Robot vacuum questions, answered

Most clear about 20mm. Where manufacturers publish a figure at all, current models range from 20mm to a claimed 60mm, and the highest claims come with conditions attached. Measure the vertical rise of your tallest door sill before shopping — see the cross-brand climb table.

Dreame states 42mm for a single vertical step on the X50 Ultra, and 60mm only for a series of steps with more than 40mm between them. Roborock states 40mm for a double-layer threshold and 30mm for a standard one. iRobot and Shark publish no climb height at all for the models we cover.

Yes, if the brush is designed for it. What people describe as poor pickup is usually a brush wound solid with hair rather than a suction problem. Look for a published anti-tangle brush design and a self-emptying dock — the pet hair hub has the comparison.

One with a published anti-tangle main brush and an anti-tangle side brush. Long hair is harder than pet hair because a single strand can wrap a roller several times before it stops. See long hair and tangles.

On low and medium pile, well — and daily running is the real advantage over a weekly upright. Above roughly 20mm of pile the robot starts riding on the fibers instead of pressing into them, which is a physical limit rather than a power one. See high-pile carpet.

There is no honest number, because pascal ratings are not standardized between manufacturers. Within one brand's range a higher figure does mean a stronger fan; across brands it tells you very little. The full suction table explains why.

It can, in a single run. A rotating brush treats fringe exactly like hair and can pull threads through the weave. There is no setting that prevents it — draw a no-go zone along the fringed edge before the first run. See rugs and fringe.

Sealed hardwood, laminate with sound seams, vinyl, glazed tile and sealed stone all take a damp robot mop. Unsealed or oiled wood, waxed finishes and unsealed stone do not. The ten-minute water test that settles it for your floor is on which floors can you mop.

A combo if most of your floor is hard. Separate machines if carpet dominates, if your pile is deeper than any published mop lift, or if you want a hard-floor washer that genuinely scrubs. See combo versus separate.

A damp pad drying slowly inside an enclosed dock, plus standing dirty water in the tank. It is a moisture problem rather than a cleaning one. Heated drying prevents it; without heated drying, take the pad out after each run. The full routine.

Nearly always a physical trap the map cannot represent: a sill it can almost climb, a rug edge that lifts, or a gap it can enter but not reverse out of. Watch one run, identify the spot, and fix that spot. The five traps.

Usually mechanical — a drive wheel turning slower than the other, a front caster packed with hair so it drags, or a dirty sensor. Check all three before resetting anything, because a factory reset wipes your maps and will not fix a caster. More.

Most often a thin film of dust on the charging contacts, on the robot or the dock. Wipe both with a dry cloth first. After that, check the dock has clear space around it and try a different outlet. The full order.

Its infrared cliff sensors are reading the dark surface as a drop-off and refusing to cross. It is a reflectivity problem rather than a mapping bug, and cleaning the sensors fixes a surprising share of cases. Dark floors.

Two to three years of daily running before you notice a meaningful drop is normal. The signal that it is finished is proportional — roughly half the runtime it gave when new. Rule out a jammed brush first, since that looks identical from outside. Runtime and batteries.

Every mapped model builds a floor plan of your home and stores it in the maker's cloud. Camera-based navigation captures images by definition; LiDAR and dToF models map without a camera, though many add one for obstacle recognition. What each type collects.

Mapped models effectively do, because the map, the schedule and the no-go zones live in the app. Bump-and-turn models with no connectivity exist and remove the question entirely, at the cost of everything a map gives you.

No. Nothing currently sold climbs a staircase at any price. The stairs are always a separate machine, which is why a robot bundled with a cordless stick vacuum is the closest thing to an integrated answer. See multi-floor homes.

Conditionally. Worth it with mostly hard floors or medium carpet, floors clear enough to run without tidying first, and mess that arrives steadily. Less so in a small, tidy, deeply carpeted flat. The five conditions.

No, and we say so on every page. We have never owned or handled any of them. We compile published specifications, link every individual figure to its source, and record what manufacturers decline to publish. How we pick sets out the whole method.