Suction power: 240AW | Bin capacity: 0.2 gallon | Battery life: 60 min | Weight: 6.83 pounds | Charging dock: Yes

The Dyson V15 Detect is just as impressive now as it was when it first came out in 2021. It’s our top pick because it provides the best mix of features and its suction power is remarkable. Even a few years after it’s initial release, it remains one of the best vacuum cleans out there today.

One thing that was immediately apparent during my testing was that Dyson models just have superior suction, period. That’s not to say a cordless vacuum from another brand can’t get the job done, because they absolutely can. But even in auto mode, all of Dyson’s vacuums did a better job trapping even the smallest dust and debris.

The “Detect” in this model’s name refers in part to the laser “blade” on the Fluffy Optic cleaner head. It does a great job of illuminating floors to clearly show you where the mess really is, and that goes for large debris like food and granules of cat litter, as well as much smaller stuff like layers of dust on an untouched part of the floor. But it’s worth noting that this light is only present on the Fluffy Optic head, a brush roll designed to work best on hard floors. The V15 Detect comes with a few other head attachments, including a Digital Motorbar head that automatically detangles hair from the brush bar as you clean. That’ll be better for all floor types, including carpet, but you won’t get the same illumination effect.

The V15 Detect also has a piezo acoustic sensor that recognizes the size and frequency of the particles it’s sucking up. It’ll show that information on the machine’s LCD display in a neat little bar graph. Is this information useful? Not particularly, but it’s satisfying to clock this while cleaning and see the bars increase and decrease as you move throughout your home. However, this is more of a neat perk than a killer feature; it’s not going to change the way you vacuum your home. But the piezo sensor is also involved in automatically adjusting the V15 Detect’s cyclone engine to better clean particularly dirty floors.

That automatic adjustment is separate from the machine’s three power settings: Auto, Eco and Boost. I spent most of my time in Auto mode, every so often switching to Boost in rooms where I knew I needed a more thorough cleaning. Eco mode is convenient to have if you need to conserve battery life.

But the V15 Detect, like all of the other Dyson machines I tested, really stands out for its suction power. I rarely, if ever, had to go over the same spot twice because the V15 Detect captured all of the dust and debris the first time. In my one-cat household, it’s easy to see tufts of fur on our hardwood floors and tile, but they’re basically invisible on our upstairs carpet. But it didn’t matter if I could see fur or not — the V15 Detect collected all of it. After every cleaning the bin was full and I was consistently shocked by how much cat hair was hiding in my carpet.

As with most cordless vacuums, you get a number of attachments with the V15 Detect. In addition to the Fluffy Optic and Digital Motorbar cleaner heads, hair screw, combination and crevice tools are included in the box. I particularly like the hair screw tool, which is great for vacuuming chairs and couches, and the crevice tool is handy for cleaning car interiors and other tight spaces. The docking station must be mounted to a wall, but it’s separate from the vacuum’s charger, which means you can power up and use the V15 Detect before picking a permanent place for it in your home.

My biggest gripe with the V15 Detect is that it doesn’t have a single-button start like the newer and more advanced Dyson Gen 5 Detect and Dyson V15 Detect Submarine do. You must press and hold down the trigger to vacuum, which requires constant effort. However, that’s a small price to pay considering the complete package you’re getting. At $750, the V15 Detect is a machine on the higher-end of the price spectrum that’s well worth the money if you want an easy to use cordless vacuum that will provide a truly thorough clean every time.

Battery life: 70 min | Weight: 18 pounds | Charging dock: Yes

Shark’s latest cordless vacuum, the PowerDetect, earned the runner-up spot here thanks to its strong suction power, self-emptying base and overall good value for the money. It’s not as powerful as our top pick, but it didn’t choke at the first sign of pet hair and captured most debris around my home in one pass. It automatically kicks up the motor depending on the type of flooring you’re cleaning and how much debris it detects. I particularly appreciated its edge-detection feature, which turns the power up when you’re running the vacuum over the floors next to your walls.

