Hunter Fenollol specializes in smart home gadgets and appliances with a focus in robot vacuums, Roombas and security cameras.

Many of today's best robot vacuums are also able to mop floors. This can be useful if you have a mix of hard floors and carpet, but be aware that robovac mopping tends not to clean as well as good old manual mopping.

However, the software was still buggy at time of review, and we'd also expect higher suction for the premium price.

We noticed that it's better at picking up more granular materials like pet hair and kitty litter compared to Cheerios — this is usually the other way around. So it works better for collecting smaller debris.

Who it's best for: This model is a great choice if your floors are mostly wood or laminate, thanks to its large parquet floor brush that safely and thoroughly cleans the cracks and crevices of hardwood floors.

It's not perfect. Our tester found it struggled to follow more specific commands. However, it works fine if you just set it to clean your whole space in the most thorough way possible, so if that's your main plan for it, then it's still a solid recommendation.

If the robot vacuum has a mop function, we see how it copes with fresh liquid spillages as well as dried-on, sticky messes.

It’s hard to find a robot vac that doesn’t have some form of mopping, but not all mops are created equal. I looked for mopping bots that could get up dried-on stains, like milk and ketchup, and scrub up small wet spills without messing themselves up.

Dust, pollen, pet dander, smoke and more are all caught by these high-efficiency filters that are also found on air purifiers, and since HEPA filters are available on many Top 3 Automatic Vacuum Cleaners upright, canister and stick vacuums, it’s relatively easy to find a model to fit your needs.

Though it’s an investment at $1,199, consider that you’re getting almost three cleaning devices in one package: a robot vacuum, robot mop, and a hand vacuum for reaching all the areas the robot misses.

Here's the table on which robot vacuums are best at picking up dirt and pet hair. Note that while all of the robot vacuums were tested by picking up the same material on the same surfaces, those with an asterisk were tested in a 15 x 15-foot square, whereas the other models were tested in a 5 x 5-foot square.

Shark's IQ robot vacuum is stacked with smarts and collects then deposits debris into its docking station after each cleaning session. This bagless base system holds over a month's worth of dirt. You can use its advanced scheduling feature to set and forget it until it's time to empty out the dock.

Some brands will address this by tapering their brushrolls or breaking them in the middle, with the aim of quickly directing hair towards the bin inlet. Dreame even has an alternative brushroll attachment that has little blades to chop up hair so it can be more easily managed.

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