GoKawiilThese robot vacuums are ones that tested well, scoring at least a 7 overall rating, or that might be the right fit for a specific situation.
The arm-equipped Saros Z70 is a pricey robot vacuum but it's one of the only ones that can sort items for you. Roborock/CNET
Roborock Saros Z70: While many robots get stuck under couches or beds, the Z70 navigates strategically around chair legs and glides under low gaps to clean where dust bunnies accumulate. In terms of raw cleaning power, it's a capable machine on hard floors, removing 89.05% of sand in our tests. It also posted a very high room coverage score of 83.27%, meaning it doesn't leave many patches of the floor untouched.
The Saros Z70's main selling point is the mechanical arm, which can pick up and sort small objects like crumpled papers, napkins, slippers and shoes. It's neat to watch the arm automatically emerge from the robot vacuum's body to do some pickup. It's fairly easy to designate a sorting zone in the app and the arm will usually put things where it's told but to be frank, the arm is hit-and-miss. It's capable of recognizing the objects it's trained for, but it usually wasn't able to pick up things like pet toys and, on one occasion, it confused my standing desk mat with a sock and got stuck trying to pick it up
The OmniGrip arm picking up my wife's sock. Ajay Kumar/CNET
I was also impressed by its mapping. After a quick scan, the robot did a great job of generating a layout of my apartment, identifying flooring types, key pieces of furniture, pet areas and cords. Tagging things manually was also fairly straightforward, though if I have one gripe, it's that the app's settings and customization options are a bit overwhelming. For me, the AdaptLift chassis was the real lifesaver. Like the Dreame X50 Ultra, it can deploy a pair of legs to lever itself over obstacles. It's one of the few robot vacuums that can cross the 2-inch thresholds in my apartment.
If you have shedding pets like me, you should avoid this model. Our testing found its pet hair pickup performance to be terrible. Additionally, the object avoidance needs work for the price: It identified and avoided the pet toy and lamp cord, but failed to avoid the sock and two types of simulated pet waste. This also means the robot arm had trouble identifying objects as well. Finally, at $2,600, it is difficult to justify if you have significant carpeting, as it only removed 31.88% of debris from midpile carpet and totally missed sections of the rug during heat map testing.
The E28 incorporated a spot cleaner into its robot vacuum, giving it useful additional functionality. Eufy/CNET
Eufy Omni E28: This is another of Eufy's unique three-in-one robot vacuums. Unlike the E20, which incorporates a cordless and handheld vacuum into the robot, the E28 is a portable deep cleaner built into the robot's base station. The detachable dual water tank (clean and dirty water) doubles as a deep cleaner, complete with a handle and hose attachment that lets you spot-clean various soft surfaces, including carpets and fabric.
"At home testing the carpet cleaner, I loved the self-cleaning feature on the extractor," said Breitenstein. "It cleans very well. It does need to be plugged in to use, but with an extension cord, it's very attainable to clean everywhere." Add excellent obstacle avoidance that managed to avoid five of six obstacles, and you get a very capable robot vacuum for $1,000 full price, though it's usually less on sale.
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