This Shark cordless vacuum has a “multiflex” articulating portion of its main attachment, which lets you clean underneath tables and other furniture more easily. While I didn’t have to use this too much (I’m just used to crouching down and articulating my own body while I clean), I can see how it would be useful for folks with limited mobility. The cleaner head has small wheels on either side as well, making it super smooth to roll the vacuum from room to room when it’s not actively cleaning. The built-in light on the cleaner head does a good job of illuminating the floor in front of and around you, so you can better see where the biggest messes lie.

Aside from being an all-around good vacuum, another major selling point for this $500 Shark machine is its self-emptying base. The machine will automatically recharge and empty its contents into the 2L attached garbage can when it’s set back down on the base. Other cordless vacuums have this feature, but they’re typically sequestered to more expensive models. Having one here just sweetens the deal, adding yet another perk to this midrange cordless vac. It may not have Wi-Fi or app connectivity like our previous runner-up pick, but I’m willing to bet that more people will get more use out of a self-emptying base than an app for their vacuum cleaner.

Suction power: 240W | Bin capacity: 0.75 liters | Battery life: 60 min | Weight: 6.6 pounds | Charging dock: No

Levoit’s latest LVAC-300 stick vacuum beat out our previous pick in this category, the Tineco Pure One S11, thanks to its more premium design, easier handling and superior suction. The Pure One S11 remains a great affordable vacuum, but the experience of using the LVAC-300 is noticeably better and worth the $350 price tag (plus, you can often find it on sale for less).

Levoit’s machine assembles quite easily out of the box, and although it doesn’t come with a charging dock, it’s easy to disassemble as well. The battery pops out quickly too, so you can choose to remove it when you need more juice for more convenient power-ups. It has a single-button start and another button that lets you cycle between three cleaning modes: Eco, Mid and Turbo. As you clean, the small digital screen will display battery drain as well, making it easy to see when you’re going to need to pause to recharge.

The LVAC-300 handles better than our previous top budget pick in that it feels smoother when you’re gliding it across your floors and feels less clunky overall. It did a good job sucking up debris of all kinds, including dirt, coffee grounds, blades of grass, cat hair and bigger dust bunnies, and it has HEPA filtration, too. Its bin size is adequate as well, as I was able to clean the main floor of my house more than three times before I needed to empty it.

It’s worth noting that, most of the time, I ran the LVAC-300 on the Mid cleaning mode. Battery life is in line with what the company estimates, but if you have a particularly large home, you may need to stop and recharge at some point.

But for $350, the LVAC-300 offers a lot of value. It’s arguably best for those who live in apartments or small- to medium-sized homes, or those who just want a no-frills, easy-to-use cordless vacuum without dropping an excessive amount of money. It holds its own against pet hair as well, but that’s coming from a person who only has one cat; you’d be better off getting a stronger vacuum with a larger bin if you have a small menagerie in your home.

Suction power: 70AW/180W | Bin volume: 0.75 liters | Run time: 50 min | Weight: 3.2 pounds | Charging dock: No

If you want something even cheaper than the LVAC-300, the Levoit LVAC-200 is your best bet. It’s $200, frequently on sale for less and it does a good job cleaning up all kinds of dry messes. It has three suction modes and a single-button start, and I found it did a good job cleaning both hard and carpeted floors. I had to keep it on the strongest cleaning mode the entire time I vacuumed carpet, but with that it did suck up a good amount of pet hair. However, it did take a couple of passes to suck up larger debris particles, like chunks of fabric fuzz.

Most cordless stick vacuums can be disassembled in some way, but that could be a big selling point for Levoit’s machine. It doesn’t come with a storage base like others on our list, but it’s pretty small — you could easily detach the cleaning head from the extension arm, and the arm from the motor base and store all three pieces separately in a closet when you’re not using it (it comes with a hand-vac attachment as well). For those who don’t want to do that, the vacuum stands upright on its own thanks to a locking mechanism where the floor cleaning brush head attaches to the arm.

