves it in the premium band
• The extending arm is one more mechanism to maintain and, eventually, to replace
• Suction numbers this high are marketing figures; the independent tests below show how little Pascal ratings predict

7. eufy 11S MAX — the best robot vacuum under $200

The 11S MAX is the pick for a first robot vacuum, a small flat or a spare room, and at $169.99 – 39% off a $279.99 list – it is the cheapest machine here. It is 2.85 in tall, which is slimmer than the LiDAR towers above, so it gets under low sofas and beds they cannot reach. eufy rates it for up to 100 minutes on hardwood at roughly microwave noise levels, and BoostIQ adjusts suction within 1.5 seconds when it moves onto carpet. What it does not have is any of the smart technology in this roundup: it navigates by bumping into things, there is no app map, and there is no mop and no self-emptying dock. That is precisely why it costs $170.

What we like:

• $169.99 today, with 59,000-plus ratings at 4.3 stars – the deepest and oldest track record here
• 2.85 in tall, so it fits under low furniture that the LiDAR machines above cannot reach
• Up to 100 minutes of runtime on hardwood at roughly microwave noise levels
• BoostIQ ramps suction up within 1.5 seconds on carpet instead of needing to be switched by hand

Who should skip it: Skip it if you want schedules, no-go zones or a floor plan on your phone. This machine has none of that, and the $299 Roomba does.

Flaws but not dealbreakers:

• No LiDAR and no app mapping: it navigates by bumping, so a room takes more passes to cover
• No mop of any kind and no self-emptying dock – you empty the bin yourself after most runs
• The design is years old, and the listing’s own feature list is short because there is less to describe
• BoostIQ and the 100-minute figure are eufy’s own ratings, and the runtime assumes hardwood rather than carpet

Three listings that did not make the cut. The iRobot Roomba 105 Vac ($149.00) is the cheapest LiDAR-mapped robot we found on Amazon – 4.2 stars across roughly 31,600 ratings at half off – but it has neither a mop nor a self-emptying dock, and for $150 more the Combo above adds both. The roborock Qrevo 2 Pro ($549.98) is the number-two machine in Amazon’s own Robotic Vacuums chart and a genuinely strong robot with 20,000 Pa and an edge-mopping arm that extends to within 1.85 mm of a wall – we kept the Qrevo S Pro instead because it costs $50 less and carries a rating pool roughly six times the size. And the eufy Omni S2 ($1,399.99) is the most technically ambitious machine in the category, generating electrolysed water on every pass and claiming 99.99% germ removal on hard floors and tiles – we left it out because it costs more than twice our best-overall pick and Amazon ranks it outside the top 100 of the category.

What you pay at each price tier

This market has four defensible bands, and the interesting thing about them is that the jumps are about convenience rather than cleaning.

$150 to $250 buys a floor cleaner and nothing else. The eufy 11S MAX at $169.99 and the Roomba 105 Vac at $149.00 will both pick up dust off a hard floor reliably. Neither has a map, a schedule you would trust or a dock; both need you to empty a bin after most runs and to free a brush periodically. This band is the right answer for a first robot, a small flat or a single room, and the wrong answer for a whole house.

$299 to $349 is where the dock arrives, and it is the biggest single jump in the category. The Roomba 105 Combo at $299.00 and the roborock Q10 S5+ at $329.99 both add a self-empty dock with a 2.7 L to 3 L bag, and the Roomba adds LiDAR mapping. The practical effect is that the machine goes from a daily chore to a two-monthly one. If you only spend once, this is the band to spend in.

$499 to $600 buys the mop and the maintenance engineering. The Qrevo S Pro at $499.99 adds 167 °F mop washing and warm-air drying; the E25 at $599.98 adds a roller mop refreshed with clean water twice a second and a 50 °C hot-air dry; the dreame L40 Ultra Gen 2 at $569.99 adds an extending arm for corners; the Roomba Max 715 at $599.99 adds the highest suction here and 90 days between empties. The stopping point for most buyers is the bottom of this band: around $500 to $600 you stop buying cleaning and start buying labour saved, and everything above it – the $1,269.98 dreame X60 Ultra at 3.13 in tall, the $1,399.99 eufy Omni S2 with its germ-removal claim – is a specialist answer to a specific problem rather than a better floor clean.

The list prices are the weakest number on every page. All seven picks carried a discount on September 23, 2026 – 14% at the cheapest, 40% at the steepest – and two of them, the Q10 S5+ and the E25, carry list prices that the current street price never approaches. Treat the struck-through figure as a marketing anchor rather than as a valuation of the machine.

What actually goes wrong

The recurring failure in this category is not suction. It is hair wrap, and it is the reason four of our seven picks advertise an anti-tangle brush as a headline feature rather than as a footnote. roborock puts a JawScrapers comb and a zero-tangle side brush on both the machines we ranked; iRobot pairs dual rubber brushes with a side brush on the Max 715; eufy ships a Pro-Detangle comb on its Omni line. A wrapped brush is not a slow vacuum – it is a vacuum that stops picking up and starts dragging.

