We may earn a commission from links on this page.When I bought my first robot vacuum, I thought my floors would thereafter be effortlessly spotless—endlessly patrolled by a 24/7 custodian, with absolutely no work required on my part. Today, there are never less than three robot vacuum cleaners installed in my small home at any given time. And yet I am definitely not doing nothing to keep my floors clean. While I’m certainly doing less daily upkeep, I would not say my floors are spotless, nor that I have been alleviated of all floor-related housework. Here’s what I wish I’d known about what robot vacuums can and can't do, and how much human effort they require. Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra Robot Vacuum and Mop $1,799.98 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $1,799.98 at Amazon Narwal Freo Z Ultra Robot Vacuum and Mop $1,499.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $1,499.99 at Amazon 3i S10 Ultra Robot Vacuum and Mop $1,399.99 at Amazon $1,899.99 Save $500.00 Shop Now Shop Now $1,399.99 at Amazon $1,899.99 Save $500.00 Saros 10 Robot Vacuum and Mop $1,599.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $1,599.99 at Amazon Saros 10R Robot Vacuum and Mop $1,618.98 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $1,618.98 at Amazon Narwal S20 Stick Mop $499.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $499.99 at Amazon SEE 3 MORE You'll have to rearrange your furniture The Freo Z navigating around an air purifier on the floor Credit: Amanda Blum When you hire someone to clean your home, you typically don’t move furniture around yourself to make their job easier,. For your robot vacuum, you might have to. While these robots have gotten much better at navigation, the less there is on the floor, the easier it will be for them to clean. Each table leg, chair and floor lamp is another obstacle to be worked around, and it’s worth knowing that most robots can’t get as close to table legs and floor lamps as you would be able to with a stick vacuum. Nor can they move a piece of furniture aside to get under it. As such, you will have to make some changes to your floor plan if you want to make the most of your new robot friend. More important than furniture relocation is the trend of having less on the floor, generally. If you like to let a laundry pile accumulate, have potted plants or a stack of books, you’ll end up relocating those items to give your robot better access. Corded items are particularly tricky, so the less cords on the floor, the better. Over time, I’ve learned to suspend the cords from the wall, and keep them wound as much as possible so nothing trails on the floor. I was recently quite impressed with the Roborock 10R, which relied solely on AI assisted cameras. The navigation skills of the robot were great, allowing it to venture into tight and low spaces that other robots hadn't. Robot vacuums can't clean near their docks the robot can't navigate around the Eureka tower, so debris accumulates around it Credit: Amanda Blum It's an unsurprising fact that robot vacuums can only clean where they can reach. Where they can’t reach, you’ll still see dirt and debris. All robot cleaners have a dock of some sort, and many now come with self emptying towers, which usually work exceptionally well at emptying the robots of dirt so you don’t have to do it manually. Given all of this automation, it's a bit ironic that the dirtiest place in your home might well be right around the tower or dock itself. As these towers are usually tucked into a corner or small space, detritus can easily accumulate around them, but the robot can’t move around the tower to clean it up. As the robot returns to the dock, it sweeps dirt with it, and it all eventually winds up at the foot of the tower.  This Roomba can't navigate into the small space underneath this plant stand, so instead it just kicks debris into the space. Credit: Amanda Blum Only the latest robots (like the 3i S10 Ultra) are at all good at cleaning around the base of pieces of furniture and thresholds between rooms. With most robots, you'll usually still find a band of dust and grime against the wall and around any items that the robot can’t easily clean. And then there are all the spaces too narrow or too low for the robot to slide into. While a few robots, like the Narwal Freo Z, have a fluffy pad that’ll occasionally rub against the base board to dust it, they don't do any real cleaning, so you’ll need to clean your baseboards manually, too. Again, you can rearrange your space to allow the robot more autonomy by making sure any spaces you want to be cleaned allow clearance of at least 1.5 times the width of the robot, and enough vertical height that the robot can reach it.This is always going to be a bit of a losing game, however, which is why I still have a stick vacuum I use to quickly suck up debris from narrow spots the robot can’t reach, the corners and edges that the robot can get close enough to, and against the wall and thresholds. Robots are best at vacuuming up only certain types of debrisThe same way you might organize before a