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The iRobot Roomba i4 EVO is the first robot vacuum we recommend to most people because it’s smart enough to clean an entire level of a home in a mostly orderly pattern without missing spots, and compared with similar bots from other brands, it’s a stronger cleaner in a sturdier, more repairable body. The Roomba i4 EVO is a great choice if you want a robot that mostly just works, without your having to fuss with settings. The Roomba i4 EVO can also work with the iRobot Clean Base automatic-emptying dock, and the two are sold together in a combo package as the iRobot Roomba i4+ EVO. (Read more about self-emptying docks below.)
The Roomba i4 EVO stands out from other brands’ robots at this price mostly because it’s more durable and easier to repair. We don’t often hear about Roomba bots completely breaking down, even after a couple of years of regular use (though as with anything, it does happen). Like any robot vacuum, the Roomba i4 EVO may need new parts from time to time, but all the replaceable parts, from brushes and batteries to wheels and transmissions, are available directly from iRobot, and you can always do the repair at home with just a screwdriver. (In a rare show of commitment to supporting its products over time, iRobot even still stocks parts for older Roomba models—we’ve found parts for models dating back to 2004 and every model released since then.)
The Roomba i4 EVO is a better cleaner than most robot vacuums—at any price. We know this from assessing the visual results in our tests, but also from weighing the contents of the robot’s dustbin after vacuuming sessions and comparing that against the performance of other vacs.
Roomba models (including the i4 EVO) are the only robot vacuums that employ two brush rolls that rotate toward each other, an arrangement that works well on all surfaces but offers its biggest advantage over other robot vacuums’ brush rolls on rugs. In fact, the “brushes” on the i4 EVO are really rubber-nubbed extractors, which are particularly good at picking up pet hair, especially from thicker and higher-pile rugs, without much hair getting wrapped around the roller. All Roomba bots, including the i4 EVO, also have a dirt-detection system—another feature you can’t find in other brands’ bots. When a Roomba model senses that it’s passing over an area with a lot of debris, it stops and makes a few passes back and forth to pick up as much as possible.
The Roomba i4 EVO’s cleaning weaknesses are the same as those of most other bots: It sometimes misses a spot, gets caught on cords, and may struggle on really high-pile carpets, where the aggressive brushes can jam on the long fibers. But we’re confident that the i4 EVO can out-clean other bots on more surfaces with more types of debris.
You can connect the Roomba i4 EVO to your Wi-Fi so that you can use a smartphone app to tell it to start or stop, instruct it to return to its dock, or create a cleaning schedule, if you’d like, though doing so is totally optional. Since we first tested this model, iRobot has added smart mapping, which allows the i4 EVO to run through the house, without cleaning, in order to create a single floor plan that is saved in the app. You can then label rooms and tell the vac to clean specific areas (or avoid ones that are particularly cluttered). We’ve concluded that the Roborock Q5’s smart mapping works better, but this new addition to the i3 and i4 EVO makes it slightly smarter than it was previously.
Like many robot vacuums at this price, the Roomba i4 EVO can thoroughly clean big spaces by following a (mostly) logical, orderly path throughout a home. To do so, the i4 EVO uses floor sensors, bump sensors, gyroscopes, and infrared (to communicate with the home base). That means it doesn’t miss many spots or waste much time recleaning the same areas, as our budget picks, or other low-end models that navigate semi-randomly, usually do. The i4 EVO should also reliably return to its charging dock. And it doesn’t get stuck on obstacles like thresholds or power cables often. Just don’t watch it too closely—it acts a little weird sometimes.
The Roomba i4 EVO also works with the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant smart-home platforms, so you can control the bot with voice commands and integrate it with other smart devices around the home. Senior staff writer Rachel Cericola tested these features but found using voice commands on both platforms to be a little frustrating. She often had to repeat commands and hold back-and-forth conversations with both voice assistants to tackle simple tasks, and she had to do a web search to learn what commands the Roomba i4 EVO could handle and how to state them properly. Rachel will continue to test these features to see if they improve after future software updates.
Siri Shortcuts worked a little better in our tests since we could customize the wording of our voice commands, but their overall functionality is limited. For example, you can’t use Siri to set up Automations as you can with Alexa and Google Assistant—though to be fair, Automations on those two platforms are pretty limited, as well. Using Alexa, Rachel was able to create an automated Routine that would tell the Roomba i4 EVO to start vacuuming whenever Rachel and her smartphone left her house. Automations also work with motion detection on a security camera, so you can trigger the vacuum to start whenever you enter or exit a room, but we’d like to see more options for triggers to tell the vacuum to clean, such as when outdoor or indoor lights are turned off at night. However, as with most robot vacuums, you could also set a Schedule to accomplish these tasks.
