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We Tested 44 Vacuum Cleaners, And This Roomba Is Our Absolute Favorite — Shop It On Sale At Amazon Today
Spring is finally here, but spring cleaning doesn't have to be a pain this year.
We've tested hundreds of vacuums in our PEOPLE Tested labs, but one vacuum completely changed the game: The iRobot Roomba 694 Robot Vacuum automatically cleaned our floors while we sat back and relaxed. Its powerful suction and long-lasting battery life earned it the top spot as the best robot vacuum overall that we tested. And during Amazon's Big Spring Sale, the super-sucking robot vacuum is nearly 25 percent less.
The robot vacuum connects to your smartphone, so you can conveniently schedule it to deep clean your floors whenever you want. Plus, it's easy to connect the device to a home voice control system, like an Alexa or Google Smart Home. Once fully charged, the Roomba can run for up to 90 minutes, weaving around furniture to suck up dirt, dust, and debris before automatically returning to its docking station to recharge.
iRobot Roomba 694 Robot Vacuum, $209 (Save 24%) Amazon According to our testers, this robot vacuum was a breeze to set up — it took just five minutes to have it up and running. The vacuum quickly got to work, skirting easily around tables and chairs to find hidden dirt and sucking it up into the internal dust canister. This little robot blew us away with its super strong suction, handlingeverything we threw at it, including pet and human hair, sand, and Cheerios. The Roomba vacuum also proved to be impressively durable during long-term testing, performing just as well after six months as it did on the day we took it out of the box. We tested the vacuum in a variety of places and found that the sensor technology could handle any floor layout, no matter how many obstacles. It easily hugged walls to get the edges of a room clean and never fell down stairs thanks to its cliff detection technology. People / Rachel Marek With almost 15,000 five-star ratings on Amazon, shoppers also agree that this is a great vacuum. One reviewer called this Roomba "easy to program and use," then added: "This little guy is so smart; just turn it loose and see the results." Another pleased reviewer wrote, "It does an amazing job of picking up the daily dog hair." They continued, writing, "I definitely recommend this for busy people or people with pets." Compared to the other 44 robot vacuums we tested, the iRobot Roomba 694 was the very best, thanks to its strong suction, nimble maneuvering, and reasonable price point. We thought the device was a great value even at full price, so the discount available now makes it a must-have deal. Hurry and head over to Amazon to snag the powerful iRobot Roomba 694 Robot Vacuum Cleaner before the discounts disappear. And if you're looking for other cleaning tools, keep scrolling to discover more of our PEOPLE-Tested picks that are also on sale at Amazon. Shark Vertex Cordless Stick Vacuum, $280 (Save 35%) People / Dera Burreson PurSteam 10-in-1 Steam Mop, $59 (Save 41%) People / Dera Burreson Black+Decker AdvancedClean+ Cordless Pet Handheld Vacuum, $90 (Save 10%) People / Rachel MarekGet A New IRobot Roomba Robot Vacuum For $170 At Amazon's Big Spring Sale Today
Amazon Interested in buying a robot vacuum, but put off because of how expensive they can be? Now's the time to lock in a special deal today at the Amazon Big Spring Sale. You can score a top-rated robot vacuum for a great price: The iRobot Roomba 692 robot vacuum is just $170 today, or 37% off its normal price.
Why would you want to snag a robot vacuum instead of a stick vacuum or an upright vacuum? Because these automated workhorses do all the work for you. They can clean your floors so you don't have to and act as a great complement to the manual housecleaning you're already doing to keep your home free of pet hair, dust and debris.
Below, check out the details on this surprisingly affordable robot vacuum. Be sure to get yours before they end up selling out.
iRobot Roomba 692 robot vacuum: $170 (37% off)
Amazon If you're looking for the lowest price available on an iRobot Roomba robot vacuum, we've found the deal for you.
The iRobot Roomba 692 features a three-stage cleaning system and dual multi-surface brushes to grab dirt from carpets and hard floors throughout your home. It also includes an edge-sweeping brush that takes care of corners and edges.
"Works really well and also vacuums in the spots you normally can't reach; under the bed and other pieces of furniture. This is a game-changer," one Amazon reviewer says. "I run it about five times a week and my floors are always clean. Love it!"
Right now, you can get this robot vacuum for just $170 for the Amazon Big Spring Sale. It's 37% off its normal price of $269.
Shop the best Amazon deals on iRobot Roomba robot vacuums now. But hurry -- these big Amazon Big Spring Sale deals will sell out quickly.
iRobot Roomba i3+ EVO: $374 (32% off)
Amazon The iRobot Roomba i3+ EVO uses smart mapping technology to learn your home. Use your connected phone to direct the Wi-Fi-enabled robot vacuum to clean any room you want.