It’s also worth mentioning that Levoit’s machine has a five-stage filtration system, but it’s not a HEPA filtration system like the LVAC-300. Ultimately, the LVAC-200’s $200 starting price is the bare minimum I’d recommend spending on a cordless vacuum (sales aside), so if you only want to spend what’s necessary to get one of these home, this is a good model to consider.

Suction power: 240AW | Bin capacity: 0.2 gallon | Battery life: 60 min | Weight: 8.3 pounds | Charging dock: Yes

Overkill for most, the Dyson V15 Detect Submarine will be exactly what some are looking for: a vacuum with all of Dyson’s signatures along with the ability to wash hard floors. It’s similar to the V15 Detect in power and design, but it comes with Dyson’s “submarine” wet cleaner head that has two water reservoirs (one for clean water and one for dirty) and a brush bar that does all the scrubbing. To wash tile and other hard floors, you fill the clean reservoir with water, reattach it to the head and turn on the machine as if you were just vacuuming. The built-in motor ever so slightly propels the machine in this mop mode, and as you move it around, it sucks up spills and other wet messes into the dirty reservoir while also washing the floor.

In my testing, the V15 Detect Submarine did a great job sucking up spills and a pretty good job cleaning my hardwood and tile, even in spots where there were more persistent stains (although it did take a few passes to fully suss them out). I typically use a corded steamer to wash the hard floors in my home, and while the V15 Detect Submarine doesn’t use heat and can’t quite match up to a device that does, it’s impressive nonetheless for its abilities and convenience.

After my first go-around with the machine, I was excited to use it again primarily because the process is so easy. Instead of getting my steamer out, plugging it in and fighting with its cord as I moved around, I popped the Submarine cleaning head on the Dyson, filled the tank and off I went. It’s worth mentioning, though, that I did have to fill the clean-water reservoir twice to wash the main floor of my home (roughly 800 square feet), which added a few minutes to the process. After each session, you’ll want to empty both reservoirs, clean the brush head and let the whole attachment dry. After that, I found it was ready to go again the next day.

The V15 Detect is a solid vacuum and an above-average mop, but more than anything, it’s convenient. It’s one relatively thin and lightweight device that can clean all of the floors in your home without a ton of extra effort needed on your part and with few, if any, frustrations. But as with anything, convenience comes at a cost: you’ll pay $950 for this model, and no, you can’t just buy the Submarine head separately and use it with a standard Dyson stick vac. If you only have a little bit of tile or hard flooring in your home, it’ll be difficult to justify the cost of the Submarine — but if convenience is of utmost importance and you want one cordless vac-and-mop to rule them all, Dyson’s machine is a great option.

Suction power: 175W | Bin capacity: 2.5L | Battery life: 70 min | Weight: Not listed | Charging dock: Yes

While the Tineco Pure One S15 remains a solid vacuum cleaner, you get more for your money with the new Pure One Station 5. The biggest addition is the self-emptying base, which is a bit less imposing than the one on the Furfree but will still take up a small corner in your home. If you don’t have the space for this kind of base, still consider the One S15.

The $460 Pure One Station 5 also ups the ante with a higher-capacity dustbin and longer battery life, both of which let you vacuum for longer, making it an even better option for larger homes. It features six-stage HEPA filtration and a zero-tangle brush, plus 175W of suction. Like most of the other Tineco machines we’ve tested, this model also features the iLoop smart sensor, which automatically kicks up the suction power when it senses more debris to clean. In my testing, I found the Station 5 to be even better than the One S15 at picking up even the finest dirt particles, and it never took more than one pass to collect all of the rogue cat litter peppered around my cat’s box.

The self-emptying base is a true perk here, as it is with most other cordless vacuums that come with it. It’s not too loud, although we wouldn’t recommend running it with your family sleeping a few rooms over, and it makes it so you barely have to interact with the dirt the vacuum collects around your home. It also doesn’t require proprietary bags, which reduces the long-term cost of ownership.

