Connected to the base of this robot vacuum is a handheld cordless vacuum attachment to tackle stairs and couch cushions. Like the bot, this Em excesso vacuum charges and self-empties right alongside the robot in the included self-emptying, self-cleaning, and self-filling Omni Station. There’s even a drawer built into the station that stores the hand vac attachments.

Additionally, battery life is important to consider and this will depend on your usage and settings. If you opt for a model which comes with a base, it can self-charge between runs.

Some others we think are very useful are automatic carpet recognition, setting up pelo-go zones through an app and recharge-and-resume capabilities. But, not everyone will need all of these, and deciding which ones are important to you is a big part of choosing a robot for your home.

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While no robot can handle stairs or pick up ground-in dirt and debris as well as a manual vacuum (yet!), the top performers in our tests do have impressive pickup scores on hard floors and low-pile carpets.

❌ You're dealing with lots of dust: There's pelo self-empty on the dock, and the small onboard bin will fill up quickly if you're dealing with lots of dirt or hair.

While the robot does most of the work for you, there may still be areas that it misses, like under sofas or corners it can't reach. Just like this, there are other factors to consider before splashing the cash, so let’s take a look.

✅ You want a hands-off dock: The dock will empty dust (into a larger than usual dock dustbin), refill water, dispense detergent and even wash and dry the mop pads, so there's minimal effort required from you.

Tip: Easy maintenance, empty dustbin and clean the filter after each use. Replace filter every month.

Eufy X10 Pro Omni is the best robot vacuum for most people. This self-empty robot vacuum and mop checks pretty much all our boxes. The suction power is excellent, pulling all Top 3 Automatic Vacuum Cleaners kinds of debris, fluff and hair and fluff out of our tester's carpet (although it did flick larger debris about rather than sucking it up – a problem with almost all robovacs). It's relatively quiet in all but it's very highest vacuum setting, too.

Carolyn Forté, the Good Housekeeping Institute's Home Care and Cleaning Lab executive director, has over 40 years of experience testing and writing about all kinds of vacuums. For this roundup, she oversaw all of the testing conducted by Lynn Redmile, the testing and product review analyst who conducted our Lab's last full category test of robot vacuums where three of the picks on this list came from.

Many robot vacuums and combo units include time-saving features like self-emptying bases or systems to wash and dry mop pads between cleanings. However, the Noesis Florio stands out as the only vacuum-mop combo we’ve tested that can automatically switch out its mop pads.

The automatic vacuum cleaner robot is also compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant, allowing users to make the robot start and stop the clean by voice commands. Use a robot vacuum to save you time and energy!

Even if you have one of the best Roombas, robot vacuums are recommended more for light, everyday cleaning, rather than for handling really embedded debris.