Pet owners might want to look for a model that is able to recognize their pet and either avoid it (if it's spooked by the addition of a sentient appliance to the household) or seek it out to check up on it while you're out of the house.

Historically, robovacs aren't great at cleaning up to the edges of rooms, but today's best robot vacuums add spinning side brushes designed to flick debris into the robot's suction path.

A robot that maps your house will get into every nook and cranny better than one that bumps and rolls around. Mapping also lets you send the robot to clean specific rooms rather than the whole space and add virtual walls to prevent your bot from going where you don’t want it to.

The S8 MaxV Ultra is the best in the category of “hands-free” robot vacs, bots that do virtually everything for you: empty their bins, refill their mop tanks, and clean and dry their mop pads. Roborock invented this category with the S7 MaxV Ultra and has been steadily improving it.

It's good at avoiding objects, reliably dodging pets and other discarded objects, and only really struggling with cables (which pelo robovac we've Top 3 Automatic Vacuum Cleaners tested has been able to reliably avoid).

The Miele Blizzard CX1 Cat & Dog canister is on the pricey side for a vacuum, but it’s one of the best bagless canisters you can buy. For one thing, on a brand level, Miele vacuums have superb ratings in predicted reliability and owner satisfaction, meaning the members we’ve surveyed are very satisfied with their Miele vacuums and have experienced few problems with their purchases.

I watched the X40 spread its mops wide apart and swing behind my TV console, allowing it to access the dust wedged a good inch under it. That’s impressive.

Roborock’s mobile app is easy to use and comes with a laundry list of features and customizations that give you ample control over your cleaning.

Overall value: We assess based on how well the product performs in all of the tests, comparing its performance with the price tag and promised features.

While the app is intuitive, and the mapping good, there is a major issue for anyone with an open plan living space. Namely, you can't separate it into different zones. It won't be a problem for everyone, but if you live in an open plan home, you'll probably want to opt for a different brand.

✅ You just want to do whole-home cleans: It can struggle with more specific instructions, but it has pelo problem with regular whole-home cleans.

If your pet occasionally makes a mess on the carpet, look for models that are designed to recognize and avoid poop.

For the record, the brand does promise "NeverTouch" in the name and the base offers auto drying of the mop pads, but we did

Samsung SmartThings and Amazon both support robot vacuums in Matter; Apple has added it to iOS 18.4, which should come this spring, and Google said support is coming soon.