One neat feature: The i4 EVO can work with iRobot’s Clean Base auto-emptying dock. A package of the two together is sold as the Roomba i4+ EVO and usually costs at least $300 more than the robot by itself. (We go into more detail about self-emptying docks later in this guide, but the gist of it is that the system works and is really convenient—you can go a month or more without having to clean out and dispose of debris by hand.)
Any robot vacuum with mapping and smart features necessarily introduces some privacy concerns since it collects data about you and your living space. We’ve included the most up-to-date privacy and data practices behind the iRobot Roomba i4 EVO and our other picks below. Some people may feel uneasy about a robot that is purpose-built to roam around their living space, learning every contour along the way. And Roomba vacuums in particular have come under heightened scrutiny since Amazon announced its intention to acquire iRobot in August 2022, which to many people expands the potential array of privacy problems. As Wirecutter’s Thorin Klosowski writes in our article about the announcement: “Combine a home’s floor plan with all the various data that different Alexa-enabled devices collect, plus everything you shop for, and you don’t need to sport a tinfoil hat to see the privacy implication: A company whose main purpose is to sell you more stuff is sitting on vast amounts of data.”
So far, the privacy concerns surrounding the Amazon acquisition are mostly theoretical, but we’re keeping our eye on any developments. As of November 2022, the Federal Trade Commission was still reviewing the acquisition, so it’s unclear whether or when the deal will go through, and what the implications for Roomba owners may be. For now, we’ll continue to monitor the privacy practices of iRobot, as well as the companies behind all of our picks. If you want a smart-mapping robot vacuum whose maker won’t potentially get acquired by Amazon, you can opt for the Roborock Q5. Or, you can sidestep privacy concerns altogether with a non-smart robot like our budget pick, the Eufy RoboVac 11S.
A possible side effect of the Roomba i4 EVO’s design is that it may be relatively slow compared with other smart-mapping bots, such as our also-great pick, the Roborock Q5. Whereas those other bots use lasers or cameras to help them map and clean areas, the i4 EVO still utilizes gyroscopes and sensors to help it navigate. Laser-nav bots can learn your home’s layout in a single session, whereas the i4 EVO and higher-end Roomba models (see below) typically need two or three sessions of training. The laser-nav bots also tend to bump into less stuff than the Roomba bots do and complete their jobs faster as a result. However, we still predict that Roomba bots on average will last longer than any of their competitors and work better at getting hair out of rugs.
If you like most of what you’ve read about the Roomba i4 EVO, you might consider upgrading to a smarter Roomba.
The Roomba j7 has an object-detection system that helps it steer around dog poop and power cables. (Like most robot vacuums with object recognition, the Roomba j7 uses a camera, which may present privacy concerns.) We plan to run additional tests on this model, and we will update this section as needed. It’s also available as the Roomba j7+, bundled with a self-emptying dock that’s shorter and arguably better-looking than the dock that comes with the i4+ EVO and the i7+. (The j7+ dock is not cross-compatible with the i4 EVO and i7 bots, unfortunately.)
The Roomba i7 is an older model and tends to cost less than the new Roomba j7. We wrote a review of the self-emptying Roomba i7+ in 2018, when it was brand-new, and at the time we called it the best robot vacuum that money could buy. The rest of the industry caught up very quickly, so the i7+ is no longer such a standout, but it still works well. It’s no longer one of iRobot’s “core” models and isn’t available through as many retailers as others, but you can still find it in plenty of places for now. The functionally identical Roomba i6 is also common, as are the auto-emptying Roomba i6+ and Roomba i8+.
Then there are the top-of-the-line Roomba s9 and self-emptying Roomba s9+, which we do not recommend. Instead of the classic puck shape, the s9 has a D-shaped body and extra-wide brushes intended to improve its edge-cleaning and corner-cleaning abilities. It also has four times more raw suction than the already-strong Roomba i4 EVO, i7, and j7. That helps it consistently pick up larger debris such as cat litter or yard waste better than most robots, though it still doesn’t come close to deep-cleaning dust from a rug like a traditional vacuum does. But when we tried the s9 in 2020, it was one of the clumsiest navigators we’d ever tested. We watched it stubbornly try to shove itself into spaces where it obviously couldn’t fit, roughing up some furniture in the process. This behavior would be annoying from a $400 robot, but it’s especially frustrating from a robot that can sometimes cost more than our favorite dishwasher. iRobot representatives told us that the company fixed the navigation problems via a software update following the robot’s launch, so we plan to reevaluate it in future testing.