The smart appliance learns your cleaning habits and can suggest extra cleanings during peak pollen and pet-shedding seasons. You can even schedule a future clean. This Roomba is compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. And don't worry about dumping out a dustbin daily.
The Roomba i3+ EVO features iRobot's Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal system and empties your accumulated dirt into an enclosed bag. This vacuum has a 75-minute runtime.
The iRobot Roomba i3+ EVO is currently $374 during the Amazon Big Spring Sale, which is 32% off its normal price of $550.
iRobot Roomba i4+ EVO robot vacuum with automatic dirt disposal: $500 (17% off)
iRobot via Amazon The iRobot Roomba i4+ EVO has all the same smart features as the i3+ EVO. But the i4+ EVO boasts a 20% larger battery.
"The i4+ is extremely quiet as it moves, and the SmartMap feature is really cool," an Amazon customer who purchased the device says. "I am able to direct my Roomba to clean common areas with more frequency than say, my bedroom. The i4+ isn't a bumper car the way that other models were, and the cleaning pattern is very neat."
With its long-lasting battery and organized cleaning methods that have it attacking dirt and debris in rows, this vacuum is a great option that doesn't need a lot of input from you. Plus, its dual multi-surface rubber brushes designed to pick up pet hair without getting tangled make cleaning up more difficult messes a breeze.
You can get the iRobot Roomba i4+ EVO robot vacuum for $500 right now, which is 17% off its normal price of $600.
iRobot Roomba 694 robot vacuum: $200 (27% off)
Amazon The iRobot Roomba 694 uses advanced sensors to move under furniture, around obstacles and along edges. It doesn't map your home but relies on its sensors, including a cliff detect feature, to avoid falling down stairs.
This vacuum is Wi-Fi-enabled. Control the vac with your connected smartphone or device via the iRobot Home app. The Roomba 694 has a 90-minute run time before it automatically docks and recharges. The bestselling robovac is rated 4.3 stars.
On Amazon, one reviewer praised the iRobot device's ability to keep a pet-friendly household clean. "We have two dogs, one that sheds moderately," the customer says. "I purchased [it] in hopes that it at least would help between regular vacuuming. I vacuumed first with my Dyson then set it free. When it was done with the job, I didn't expect much in the dust trap... I was wrong! It was full! Super impressed."
This vacuum is currently $200, which is 27% off its normal price of $275.
Kaylyn McKennaRoomba I5+ Review: This Robot Vacuum Is Certainly More Useful Than Most Pets
THE Roomba Combo i5+ won't completely replace your handheld vacuum cleaner and mop, but it's a welcome addition to any household.
I put this big-name robot vacuum to the test: read my Roomba i5+ review to find out more about its features, performance, price, pros and cons.
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I spent a few weeks testing the Roomba Combo i5+ for my in-depth, hands-on reviewMarketing-wise, there are few things companies dream of more than their names becoming a shorthand for their products.
In the UK, we don't say "ballpoint pen", we say "Biro". We occasionally say "hot tub", but we're as likely to say "Jacuzzi". At a restaurant, you don't ask for a "cola", you ask for a "Coke".
Perhaps the most famous of these examples is in floorcare — we seldom go to the effort of saying "vacuum cleaner" in the UK, instead we say "Hoovers".
However, for robot vacuum cleaners, that's not so true; instead, they're commonly known as Roombas, after a line of robot vacuums designed by iRobot.
To find out whether the sub-brand deserves such hallowed status, I put it to the test for my in-depth Roomba i5+ review.
I've had the Roomba Combo i5+ for a few weeks now, and as I live in a house of four 26 to 28-year-olds, it's safe to say it's been put through its paces.
All four of us tend to cook separately, meaning that there are up to four dinners being cooked in the kitchen every night, and four dinners' worth of debris on the floor, providing the perfect environment to test out the Roomba.
So yes, we're in need of some cleaning hacks.
It's cleaned the kitchen every day and the rest of the house a few times per week, and I've also swapped in the mop attachment a few times and had it give the floors a deep clean.
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The i5+ is delivered in a pleasingly compact boxThe Roomba was delivered swiftly and efficiently, in a surprisingly small box that belies how big the unit is.
Inside the box were all of the bits required to get started: the robot vacuum itself (obviously) — which was already fully put together and needed no assembly — the mop attachment, a couple of instruction cards, a spare filter, and an American charging cable.
Oddly, the British cable came in a separate package, which is probably something to do with iRobot being an American company. It was delivered alongside the box containing everything else, though, so I've got no issue with that.
