Best Robot Vacuum for Hardwood and Carpet

So you’re considering buying a robot vacuum to help you around the house? Someone that will clean without you having to chase them around all day, right? No more bending down or cleaning hard to reach areas.

Now is absolutely the time to get one. Previously, these devices were out of reach for most people. Nowadays, affordable and quality brands have emerged, putting them in a price range that most people can buy.

The tech in these machines has improved also. They can recognize when people and pets are nearby and reroute themselves, and some even have the ability to integrate with your Alexa device.

Certainly, the suction power does not match that of a traditional upright vacuum, but these are great for getting in hard to reach spots, like under your bed. And they make a great helper in that you can set it to roam the house, cleaning up that small dirt everybody tracks around.

In this article, we are going to go over all the ins and outs of robot vacuums, and then show off three great Amazon picks for you to consider.

round floor robot vacuum cleaning under a small corner table

What to Look For / Consider

  • What Are My Needs? Do you have a pet cat or dog? If so, you are probably looking for a vacuum that excels at pet hair pickup. On the other hand, if you have hardwood floors or vinyl ones at that, you should look for a vacuum that performs well on such surfaces.
  • Do I Want Smartphone/Tablet capability? You can control some of these robot vacuums using an app installed on your device. These companion apps are a handy way to schedule the vacuum to clean, control the vacuum, and map where it has already cleaned up.
  • Battery Life – If you have a large home, you might want a bigger battery, so it lasts longer. But if you have a smaller house, or just want to save some dollars, choose a model that can go back to its charge port and recharge its batteries if needed while cleaning.
  • What’s My Budget? It is probably the most significant factor of all for most consumers. You can spend anywhere from $100 to up to $1000 on these robot vacuums. As always, you get what you pay for. You might miss out on some features like Wi-Fi connectivity if you go with a lower-end model. It’s all about what you personally need.

Do I Even Need One?

We think the answer is yes, especially if you have young children, pets, or just want a bit of help keeping your hardwood floors and carpets in good shape with some light cleaning.

We want to emphasize that this is not a substitute for a once or twice-weekly cleaning with your upright vacuum but can help keep things under control in between by picking up small crumbs, bits of tracked cat litter, and hair from pets and humans. Even thick carpets can be maintained with the right thick carpet robot vacuum.

They can even pick up dust bunnies that form or other small particles that come about from being in a high traffic house-glitter from craft projects, sprinkles from making Christmas cookies, and more.

Given that you can schedule them to run and that there are HEPA filter models available, everybody can benefit from using these vacuums.

round white floor robot vacuum cleaning a wood floor close to a window

Health Benefits of Vacuuming Your Home

The act of vacuuming your home has heaps of benefits – and some of these relate to your family’s good health. Here are some health reasons why regular vacuuming, with an upright vacuum and a robot vacuum, is good for you.

  • Promotes Good Hygiene: Doing a quick once over with your vacuum can pick up allergens and dust. This way, they don’t build up in your home. The act of vacuuming helps keep dirt from becoming embedded in the carpet.
  • Keeps Carpets Alive: Carpeting is expensive! Keep its life extended by vacuuming regularly. They look new, and they are safer for kids and pets to lay and play on when you vacuum them.
  • Keeps Your Family in Good Health: Your carpet can carry health risks you might not even see. For instance, if you live in a place with high humidity, the carpet has a higher risk of growing mold if you don’t keep it maintained properly. Carpets are like a filter: They trap dust mites, dirt particles, and more, which can be a bother for people managing allergies or asthma.
  • Mental Health: We, as parents and homeowners, are stressed enough. If you and your partner work full time, house cleaning can seem like an impossible task. Let a robot vacuum help you by handling the floor cleaning.

The amount of time you should spend vacuuming your home varies. It all depends on the kind of traffic you have. Do you have pets? Do people track in a lot of dirt? Is your house really busy?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, aim to vacuum about twice per week. You can handle some of this using your robot vacuum for help.

Aim for an upright vacuum, as well as a robot vacuum, that handles this sort of work.

If you answered no to the above questions, you can vacuum once a week. You can also have some leniency when it comes to choosing your robot vacuum, as you don’t need to look for one that specializes in pet hair or high traffic homes.

And, to be fair, you only have to vacuum the high-traffic areas often. If you close off certain rooms of the house so your pets cannot access them, or kids cannot enter them, you just need to vacuum the main areas where traffic happens; living rooms, hallways, dining areas, and the like.

After all, dirt particles are tricky: they don’t stay at the top of the carpet. Instead, they fall down into the bottom where we cannot see them.

Once you start seeing dirt and spots on your carpet, this is an indicator that the carpets are in rough shape. They should have been vacuumed a while ago. Stains may be already forming, and some damage may have occurred.