While the iRobot Roomba i4 EVO is better at cleaning, the Roborock Q5 is smarter. Equipped with a superior mapping system that can store multiple maps for different levels of the home in both 2D and 3D, the Q5 also has an easy-to-use app and responds well to voice commands. It cleans admirably (though not as well as the Roomba i4 EVO, particularly on carpets), moves fast, and steers clear of larger obstacles.
Like its predecessor (and a previous Wirecutter pick), the now-discontinued Roborock S4 Max, the Q5 shines with its smart-mapping feature. Using its laser rangefinder (lidar) and bump sensors, the Q5 learns your floor plan in a single cleaning session and creates an interactive map in the companion app. That map, which you can view in 2D or 3D, allows you to set up a bunch of cool tricks, such as targeted room cleaning and no-go zones, without having to manually move the bot or fiddle with physical barriers as you would with other robots, including our other picks. It also allows you to create and store maps for up to four levels, which is a nice perk if you want to use the bot on different floors of your home.
The Roborock app has tons of features and customizations, and it gives you more control over navigation than you can find on other robot vacs. It also provides a better user experience and works more reliably than its closest competitors’ apps.
Even setting aside the smart maps, the Roborock Q5 is still one of the best navigators we’ve tested. The laser-nav system, combined with speedy processing, helps the Q5 plan a cleaning path where it avoids bumping into most furniture and walls, so it finishes its job noticeably faster and with less thunking around than most robots, especially non-laser navigators like the Roomba i4 EVO and even the Roomba i7. It rarely misses any accessible areas of a home, as random-navigation robots (including our budget picks) sometimes do. In our tests, even when it did bump into an object its lidar turret didn’t detect, it course-corrected more quickly and more accurately than other bots.
When you add up all those little optimizations, the Q5 saves a noticeable amount of time compared with other bots. The bigger your home, the more valuable that greater speed may be, as long as you’re willing to trade some cleaning performance. The Q5’s massive battery should power the bot through at least 1,500 square feet without having to recharge, even on the bot’s strongest suction level, whereas other popular bots, such as the i4 EVO, need to stop and repower for a while after cleaning about 1,000 square feet.
With the horde of copycat bots that have flooded Amazon and other retailers, the Q5 might not always be the best deal among robots of this type. But Roborock has been making quick, smart, strong-enough robots for longer than most of those knockoff brands, and the company seems to do a better job of supporting its devices, so we’re comfortable recommending the Q5 as a standout in its class.
We also found the Roborock Q5 to be easier to use and program than other robots we tested. Roborock has one of the better apps among all the robot vacs we’ve tried, with a plethora of features that are easy to find and use, including scheduling, the option to spot-clean certain areas, and remote-control options that allow you to use on-screen buttons or a joystick. On the robot vac itself, you’ll find a power button and a home button; the latter can send the device back to the dock or tell it to spot-clean if you hold it for a few seconds. The Q5 also supports Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri Shortcuts. We found that all three responded to voice commands very well; this was most evident in how the robot always reacted after our first request, no repeat commands necessary. And like the Roomba i4 EVO, the Q5 does allow you to ask Siri to clean specific rooms. For instance, you can say “Hey Siri, go clean the kitchen,” and the bot will do just that. As we mentioned earlier, Siri Shortcuts does not provide the ability to create Automations.
The Q5 is a good cleaner, although not quite as good as the i4 EVO. Also, the Q5 would regularly say that it had completed a job, when a quick look told us otherwise and we knew that we would have to restart the cleaning cycle.
Reliability and longevity are hard to predict, but the information we’ve gathered from owner reviews suggests that Roborock bots aren’t quite as reliable as the average Roomba model over the course of a few years—but they aren’t some short-lived throwaway thing, either. Roborock does a decent job of keeping spare parts like filters and spare brushes in stock for its recent-model robots, which is an improvement over the company’s spotty stock status in past years. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether spare parts—particularly the expensive ones, like battery packs—will still be available beyond the short term (let’s call it three years), and Roborock has been noncommittal when we’ve asked for clarity on its long-term product-support strategy. Even if you can find something like a spare transmission or wheel, it’s not so easy to just swap it in using a regular screwdriver, as it is with Roomba devices. But we’re happy to report that Roborock seems to be establishing a decent reputation for product quality and support.
Like the iRobot Roomba i4 EVO, the Roborock Q5 comes in two flavors: with and without a self-emptying dock. We found the Roborock Q5+ to be convenient, although slightly louder than the Roomba i4+ EVO during the emptying cycle.
