How we tested
The Mashable shopping team has tested dozens of robot vacuums from top robot vacuum brands such as iRobot, Roborock, Shark, Eufy, Ecovacs, Narwal, and Yeedi. New releases with any sort of buzz are brought home by us as soon as possible to be tested on our own floors and compared to our current winners. The models tested most recently by Mashable are the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra, Eufy X10 Pro Omni, and Yeedi M12 Pro+, all in Senior Shopping Reporter Leah Stodart’s three-bedroom apartment.
Leah says: At this time, I’m choosing to leave the Yeedi M12+ Pro off of the recommendation list. I felt a sense of urgency to try it out at home given its claim of clocking 11,000 Pa in suction power — some of the most potent suction power (allegedly) on the market that even beats the 10,000 Pa of the $1,799.99 Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra. Given the Yeedi M12+ Pro’s sub-$1,000 price point (around $700 on sale) and its ability to wash and dry its own mopping pads, I had high hopes for this budget pick. Unfortunately, while its performance on rice, kitty litter, and long hair on multiple carpet piles has been mostly in line with other vacuums I’ve tried, I wasn’t necessarily wowed. The eerily low price point particularly starts tracking each time the flimsy design struggles to hoist itself over bath mats and my living room rug from the tile or hardwood, getting stuck often and even losing a mopping pad at one point.
I also do not recommend the Dyson 360 Vis Nav for homes with lots of carpets — or, well, any homes at all. You’d think that a machine that veteran vacuum brand Dyson claims is the most powerful robot vacuum in the world would kill it on carpets. Like the Yeedi M12+ Pro, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav wasn’t horrible or stellar on the carpets or rugs in my home. It also missed a ton of crumbs in the corners of my kitchen, despite corner cleaning allegedly being one of its strong suits. Those shortcomings plus a lack of mopping or automatic emptying make the $1,199.99 price tag impossible to justify.
The next vac on the testing docket is the new Roomba Combo 10 Max Robot + AutoWash Dock.
How we assess a robot vacuum’s performance
We’ve directly compared these bots’ cleaning capabilities on multiple types of flooring (as well as how they stack up against popular cordless vacuums from brands like Dyson and Shark). When conducting hands-on tests of robot vacuums, we consider how the product performs on carpets, area rugs, hardwood laminate, and tile. In searching for the best robot vacuum for carpets, we mainly considered how effectively these vacuums removed new messes like freshly spilled food crumbs, as well as more stubborn debris like pet hair that has been embedded into the fibers over an extended amount of time.
In addition to analyzing a robot’s performance on carpet, we also took its overall cleaning abilities and recurring maintenance into account, including its accuracy with room-to-room smart mapping and zone cleaning, its thoroughness when it comes to mopping and keeping carpets dry, and the presence of a self-emptying dock to ensure the whole home can be cleaned without constantly clearing the dust bin. With all of these factors in mind, we handpicked the four best all-around robot vacuums for carpets and rugs at a variety of price points.