Because I tested out the i5+, rather than the "standard" i5, I was sent the brand's Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal dock, which allows the Roomba to empty itself for up to 60 days, saving you even more work.
If you opt for the more affordable model, then you'll be sent a standard charging dock, which doesn't have the self-emptying properties of the upgraded base but is pleasingly compact.
Set-upBeing honest, I was anticipating that setting up the Roomba Combo would be a massive pain in the neck.
My previous experience with connecting purportedly "smart" appliances to my wifi network has been nothing short of agonising.
However, I'm pleased to report that within half an hour of opening the box, my Roomba was exploring its new surroundings.
Inside the delivery box was a simple, colourful instruction card that talked me through the initial setup steps. The final stages of setup, meanwhile, are explained to you via the iRobot app.
One of the final things you'll be asked to do during setup is name your Roomba Combo, a step that helps with a phenomenon I'm sure iRobot encourages, which is making your robot vacuum into sort of a pet, and encouraging you to form an emotional attachment to it. (It's not working on me, I swear).
Once my housemates and I had pointedly named ours after our less-than-tidy housemate, setup was pretty much complete.
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As you might be able to tell, when I chose the name of my Roomba I hadn't yet thought about the fact I'd have to publish screenshots in a national newspaper.One of the things that separates the Roomba Combo from some of its more budget compatriots is its ability to "map" your floorplan, allowing it to work according to a blueprint, rather than just roaming the house randomly bumping into things.
(It does rather a lot of that anyway, but we'll get into that later).
To get this blueprint integrated, your Roomba needs to explore your house, meaning that you need to move anything that's not a permanent fixture in your house. While this is a bit of a pain, it's a good excuse to tidy the place up.
Once you've given the house a once over, the Roomba will take to pottering around and figuring out a floorplan for your house, a process that took around an hour for a house of my size.
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The Roomba created a remarkably accurate map of my downstairsIt does this with remarkable accuracy, even figuring out where the boundaries of each room are. Once these boundaries are set, you can label each room, enabling you to tell the Roomba to clean the kitchen, lounge, hallway, or wherever else.
The Roomba Combo i5 comes in two guises, with a gulf in price between them.
The "standard" i5 is £399 on iRobot's website, making it the cheapest vacuum/mop combo that the brand offers, and only £20 more expensive than the entry-level i1, which comes with no mopping capabilities.
The i5+ is a rather more hefty £649. While that makes it the most affordable self-emptying combo model that iRobot sells, it's certainly more of an investment, and people will be split on whether having the extra features justifies an extra £250.
For comparison, though, the i8+ — the next model up — usually retails for £799.99, and all you really get for that extra £150 is the ability to clean specific zones of rooms (e.G. Under the kitchen table), and to specify "no-mop zones".
Eufy, one of iRobot's main competitors, sells its most comparable model, the X8 Pro, for £599, £50 cheaper than iRobot's model. However, the i5 comes out just on top when you get into the nitty-gritty of the stats (it has a bigger capacity, is lighter, etc), and when you compare the brands side-by-side, people tend to rate the cleaning performance of Roombas more than that of Eufys.
And at the time of writing the Roomba Combo i5+ is actually cheaper than the Eufy X8, thanks to a very generous deal on Amazon that takes its price down to just £449 (a 36% discount).
Roomba i5+ review: Design and build9
The Roomba has a sleek black and grey design that fits into any colour schemeAlthough they come with varying levels of expertise, Roomba Combos all look vaguely the same — like a hockey puck for giants.
That isn't to say they look bad. As far as robot vacuum cleaners go, they're quite stylish, with a sleek black design that will fit neatly into any interior design scheme, and a texturally satisfying grey fabric upper that prevents it from looking too sinister.
At 3.18kg, it's pretty lean for a robot vacuum cleaner (the competing Eufy X8 is over 4kg), but that'll only really matter if you're planning on carrying it up and down stairs fairly regularly.
I quickly realised that its design is more important than I'd first thought, as it has to live in a part of your house that allows it to reach all of the high-traffic areas easily.
It also can't be blocked in by anything, meaning there's no way of covering it up like you could a regular cordless vacuum cleaner.
The trade-off you make if you opt for the convenience of the self-emptying model is that you'll have to also have the Clean Base on display.
While bulky, it's still sleek enough, with a ridged design that makes it look as much like a speaker as anything else; if you saw it, your first assumption wouldn't be that it's home to up to two months' worth of detritus.
There are two ways to use the Roomba Combo as a vacuum cleaner. The first is by getting it to "clean everywhere", which you can ask it to do pretty much straight out of the box.
If you select this function, the Roomba will behave very much like any other budget robot vacuum, moving randomly, bumping into things and getting the job done in a rather chaotic way.