If you need to vacuum only a few rooms at a time, and you’re looking to save a few bucks, consider the iRobot Roomba 694, or really any model from the 600 series. You can find plenty of affordable robot vacuums that can keep small spaces tidy, but for a budget pick we recommend one of these basic Roomba models because they’re more durable and repairable than other brands’ bots, and they work better on more types of rugs, especially if you need to clean up a lot of hair.
The biggest difference from our top picks is that the Roomba 600 series doesn’t have smart mapping and navigates semi-randomly rather than following an orderly, predictable path. This was the norm for robot vacuums until a few years ago, and a lot of people were happy with that approach. But as of 2022, smart robots are much more common and affordable—and much better at cleaning large spaces consistently and efficiently. Even so, the semi-random bots still have a place in the world, and we’ve concluded that the Roomba 600 series is a great option if you want a simple, sturdy bot for a fair price.
The 600 series comes in a few variants. We’re using the Roomba 694 as a shorthand reference to the 600 series throughout the rest of this section, but if you encounter a Roomba bot and the model number starts with a 6, everything you’re about to read applies, except that the Wi-Fi capabilities vary from model to model (more on that below).
The main thing that makes the Roomba 694 stand out from other affordable robot vacuums is that it’s more durable and easier to repair (just like other Roomba models, as we covered earlier). They generally don’t break, spare parts are always in stock, and you can swap in everything from a new filter to a new transmission with nothing more than a screwdriver. Usually you pay more for the Roomba 694 than for our other budget pick, the Eufy RoboVac 11S, or other super-cheap bots with random navigation. But the Roomba bot can easily pay off in the long run because it’ll last longer. In fact, several Wirecutter staff members have owned Roomba 600-series bots for several years and have found them to be sturdy and reliable.
Another advantage is that the Roomba 694 (like other Roomba models) has two counter-rotating brush rolls, mounted in a suspension system, whereas every other bot at this price has a single brush sitting at a fixed height. Even the cheapest bots we’ve tested do a good job of picking up the most common types of debris from bare floors and short rugs, but the Roomba 694’s design helps it work better on rugs, especially when it needs to pick up a lot of hair. The Roomba 694 also has a dirt-detection system, which helps the bot reliably clean the most obvious piles of debris as long as it encounters those piles on its semi-random travels.
The Roomba 600 series robot vacuum next to its counter-rotating brushes.
The Roomba 694, like most affordable robots, is what we call a bump-and-run navigator. Basically, it bloops around semi-randomly until its battery runs low, and then it tries to get back to its dock before it completely runs out of juice (and doesn’t always succeed). It looks silly, but it’s basically effective, especially in smaller spaces. And even though it navigates with absolutely reckless abandon, we’ve found that it’s actually a lot less likely to get stuck on random hazards around the house than other bots, as it has several specific “escape” routines for common traps.
The good-enough navigation, the 90 minutes of battery life, the effective brush design, and clever features like the dirt-detection sensor all add up to a consistent clean, as long as you’re relying on the Roomba 694 to tidy up only three or four rooms at a time. Judging from our experience, it can be useful in spaces as large as 1,000 square feet, as long as you run it most days of the week as a habit and can forgive that it might not thoroughly clean every room every time that it runs. But some people don’t want to deal with unpredictable coverage, and that’s understandable. If you want a smarter robot, take a look at our top pick, the iRobot Roomba i4 EVO, and our also-great pick, the Roborock Q5.
Compared with other cheap bump bots, the Roomba 694 is a little rough on furniture. It slows down but doesn’t stop short of obstacles. If all the clomping and bonking noises would be likely to bother you, or if you’re nervous about the Roomba 694 possibly knocking a priceless vase off a wobbly side table, consider a gentler bot, such as a Eufy, or a bot that tries to navigate around obstacles, like a Roborock. (You can purchase “virtual walls,” which prevent a Roomba bot from entering certain rooms or areas, for $40 apiece, but generally you’re better off just closing a door or putting up a physical barrier.)
The Roomba 694 (but not all Roomba 600-series models) can connect to your home Wi-Fi network, so you can use its smartphone app to turn it on or off even if you aren’t home, or create a cleaning schedule, or check if the filters need replacing or the sensors need cleaning. You can also control it through Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri Shortcuts, using voice commands to start and stop the bot, as well as to send it back to its docking station. As with our top pick, Rachel often had issues with Alexa and Google Assistant, where she would have to repeat commands or the smart speaker wouldn’t understand her requests to control the Roomba 694 (although we had better luck with Siri on all of the Roomba models we tested). She will continue to monitor this feature for updates, as it’s very handy if you have your hands full, are on another floor, or have mobility or dexterity issues.
source : nytimes
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