Suction power: 230W | Bin capacity: 0.8 gallon | Battery life: 60 min | Weight: 5.29 pounds | Charging dock: Yes

Tineco’s high-end Pure One Station FurFree deserves a nod here because it was one of the cordless vacuums I tested that I wanted to use the most, and it’s arguably the most convenient option on the list. Not only does it have strong suction power and the company’s iLoop smart sensor, but it docks and charges in a self-emptying base that cleans all parts of the machine — brush, tube and dustbin — after each use.

The freestanding base is a little intimidating when you unbox it, purely because it has more parts than that of any vacuum cleaner I tested (including the Shark Detect Pro). The whole thing, vacuum included, remains relatively svelte; it was easy for me to tuck it into a corner of a room near an outlet. The vacuum itself has a single-button start and, while not quite as strong as the Dyson V15 Detect, did a good job cleaning up all kinds of messes, pet hair included. Run time comes in at 60 minutes, more than enough to clean my whole home, and it supports Auto and Max modes along with the auto-adjusting feature provided by the iLoop sensor.

The Pure One Station FurFree also supports Wi-Fi connectivity, with its mobile app showing you battery life, dustbin capacity and self-cleaning settings. But since the small screen on the docking station gives you most of that data as well, the app is just a bonus.

The biggest selling point of this cordless vacuum is its self-emptying base, which has its own large dustbin that can hold up to 60 days worth of dirt. It’s a plastic canister that takes no garbage bags, so there’s nothing to add to the cost of ownership — simply remove the base’s dustbin to empty into your own garbage can every couple of weeks and then snap it back into place. You can customize self-cleaning settings to do a quick clean (30 seconds long) or a deep clean (60 seconds), or keep it to the auto mode (45 seconds). The machine will clean itself whenever you return the vacuum to its dock, unless you manually disable this feature. I appreciate that the base automatically empties the vacuum’s dustbin during self-cleaning, but it’s also great that it uses gusts of air to clean the vacuum’s brush and tube. Lots of little particles and hair can get stuck in those parts, and with other vacuums, you’re left to clear those out yourself.

The “FurFree” in the Pure One Station’s name refers to the extra attachments that come with the machine that basically turn it into a pet-grooming tool. This will likely be more useful for dog owners, or maybe folks with more amenable cats than mine (she hates all vacuums — cordless, robot, you name it). If you’re not a pet owner, there’s a standard Tineco Pure One Station that’s otherwise an identical machine with the same self-cleaning base, but only comes with regular vacuum attachments, and costs $200 less. FurFree or regular, though, the Pure One Station is a great cordless vacuum that’s made better by its clever and convenient self-emptying base.

Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Obstacle avoidance, home mapping, LiDAR navigation | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: No | Self-empty: Yes | Good for pet hair: Yes

Shark’s AI robot vacuum with self-emptying base station ticks all of the boxes that a mid-range machine should. It offers reliable cleaning performance, its mobile app is easy to use and it produces accurate home maps. On top of that, its base is bagless, which means you won’t have to spend money on extra bags every few months.

Setting up the Shark is as simple as taking it and its base out of the box, plugging the base in and downloading the companion mobile app to finish things up. The machine connects to Wi-Fi, allowing you to control it via the app when you’re not at home, or using Google Assistant and Alexa voice control. The first journey the Shark makes is an “Explore Run,” during which it produces a map of your home that you can then edit from the mobile app.

The Shark produced a pretty accurate floorplan of my home, and I was happy to see a “re-explore” option that I could use if the map wasn’t up to my standards. With a completed map, you’re then asked to label rooms in your home. That way, you can send the Shark to only the bedroom for more direct cleaning jobs, select “no-go” zones and more.