Does Vacuuming Hurt Carpets or Hardwood Floors?

Nope-just make sure you have the correct vacuum for the job. For instance, you would not use a commercial vacuum in a home setting, and a household-grade vacuum would not be able to handle the traffic of an office or public building.

A vacuum designed for wood floors should be free of beater brushes, and feature felt or rubber padding, so they don’t accidentally scratch up the floor.

Most carpets of today are designed to withstand vacuuming, so do it twice per week, once per week, or when you feel it is appropriate.

After all, when people and pets in your home step onto the dirt, it becomes crunched into the carpet, leading to embedded dirt and a not so clean surface on which to sit, stand or lay.

What’s more, you should vacuum for the sake of the pads underneath the carpet so that stains, smells, and grime do not build up.

Are They Bothersome?

Not at all! A loud vacuum can be scary for kids and pets. Children with autism especially may become upset when a loud vacuum is used. Dogs are known for having an aversion to vacuum cleaners.

A standard upright vacuum cleaner emits about 75 and 80 decibels. 85 decibels and lower are considered safe. Most robot vacuums emit 54 to 60 decibels.

Thankfully, the robotic vacuums of today are nice and quiet, and you can run them without fear of an infant or child waking up during nap time or crying when the device is used. Your pets will likely be curious about the vacuum or ignore it altogether.

So, for those moments when you would like to tidy up but don’t want to bother the family with your upright, these robot vacuums will help you greatly.

How Long Can You Run a Robot Vacuum?

That all depends upon the battery’s size. Some brands we looked at averaged two hours of runtime, while others just one hour. In the middle, we found some that lasted about 1.5 hours.

The next question we usually get about this is, “How do you charge a robot vacuum?” The answer is that the robot will return to its wall charge port all by itself and recharge there. With less advanced models, you can physically move it to the port and let it recharge that way.

Either way, you don’t have to worry about buying batteries for the device; it’s like a cell phone-you just recharge it until ready to use again.

Featured Products

Now let’s get to what you REALLY came for: The best robot vacuum for hardwood and carpet products on Amazon. These are all highly rated products with great features and favorable reviews from other users.

iRobot Roomba 675 with Wi-Fi Connectivity

Our first pick is the widely recognized brand Roomba. People everywhere love this brand, and for a good reason. The features of this little vacuum are remarkable.

  • Dirt Detect sensors help the Roomba to find and work harder on concentrated dirt areas, such as those found in the high-traffic zones of your home.
  • This Roomba is capable of holding over a half-liter of debris. It uses a 3 Stage Cleaning System to lift, loosen and suck away dirt, hair, and dust from your carpets and hardwood floors.
  • The brushes on this are great for hardwood and carpet. They are Dual Multi-Surface brushes that work in tandem to lift debris of varying sizes. The vacuum’s cleaning head adapts to fit the pile height of your carpet and your hardwood/vinyl flooring.

The greatness doesn’t stop there with this vacuum. The sensors do a great job of getting the Roomba around objects in your home. It won’t bump into kids, pets, furniture, or walls. You will be amazed about how it goes around all objects with ease.

It is also an app connected. You can bring up the app on your phone or tablet, called iRobot HOME App, to schedule a cleaning whenever you would like. You can control its cleaning also.

If you have a Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, you can use vocal commands to start the vacuum on its cleaning journey.

The runtime on this is 90 minutes. That’s a good, solid hour and a half. You can allow the robot to roam before it heads back to its port for a charge.

But what did other users say about this robot vacuum? Well, they had plenty of good things to say, considering the over 2000 reviews and 4.2 out of 5-star rating.

It is, after all, the Amazon Choice for Robot Vacuums! Now let’s look at customer reviews-please note these have been paraphrased.

One review, left by an Amazon Customer, stated this: “The other brands just didn’t come close…I have had my robot for 2 weeks now…Rosie does a great job. She doesn’t get everywhere…. she gets 95%, and that takes a big load off…”

The user went on to say that due to having a large home-3800 square feet-they had to buy a set of virtual walls. These are accessories that will help your Roomba stay in the boundaries you set.

Thinking of how it will perform with pet hair? Another user with three cats stated the following: “Love, love love this Roomba! …it picks up all the cat hair. We have all wood and tile floors…it does a good job cleaning on all surfaces. …Since we have 3 cats, we have to pause it a couple of times during a cleaning cycle to empty the bin…. We are seniors, and it is so nice to sit in our recliners and have the Roomba do its job.”

For those of you on a budget, and for those of you with allergy sufferers in your home (maybe YOU have allergies?), we have a vacuum you will love.

