Robot Vacuums Put to the Test: 14 Models, One Living Room

At 3.14 inches tall, the Saros 10R was the only robot in our test that reliably glided under our low sofa without getting stuck, and StarSight 2.0 navigation avoided every item in our night obstacle course on the first pass. It finished with the highest combined score across suction, navigation, and hands-off dock maintenance.

The Dreame X60 Max Ultra Complete posted the highest raw pickup rate of any robot in our embedded-sand carpet test, and its dual robotic legs cleared an 8.8cm double-layer threshold that stopped three other units cold. It's also Dreame's thinnest robot yet, at just 3.13 inches.

The Narwal Flow 2 was the clear winner on our pet hair test, thanks to a dual short-roller brush system that Narwal says achieves a certified 0% tangle rate — and in six weeks of runs on synthetic fur, ours never once needed the brush cut out and cleared by hand.

Roborock's first roller-mop robot, the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow, passed our paper-towel wipe test with the cleanest result of any robot in this lineup, and its extending roller reached noticeably closer to our baseboards and bathtub edge than any pad-style mop we tested.

The Shark PowerDetect was the most consistent robot in our test at automatically boosting suction or mopping passes exactly where our debris and stains were concentrated, using its DirtDetect and StainDetect sensors — nice to see on a robot priced well under the flagship tier.

The eufy Omni C28 undercuts most of the flagships in this test by $600 or more while still packing a self-cleaning HydroJet roller mop and a full 5-in-1 Omni Station — features that were exclusive to $1,500+ robots just two years ago.