Top 7 Best Robot Vacuums 2026

The S5V is the one we'd actually buy with our own money. It's $600 cheaper than the S8 MaxV Ultra and cleans just as well in any normal home. The 7,000Pa suction handled everything we threw at it — pet hair, cereal, fine dust — without breaking a sweat. What we didn't expect to care about was the FlexiArm side brush, which physically extends to reach further along baseboards. It sounds like a gimmick. It isn't. Corners that other robots consistently missed were actually clean. The dock washes and dries the mop, same as the flagship. Where it falls short is obstacle avoidance — it doesn't have the camera-based AI of the S8, so it'll nudge things rather than go around them. If your floors are reasonably tidy, you'll never notice. The Roborock app has a learning curve, but once you've set up your room zones and no-go areas, you basically forget it exists.

We've tested a lot of robot vacuums in homes with dogs and cats, and the j9+ is still the one we recommend without hesitation. The dual rubber brushes don't have bristles, so hair wraps around them far less than on traditional brush rolls — we'd go 4 or 5 runs before needing to clear anything off. The bin fills up faster than you'd expect with a heavy shedder, but the Clean Base auto-empties after every single run and holds about 60 days of debris before you need to swap the bag. The PrecisionVision Navigation spotted and avoided a small mess on the floor in our test — something cheaper robots would have spread across the room. It's slower than the Roborock models, noticeably so on larger floors. And there's no mopping, which matters if you have tile or hardwood throughout. But for pure pet hair performance, nothing beats it.

The X2 Omni is the only square robot vacuum on this list, and that shape actually matters. Round robots physically can't reach into 90-degree corners — they get close, but there's always a crescent of dust left behind. The X2 doesn't have that problem. In our testing, corners that needed a follow-up with a regular vacuum on other robots were genuinely clean after the X2 ran. The 8,000Pa suction is strong, the hot-water mop washing is a nice touch (warm water does clean better than cold), and the AIVI 3D obstacle detection handled our cluttered test room well. The all-in-one dock is bulky but does everything in one unit. Our main gripe is the Ecovacs app — it works, but it feels a generation behind Roborock's. At $999, you're paying a premium for the square design and the corner-cleaning advantage. If your home has a lot of furniture and tight spaces, it's worth it. If it's mostly open floor, the Qrevo S5V is a better deal.

Around $500, the Q8 Max+ is where the value math really starts to work in your favor. You get 5,500Pa suction — plenty for hard floors and low-pile carpet — lidar navigation that maps accurately on the first pass, and a self-emptying dock that's included in the box, not sold separately. The sonic mopping vibrates at 3,000 times per minute and does a solid job on tile and sealed hardwood; don't expect it to scrub dried-on grime, but for daily maintenance it's genuinely useful. The trade-off is obstacle avoidance. There's no camera, so it relies on bump sensors. It'll run into a shoe and back off rather than go around it. For a tidy home, that's fine. If you've got kids who leave stuff everywhere, it gets annoying. The mop also doesn't lift automatically when it hits carpet, which means you'll want to set no-mop zones in the app if you have rugs. Minor complaints for the price, but worth knowing upfront.

If most of your home is carpeted, the Shark Matrix Plus deserves a serious look. The Matrix Clean system runs the robot in a grid pattern rather than the random or room-by-room paths most competitors use, and on carpet it shows — we found noticeably less debris left behind compared to other robots at this price. Suction is strong enough to pull embedded dirt out of medium-pile carpet, which is where a lot of robots quietly fail. The 60-day self-empty base works well, and Shark's US-based customer support is a real advantage if something goes wrong. The mopping is underwhelming — it's a damp pad drag, not a proper scrub, so don't buy this for hard floors. Navigation is camera-based rather than lidar, which means it can get confused in low light or very open rooms. At $449, it's not the cheapest option, but for a carpeted home it outperforms robots that cost $200 more.

Under $300 with lidar navigation — that used to be impossible. The L60 maps your home accurately on the first run, holds a schedule without issue, and at 5,000Pa it picks up more than you'd expect for the price. It's also genuinely quiet; we measured it at around 62dB on standard mode, which is low enough to run during a video call without anyone noticing. The app is clean and simple — no bloat, no confusing menus, just a map and a few settings. That said, you're giving things up. There's no self-emptying dock, so you'll be emptying the dustbin every 2-3 runs (it's small). No mopping either. And on thick rugs it loses suction noticeably, so if you've got a shag carpet it'll struggle. For a one or two-bedroom apartment with mostly hard floors and no pets, it does the job without drama. It's the right first robot vacuum for most people.