visit from a cleaning professional, you’ll find yourself pre-sweeping for your robot. While robots are reliable at getting up dust and small detritus like rice or cereal, they’re not great at large debris, which means anything larger than a standard dice cube. Pieces of mulch, pet toy fluff, kitchen scraps, bobby pins, and pocket change will all get caught in a robot's rollers and need to be fished out. Pre-sweeping is a way to avoid that annoying task by getting up larger items of debris and leaving the rest for the bot. (But once again allow me to praise the 3i S10 Ultra, which has excelled at vacuuming up larger debris than any other robot vacuum I'd ever tested.)Even if your robot vacuum has a mop, you'll need to mop manually This Roborock is starting to get up the muddy pawprints, but it takes many passes Credit: Amanda Blum Most robot vacuums are now combo vacuums and mops.Some models are great at mopping—sometimes even better than they are at vacuuming. The docking tower empties the mop of dirty water, fills it with clean water, and sanitizes everything afterward. With the combined functions of vacuuming and mopping your floors will surely be clean, right? Not necessarily. Robot mops are great at cleaning up surface spills. What they’re less good at is scrubbing away stains and compound floor messes like mud or spilled food. While most robots can mostly get muddy paw prints up after a number of passes, doing so requires a lot of water, battery life, and time, and I’ve yet to find a single robot mop that is good at getting grime out of tile or wood floors. The robot simply can’t put enough pressure on the mop to really scrub the floor. For these reasons, you’ll need to keep an old-fashioned mop around, and you should expect to have to give the floor a good, hardy mop every few days and use real elbow grease to get out grime. Once the floor is clean, repeated patrols by the robot mop can help stave off new grime deposits, but they’re inevitable, so don’t assume your mopping days are over. If mopping is your priority, I recommend highly Roborock models that have a singular vibrating mop pad, versus twin spinning mops. The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra remains one of my top recommendations. Robot vacuums are slowWith most robot vacuums working with voice assistants like Google, Alexa, or Apple, its well within the realm of possibility to simply ask the robot to “clean up around the high chair” after dinner (presuming you’ve set up a zone around the high chair, and it is always in the same approximate spot). If you’ve got such a routine set up, the robot will begin whatever pre-deployment practices it has, whether that’s filling the water resivior or orienting or cleaning the mop head, and eventually will amble over to the intended spot and proceed to take its time cleaning. Though still not particularly fast in getting to the spot you pin, Roborock's Pin and Go feature allows you to quickly place a pin on your floor map and the robot will proceed immediately to that spot to clean. This feature is available on all premium Roborock models, including the latest Saros 10 and 10R. Roborock lets you put a pin on the map for the robot to proceed to Credit: Amanda Blum If you’ve got the time to spare, great. But if your kid spills a cup of orange juice on the floor, you might not be willing to wait the five to 10 minutes it will take the robot to get to the spot in question and start cleaning when you could grab a mop or towel and be done in under a minute. For that reason, I'm still happy to have a Narwal S20, a newer model stick mop I can quickly grab, mop as needed, and then put back on the dock, all without having to get my hands dirty.  Robot vacuums occasionally require human interventionRobot vacuums can range wildly in price (from $200 to $2,500) and quality, and they are getting more intelligent and feature-rich all the time. Robots that have AI on board can actually learn about your home and get better at cleaning it over time. Despite all of that, however, your robot will need your intervention more than you’d like. Depending on how good a model you own, you will likely need to routinely unclog the rollers (the most common robot vacuum maintenance task). Your robot will also get stuck—sometimes because there is a new obstacle for it to navigate around, like a waylaid toy or sock, or a loose cord under the couch the robot gets stuck on it. Sometimes, it will simply gets lost. The bottom line is, even the best robots can’t be left on their own for weeks at a time. Most will require a human around eventually to get them back to the dock, clear the rollers, unclog it any clogs in the mopping system, and/or change the water in the dock. If all of this hasn't scared you away from getting one, your goal should be to choose a robot that matches your home and needs, and that enough features that you won't be following it around every day, making sure it does its job. Source: https://lifehacker.com/tech/what-robot-vacuums-can-and-cant-do?utm_medium=RSS #ive #tested #robot #vacuums #for #years #and #heres #what #they #can #cant