The second is the damp mop. A pad that is used, parked and used again grows a smell that people describe as the machine’s fault rather than the pad’s. Every dock-based mop pick here addresses it: the Qrevo S Pro with a 167 °F wash, the E25 with 50 °C drying air, the Omni C20 with room-temperature washing and drying. Where a listing does not advertise a wash or a dry cycle, assume the pad stays wet.

The third is the dust cloud when you empty the bin by hand, which is the specific problem the sealed bag solves. And the fourth is the filter itself. The Hook Up, an independent tester who weighs debris pickup rather than quoting suction, reported after a carpet run that what was left in the E25-class bin was mostly flour caked into the air filter – a reminder that a loaded filter quietly reduces suction until it is cleaned or replaced, and that no listing will tell you when that has happened.

Finally, low-clearance furniture. Most of the value in a modern robot is its navigation tower, which is also the thing that stops it going under a sofa. The eufy 11S MAX at 2.85 in is the only pick here that fits the genuinely low gaps; the dreame X60 Ultra, which we did not rank, markets a 3.13 in body specifically for that reason. Measure the gap under your furniture before you buy a LiDAR machine, not after.

Spec-claim reality checks

Pascal ratings are not a shared measurement. There is no standardised cross-brand test behind the 10,000 Pa, 25,000 Pa or 30,000 Pa on these listings, and the independent evidence says the number predicts less than the price suggests. The Hook Up, who tests by weighing what a robot actually lifts, mixed 10 g each of flour, salt, flax seed and rice, spread it over high-pile carpet and weighed the bin after a two-pass run. The cheapest machine in that test – the roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow – picked up 26.9 g, or 67.3% of the debris, while the $1,499 Narwal Flow 2 managed 18.6 g, 46.5% of the 40 g available. His explanation is the honest one: less expensive robots pick up carpet debris well precisely because they are not engineered around tangle avoidance, and flagships trade some pickup for brush designs that survive hair. Buying on Pascal ratings alone buys the trade, not the performance.

“70X more suction” is a comparison to a decade-old baseline. iRobot’s own footnote says the figure is measured against the Roomba 600 series. It is a true statement about iRobot’s product line and a meaningless one about the robots in this roundup, where the Roomba 105 Combo’s value case is its 75-day dock and its 0.7-micron bag rather than its motor.

“Self-empties for 75 days” is a model, not a measurement. Where a listing gives its basis, the basis is a three-person household without pets – eufy publishes exactly that caveat on the Omni C20 and most of the others do not. A home with a shedding dog will fill a 2.7 L bag far faster than the number suggests. Budget for the bag interval you will actually experience, not the one on the box.

“99.99% germ removal” is a claim about a mop, made by a manufacturer. The eufy Omni S2 generates electrolysed water as it passes and the number is eufy’s. We have not seen it reproduced by an independent tester, and the qualifier in the same listing – on hardwood and tile – is doing a lot of work. Validating an antimicrobial claim needs microbiology, not a carpet test.

And battery figures read better than they behave. In the same independent carpet test, the two machines that published their runtimes used 47% and 24% of a charge on runs of 48 and 25 minutes. Those are honest numbers from a tester who logs them – but they are also why the up-to-100-minutes figure on our $169.99 pick is qualified with on hardwood floors. Carpet draws more current, and the runtime falls.

Where we disagree with the big testers

The strongest independent testing in this category agrees on one thing and disagrees with us on another. Vacuum Wars runs every robot through the same lab suite – airflow and suction, carpet deep clean, hard-floor and crevice pickup, pet-hair pickup and tangle resistance, navigation timing, obstacle avoidance across 24 objects and mopping across 14 dried stains – and scores them against the average of more than 205 machines it has bought at retail. Its current best overall is the Mova V70 Ultra Complete at $1,299, with a score of 4.07 against an average of 2.60; its best value is the Ecovacs T90 Pro Omni at $899.99 and its best budget the Ecovacs T80s Omni at $478.99. RTINGS, which buys and tests 100 robot vacuums and funds the work through memberships, splits its four awards across a best robot, a budget robot, and separate carpet, hardwood and pet-hair categories – a structure that assumes no single machine wins everything.

We lead with a $599.98 machine that does not appear in either list, and that is a deliberate disagreement about what the list is for. Vacuum Wars is ranking cleaning performance per machine, which is the right thing to do if you are indifferent to price; the consequence is that its top three all cost $479 or more and its overall winner costs $1,299. Our list is ranked on performance per dollar for a household that has to live with the dock, which is why the $169.99 eufy 11S MAX and the $299 Roomba 105 Combo earn places that no performance-ranked list would give them.

