GoKawiilMaria Diaz/ZDNET
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For many, robot vacuums have become an answer to the annoying chore we all have to do to keep our homes clean. But not all robot vacuums are created equal. While they have gotten much smarter since their early days of bumping around furniture and leaving dirty edges behind, we decided to really put them to the test.
To find out which robot vacuums are the best, we ran dozens through the gauntlet in our lab in Kentucky, evaluating suction power, navigation performance, object avoidance, noise level, and, most importantly, pickup performance.
Also: The best robot vacuums for pet hair
We compared 10 robot vacuums based on our smart home reviewer Maria Diaz's recommendations from her real-world home testing, as well as the products we've tested in our lab.
The robot vacuum that stood above the rest in terms of debris pickup was the Ecovacs X8 Pro Omni.
How we tested these robot vacuums
In our lab, we put each robot vacuum through three tests over five sessions, for a total of 15 tests per vacuum (at an average rate of 30 minutes per test). Each robot vacuum was tested in a simulated living room on different floor types to determine the percentage of sand it picked up on hardwood, low-pile, and mid-pile carpet.
We chose sand as the debris of choice because it is very consistent and easy to measure out exactly the same amount for each test. In addition, sand embeds well in carpet, forcing the vacuum to use both suction and brush agitation to dislodge it for pickup, giving a better overall indication of a vacuum's cleaning ability than raw suction alone.
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