The first few times I ran the Shark robot, I had it clean my whole apartment. It boasts a respectable run time of up to 120 minutes, which will be handy for bigger homes. I was impressed by how quiet it was – or rather, how much quieter it was compared to other robo-vacs I’ve tried. You’ll have to turn up the volume on your TV if it’s cleaning in the same room, but it’ll be hard to hear when it’s sucking up debris down the hallway.

It also did a decent job maneuvering its way around the cat toys I left out on the floor. The device’s object detection feature claims it can avoid things as small as four inches, but I found that it was much better at sensing and moving around the three-foot-long cat tunnel on my floor than the many tiny mouse toys.

But even if Mr. Mouse caught the edge of the Shark’s wheels now and then, the robo-vac took it all in stride. One thing I look for when testing robot vacuums is how much attention they need from me during cleanings. The best ones are hands-free and require no extra attention at all – once they start a job, they’re smart enough to putter around your home, move around objects and return to their base when they’re finished. With Shark’s robo-vac, I never had to tend to it when it was cleaning.

Now, I did my due diligence and picked up pieces of clothing and charging cables off the ground before running the Shark (ditto for every other robot vacuum I tested), so those things were never in the way. Most companion apps will actually remind you to do this before starting a cleaning job.

This Shark machine comes with an auto-empty station, so it will empty its dustbin after every cleaning run – and also during a job if its bin gets full before it’s done. In the latter situation, the Shark will go back to cleaning automatically after it’s freed up its bin. That’s a great feature, but I found the best thing about the base to be its bagless design. Shark’s device is unlike most other robot vacuum clean bases because you don’t have to keep buying proprietary garbage bags to outfit the interior of the base. When you want to empty the base, part of it snaps off and opens to eject debris, and it easily locks back in place when you return it. Not only is this convenient, but it also brings the lifetime cost of ownership down since you won’t be buying special bags every few months.

Its worth noting that Shark has a couple of models that are similar to this one that just have a different color scheme, a 30- versus 60-day self-cleaning base capacity and other minor differences. The biggest feature that would impact how you use the machine is the clean base capacity: we recommend springing for the 60-day models if you want to interact as little as possible with your robo-vac.

Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Obstacle avoidance, home mapping | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: Yes | Self-empty: Yes | Good for pet hair: Yes

Read our full Roomba Combo j9+ reivew

The Roomba Combo j9+ has everything we want in a combination robotic vacuum and mop. It offers incredibly powerful suction, deep floor scrubbing and a slew of smarts to avoid obstacles (including cat and dog poop!). It’s a better vacuum than its predecessor, the Roomba Combo j7+, and it also features a new Clean Base that can automatically refill its liquid tank. More than any Roomba before it, the Combo j9+ can make your floors sparkly clean with very little intervention on your part.

While it’s expensive, the Roomba Combo j9+ certainly beats paying for a professional cleaning service. It’s also an excellent accessory for busy parents who just want to keep their floors looking tidy. It’s one of the best robotic vacuums and mops for pet owners, especially for its ability to avoid pet waste. In fact, if the j9+ ends up making a poopy mess due to cat or dog droppings, iRobot will send you a replacement unit for free. (That offer only works for the first year, and it only applies to solid waste from cats and dogs, but it’s still a helpful guarantee for pet owners afraid of the havoc that a robo-vac might wreak.)

The Roomba Combo j9+ features home mapping and can accurately map your home far faster than any previous Roomba, and you can also use the iRobot app to specify room borders. You can also create cleaning routines and label objects to help it clean exactly where you’d like. The j9+ works with smart assistants from Amazon and Google as well, so you can just shout out cleaning requests to your smart speaker. While it’s not a completely magical cleaning robot – you’ll still need to clear up your floors to help it run well – it’s certainly the closest we’ve seen yet to the ideal robotic vacuum and mop for whole-home deep cleaning. — Devindra Hardawar, Senior Reporter

Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Auto mopping, obstacle avoidance, home mapping, self-emptying and self-refilling base | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: Yes | Self-empty: Yes | Good for pet hair: Yes

It didn’t take long for Shark to make stiff competition for iRobot’s Roomba Combo j9+. The PowerDetect 2-in-1 robot vacuum and mop works slightly differently to vacuum and wash your floors, but the outcome is quite similar. Instead of lowering a mop pad when scooting over hard flooring, Shark’s machine has a mop pad that lives on its underside and will deploy it when cleaning tile, wood and other similar floors. You as the user, during the initial setup process, will indicate in your home map where you have hard floors and when you have carpet. In that sense, it’s not as automated as iRobot’s device, but it’s just one additional step that you should only have to do one time.