Where we agree with the testers rather than the listings: the Q10 S5+ is Amazon’s best seller in the category, and on Vacuum Wars’ own data a 10,000 Pa robot is not near the top of the performance table – the two facts are compatible, because the chart measures what people buy and the lab measures what machines do. Where we part company is narrower than it looks: if you genuinely want the best cleaning performance and price is not a constraint, buy what the labs recommend, not what we ranked. Everything in our top four exists because most people are not in that position.

One practical note about RTINGS: its full test data sits behind a membership. We cite its category structure and its 100-machine test programme, and we are telling you plainly that we could not read the test tables without subscribing.

How we chose and what we verified

We built the list around the jobs people actually shop for – the best all-rounder, the best value with a dock, the category best seller, the best dock for a busy home, the best for pet hair, the best for edges, and the best machine under $200 – then pulled live pricing, list prices, availability, suction ratings, bag capacities, dock wash and dry temperatures, brush designs and buyer ratings for every candidate through Amazon’s product API and the live product pages on September 23, 2026. Each pick was confirmed as a first-party brand listing with the brand as the first word of the product title, an active buy box and a real rating pool; a “Renewed” listing that would otherwise have ranked was dropped for that reason. Our method, what we do and do not test, and our corrections route live on our How We Test page.

Sourcing transparency. The filtration and indoor-air context comes from the EPA’s HEPA filter explainer and its indoor particulate-matter guidance. The independent testing comes from Vacuum Wars, which has lab-tested more than 205 robots and publishes its scoring method; from RTINGS, whose robot-vacuum testing is membership-funded and paywalled, so we cite its structure and programme rather than its tables; and from The Hook Up, whose weighed-debris method we describe above. We have not run instrumented suction or pickup tests on these machines ourselves, and we do not claim to have: what is hands-on here is the listing-level verification, and what is aggregated is the testing above. Prices, discounts and stock are a same-day snapshot and move constantly.

One caveat we owe you on the ratings. Amazon’s aggregated review widgets can report the same buyer pool against more than one sibling listing from the same brand – the eufy E25 we rank first and the eufy Omni C20 we did not rank both show the same 50,000-plus figure – so where that happened we round the count and say so rather than quote a precise number we cannot stand behind.

Related reading: our robot vacuums for carpet guide covers deep-pile pickup in more detail, our stick vacuums roundup covers the cordless machines that still beat a robot on stairs, and our air purifiers guide goes deeper on the filter claims robots only gesture at.

FAQ

Do I need LiDAR on a robot vacuum? You need it if your home has more than one room or furniture that a looping path would miss. LiDAR mapping is what separates the $299 iRobot Roomba 105 Combo from the $149 Roomba 105 Vac and the $169.99 eufy 11S MAX. In a single open room, it matters far less.

Is a robot vacuum worth it if I have pets? Yes, but buy it for the brushes rather than the suction. Hair wrap is the failure people report, and the four picks here that advertise anti-tangle designs – the Q10 S5+, the Qrevo S Pro, the E25 and the Roomba Max 715 – are the ones built for that. If pet hair is the whole reason you are shopping, the Max 715’s 30,000 Pa and dual rubber brushes are the most targeted answer in this roundup.

How often do I really have to empty it? With a self-empty dock, every 60 to 90 days in a household without pets, and considerably more often with a shedding dog. The 70-, 75- and 90-day figures on these listings are manufacturer models, and only eufy publishes the assumption behind one of them.

Do robot vacuum HEPA filters matter? They matter less than the bag. EPA defines HEPA as capturing at least 99.97% of particles at 0.3 microns, but a vacuum leaks air around its own chassis, so an on-board HEPA filter is not the same promise as a sealed bag. iRobot’s published figure – 99% of allergens down to 0.7 microns for the Roomba 105 Combo’s dock bag – is the more useful number because it describes where the dust ends up.

How much should I spend? $299 if you want a self-emptying dock and nothing else, $500 to $600 if you want a mop that is washed and dried for you. Above $600 you are buying either a specialist capability – deep-pile cleaning, a body slim enough for low furniture, an antimicrobial mop – or a performance advantage the independent tests suggest most homes will not notice.

The bottom line

Buy the eufy E25 at $599.98 if you want the floors handled end to end – its roller mop is the one here that is rinsed with clean water while it works, and its dock empties, washes and dries without you. Buy the iRobot Roomba 105 Combo at $299.00 if you want the cheapest honest route to a self-emptying dock with a real map. Buy the roborock Q10 S5+ at $329.99 if you would rather follow the crowd, since it is the category best seller on the steepest discount here. Buy the Roomba Max 715 Pet at $599.99 only if a shedding animal is the specific problem, the dreame L40 Ultra Gen 2 at $569.99 only if corners are, and the eufy 11S MAX at $169.99 if you want a first robot and accept that it navigates by bumping into your furniture.