The better way of proceeding is to first get your Roomba to map your house, as I explained earlier in this review.
This will allow you to tell it to clean certain rooms, enabling you to create a cleaning schedule that works for you. I get mine to vacuum the kitchen every day, and clean the kitchen and hallway, which don't get anywhere near as dirty, once every two days.
Unfortunately, the i5 doesn't have the technology required to specify specific "zones" in each room, meaning I can't tell mine to, say, clean beneath the kitchen table, or next to the front door. If you want this technology, you'll have to splurge on the i8 (or any model more expensive than that).
The other key piece of technology the i5 doesn't have is the ability to recognise and avoid obstacles, meaning it does still tend to bump into things, albeit nowhere near as much as it does without mapping. To be honest, I didn't mind this at all; the Roomba's clumsiness is oddly endearing, like when you see a dog trying and failing to jump onto a sofa.
I was incredibly impressed by how thoroughly the Roomba Combo vacuumed hard-to-reach areas; it cleaned thoroughly underneath my kitchen table, around plant pots and the far corners of every room, and the wasteland beneath my sofa is clean for the first time since I moved in.
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I was very impressed at the i5's ability to clean hard-to-reach areas such as underneath the kitchen tableIt's also important to remember that the Roomba learns as it goes, improving its knowledge of each area of the house each time it cleans it. After vacuuming it at least once per day for a couple of weeks, it knows the kitchen like the back of its proverbial hand.
However, with more unfamiliar areas, it does tend to miss spots; the first couple of times it cleaned my living room, it became obsessed with cleaning beneath my TV console and sofa (where it was in danger of becoming entangled in wires) to the detriment of the wide open areas of the living room, which remained comparably unclean.
Having said that, I have been incredibly impressed by its ability to negotiate uneven terrain; it can climb onto doormats and carpets without breaking a sweat, and has no issue with the small ledge between my kitchen and living room.
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The i5 had no issue navigating the small inclines between roomsAnd in case you weren't already aware, it's worth saying that you will not be able to throw out your incumbent vacuum cleaner when your Roomba Combo comes along; you will still need to get stuck in now and again to give things a deep clean.
Installing the mop attachment is incredibly easy; there is a removable mop cloth that slots into the mop attachment, which replaces the front vacuuming element of your Roomba. Swapping the two elements is easy; one unclicks, and the other clicks in.
Before you slot in the mop attachment, you'll also have to fill it with water in the same way as you would an iron or steamer; you can also optionally add a few drops of floor cleaner.
When the Roomba mops, it will also do a once-over with its vacuum beforehand, to make sure that the surface it's mopping is free of debris. However, the i5's self-emptying features don't work when the combo attachment is affixed, meaning you'll have to empty it yourself.
I was pleasantly surprised by the Roomba Combo's mopping performance; it gave the floor a good superficial clean, getting rid of any spills and leaving my white tiles noticeably shinier than they were before.
However, as with the vacuum, you will need to occasionally get the mop and bucket out, as the service the Roomba offers is nowhere near as thorough as a proper wet mop; it's more akin to cleaning the floor with a wet wipe.
Roomba i5+ review: App9
You can instruct the Roomba to do almost all tasks from the app's homescreen9
I created schedules that meant the kitchen was cleaned every day, while all other areas were cleaned every two daysTraditionally, I've not been a fan of the apps that come with smart tech: they're usually an afterthought and hamper rather than enhance usability.
However, I've got no such qualms with the iRobot app, which is sleek, well-designed and easy to use (from my iPhone, at least — I can't speak to the Android experience).
From the central home screen, you can see what your Roomba is doing, select from a list of favourite tasks and schedule jobs; pretty much everything you'll ever need it to do.
I also appreciated how easy and quick the app makes it to "send home" your Roomba Combo when it starts a job. Say, for example, you're at the crescendo of a dramatic film or hopping onto a work meeting and your Roomba starts vacuuming, you can cancel the job immediately with two taps of the app.
Roomba i5+ review: VerdictI touched on this briefly earlier in this review, but it's my firm belief that the success of the Roomba is down to iRobot's realisation that people treat them as much as pets as they do as appliances.
That's why the app says "welcome to the world" when you first name your Roomba and why it "returns home" rather than "returns to charging base". It also helps that more affordable Roomba models have a penchant for bumping into things, like a dumb dog.
However, beneath all that, this is a great option for people such as myself who probably should vacuum every day, but are too lazy or busy to do so. (I claim I'm the latter, but I'm 100% the former).
It's extremely well-placed on the spectrum of robot vacuums, I'd say; sophisticated enough to do what you need it to do to a high standard, without the bells and whistles that would add hundreds more pounds to its RRP.
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