Your wallet will also smile. And no, the quality is not compromised-this next vacuum we are examining has a 4 out of 5-star rating. Let’s begin by looking over the main features.

  • New for 2019: The new version is manufactured with a better battery life-this time, users will get a 90-minute run time out of a charge. The programming has also been upgraded for better navigation around obstacles.
  • It works great on hardwood, tile, and shorter carpet. Just press the 1-touch button and watch it go.
  • Small: With a tiny 3-inch profile, your vacuum can definitely hit the hard to reach places like under the bed or under the end tables-great for people who cannot bend to reach these areas.
  • Safe for allergy sufferers and pets: The dust filter keeps the air clean and keeps dust inside of the bin. This vac features a no-underbrush design. This way, cat and dog hair will not clog up the rotating underbrush.
  • For brushes, this vac does have two side sweeper brushes that do an excellent job of catching dirt and debris on hardwood floors and in corners.
  • Sensors are great-the vacuum will not fall off an edge or go down the stairs.

One “con” we noticed off the bat was that this vac does require three-hour charge time. It is not a big deal most of the time, but if you wanted to use your vacuum in a hurry, it could be a pain point. This vacuum also has to be manually returned to its charge port when the batteries die, and it also lacks app capability.

However, the good really outweighs the bad. For instance, you will love how nice and quiet it is. A new mom actually did the top review with two dogs on top of her new baby.

“…I spend way too much time vacuuming up fur. Now that I spend most of my time trying to keep a tiny new human alive, I was desperate to …save time on household chores.”

The user goes on to discuss the fact that she has long and thick hair, which was a “vacuum killer” but that this vacuum does a really great job of sweeping it up.

Another customer stated that “…at this price point, I wasn’t expecting much. This little machine proved me wrong!” The user even described how the device motivated her kids to clean, as they enjoyed watching it navigate around the house and “eat” dirt.

So, as you can see, it is a pretty good value for the money. It lacks some of the convenient features that higher priced models have, such as the ability to find its own charge dock or be controlled by an app.

However, those looking to save some cash but still get the convenience of a robot vacuum will be glad to get their hands on this device.

We saved this one for last because YOU-the consumer-has rated this one a 4.4 out of 5. In fact, we did a complete review of the RoboVac 11S. Bear in mind that this vacuum has over 8,000 reviews. They say you can’t make everybody happy, but it seems that this vac has.

  • It has a very low profile-measures up at just 2.85 inches. It is also engineered to be quiet and has serious suction power also. It travels at 10.5 inches per second.
  • This vacuum detects when the extra suction power is needed and boosts accordingly to get that hard to reach dirt out of the carpet.
  • It can vacuum up to 100 minutes and is not much louder than a microwave.
  • It has an infrared sensor that detects and avoids objects, drop sensors to prevent falling, and a scratch-resistant top.
  • It automatically recharges when the batteries get low.
  • It can be remote control operated. It comes with the remote, the power adapter, charge base, and other accessories.

It is a vac that really does it all. You can use it on hardwood floors, plus laminate, tile, and low to medium pile carpets. Please note this is not ideal for dark-colored or high-pile carpets and rugs.

The user reviews and photos really speak for themselves. The vacuum is EXTREMELY user-friendly. Users found the instructions very easy to follow.

Should the vacuum beep while it is in use, you simply use a table found on the bottom of the machine to tell you what the beeps mean. Simply remedy the problem and BAM-you’re back to relaxing while your Eufy does all the work for you.

Users also noted that the vacuum was very quiet. One user stated they are able to work while the vac runs without being distracted, and also went on to say that their dog did not mind the machine either.

Other great “pros” about this machine included its ability to go to the dock and charge itself, and how it is able to untangle itself from small cords it may come upon. (You should still always pick up all your cords before allowing your vacuum to roam). You can also set the timer to clean at a specific time during the day.

Some of the cons: This vacuum does not have an app you can use to control it. Also, the vacuum may get “confused” on black or dark carpets, as it cannot detect them.

Those of you with pets will be overjoyed to get your hands on this model. Lots of users with cats and dogs found this to be an excellent vacuum for keeping things neat. Many reviews had people describing how “shocked” they were to see how much hair the vacuum had actually picked up-despite its size, it really packs a punch.

Indeed, all of the Eufy brand robotic vacuums are worth your while. Though the model we picked out has the most reviews, we encourage you to check out some other too – customers love these little vacs and you will, too.

So which vacuum robot is best for you?

Which of these vacuums do you think you will get for your home? You can’t go wrong with any of them!

All of these have great reviews, are reasonably priced, and will help keep your rooms clean. Buy one, set it up, put up your feet, relax, and let somebody else do the cleaning for you, enjoy!