When I tested the PowerDetect, I found that it had a very easy setup process (just like all of the other Shark robot vacuums I’ve tried) and it took very little time to putter around the main floor of my house to get an initial home map reading. After that, you can choose if you want the machine to vacuum, mop or do both, in which case it will first vacuum the floors and then mop those freshly cleaned surfaces.

Aside from the fact that it took the robo-vac a long time to fill up its tank before mopping (a minute or two longer than I expected), it did a nice job cleaning my mix of hardwood and tile floors. I also never had to untangle it from a messy situation, be it rogue charging cables on the floor or a steep lip on the legs of my coffee table. While I spent most of my time manually dictating cleaning jobs for the PowerDetect, you can set regular cleaning schedules using the modes you prefer, or tell the machine to only clean certain rooms at specific times.

Shark didn’t pull the NeverTouch Pro Base’s name out of thin air, either. After initial setup, you really don’t have to touch the base until you need to empty or refill it in some way — empty its debris container or refill its reservoir with water and cleaning solution. Shark claims the base can hold up to 60 days worth of vacuumed debris, which is pretty standard for a machine like this, and it can hold 30 days worth of liquid refill. That means you should be able to run the PowerDetect for at least a month before you have to interact with its base — great for those who hate floor chores, or just don’t have the time to baby a new gadget in their home.

Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Obstacle avoidance, home mapping | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: No | Self-empty: No | Good for pet hair: Yes

Dyson may have been late to the robo-vac party, but it made a remarkable machine with the 360 Vis Nav. Let’s get this out of the way at the top: this is a $1,000 robot vacuum cleaner that doesn’t have mopping abilities or a self-emptying base. Those factors alone make it less versatile (and more cost prohibitive) than our other top picks, but two of its features make it worth a shout here: its suction power and obstacle avoidance capabilities.

The Dyson 360 Vis Nav has the strongest suction power of any robot vacuum I’ve tested; it’s certainly the closest you’ll get to using one of the company’s cordless stick vacs. It sucked up an impressive amount of pet hair from my carpeted floors, and I didn’t even get a “bin full” alert after the fact. Dog hair can be really tricky to pull up from carpets, but it appears this hands-free cleaning machine can handle it all.

Obstacle avoidance is impressive as well, thanks in part to the machine’s 360-degree vision system that uses a camera and LED lights to navigate around things like furniture, and map out your home. No robo-vac I’ve used has been able to fully avoid crashing into a chair leg now and again, and the 360 Vis Nav is no exception — but it did so only a couple of times. More importantly, I never got an alert that the robot was stuck or got tangled up with a rogue charging cord and needed human assistance to get it back on track.

In many ways, the Dyson 360 Vis NAv distills a robot vacuum down to its essence: it’s really good at sucking up dirt and debris on its own, with little to no interaction with humans needed (after initial setup, of course). Some people will be willing to spend a pretty penny on that — but in a saturated market like that of robot vacuums, you can get a lot more for your money.

A self-emptying base and mopping capabilities are all but standard on most robot vacuums priced at $700 or more (and you can increasingly find one, or both of those features on cheaper machines). Personally, I think it’s particularly painful to pay $1,000 and not get a self-emptying base, at minimum. But if you’re willing to spend more on a machine that gets the basics almost perfect, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav is the machine to get.

Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Obstacle avoidance | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: No | Self-empty: No | Good for pet hair: Yes

The iRobot Roomba Vac Robot Vacuum is a good affordable option for most people thanks to its good cleaning power and easy-to-use mobile app. We won’t get too deep into it here since we have a whole guide to cheap robot vacuums with additional recommendations. But suffice to say, the Roomba Vac gives you all the essentials you’d expect from a robot vacuum, along with all of the convenience that comes with iRobot’s mobile app.

Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Obstacle avoidance, home mapping, stick and hand vac accessories (included) | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: No | Self-empty: Yes | Good for pet hair: Yes

Read our full Anker Eufy E20 review

Anker’s Eufy home brand made a first-of-its-kind machine with the E20 robot vacuum that, surprisingly, doesn’t succumb to too many of the pitfalls that a first-gen device typically does. The E20 comes as a robot vacuum with a self-emptying base, and also included in the box are the attachments to turn it into a cordless stick vacuum and a handheld vac. Just pop out the cleaning module from the robovac, snap in your attachments and get all of the conveniences of a cordless vacuum without spending (potentially) double to buy a second device.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the E20 excels as a robot vacuum. Eufy has made a number of solid robovacs over the years, and the E20 is no exception, dutifully sucking up dirt, debris and pet hair as it putters around your home. In my testing, it rarely got stuck on household objects like door mats and it has good obstacle avoidance. I also appreciate that it’s smart enough to know when its built-in dustbin is getting full, and it will return to its base to empty it periodically as it cleans.

As a cordless stick vacuum, it’s just ok. You’ll need to keep it on the highest suction mode to get the deepest clean and the build quality feels a little cheap. But its small profile will make it easy for anyone to use (and to take it out to your car for a quick clean up) and it doesn’t choke at the first sign of pet hair. A device like this could be exactly what some have been hoping for: a solid robot vacuum that can clean for you most of the time, but also lets you manually clean hard-to-reach spots when necessary.

Wi-Fi connectivity: Yes | Floor type: All floor types | Features: Obstacle avoidance, home mapping, laser navigation | Assistant support: Alexa/Google Assistant | Mopping capabilities: Yes | Self-empty: No | Good for pet hair: Yes

You may be unfamiliar with Anker’s robot vacuums, but they’re often more affordable alternatives to the iRobots and Sharks of the world. The Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid isn’t a budget machine by any means, but it’s a solid robot vacuum that offers a few key features that many competitors don’t have. Plus, you can often find it on sale for $549 or even $449.

Unlike some of our other picks, the X8 Hybrid doesn’t come with a self-emptying bin, nor is there one you can purchase separately. It’s just a standalone robo-vac, but the “hybrid” indicates that it’s also a robot mop. It has both a dustbin for collecting debris and a 250-milliliter water tank that you can fill whenever you want to run a mopping cycle. Plenty of other robot vacuums have this feature, and it could be even more useful than a self-cleaning bin if you have lots of tile or hardwood floors throughout your home.

Besides that, I was impressed with how easy it was to set up the X8 Hybrid, how accurate its mapping capabilities were and how many extra features it supports. It has four cleaning modes – auto, room, zone and spot – and four suction levels starting with Pure at the low end and topping out at Max. These features give you a lot of control over where the machine cleans and how powerfully it will do so. The X8 Hybrid was in Pure mode the first time I ran it, and I was surprised by not only how quiet it was but also how thoroughly it cleaned considering it was on the lowest suction setting.

There’s also a “tap and go” feature that lets you pinpoint any spot on your home map in the EufyHome app, sending the robot there to clean. Manual controls are also available, which isn’t something you see on a ton of robo-vacs. This option lets you control the machine almost like a slow and slightly clumsy RC car, giving you more control over where it cleans.

It may not have the name recognition that iRobot or Shark do, but the Eufy RoboVac X8 Hybrid is a solid choice nonetheless, especially if you don’t care to add a clean base into the mix. It’s an even more tempting choice if you can snag it at a lower price when it’s discounted.