Six months of pet hair, spilled oats and deliberately awkward furniture.
By Marcus Okafor, Appliances & Cleaning Editor · Published August 11, 2026 · Updated August 12, 2026 · 2 min read
Photograph: Jens Mahnke / StockSnap
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Robot vacuums stopped being novelty devices around 2023. The gap now is not suction — nearly all flagships clean adequately — but whether the robot gets stuck, eats a charging cable, or needs rescuing while you're at work.
Nine robots ran daily for six weeks each across 140 m² of mixed oak, tile and medium-pile carpet, with two shedding dogs. We scattered a fixed obstacle course of cables, socks and a pet bowl, and logged every intervention.
Camera-plus-LiDAR avoidance halved intervention rates. Mop-lifting matters if you have any carpet. Dock reliability matters more than dock feature count.
Independently tested
Cleans well, avoids everything, and the dock removes almost all maintenance.
Best for: Mixed carpet and hard floor homes with pets
Price band last checked 2026-08-11. Live pricing arrives with our retailer feed.
Not a robot — but if you only buy one vacuum, a cordless still cleans better.
Best for: Allergy households and hard floors
Price band last checked 2026-08-09. Live pricing arrives with our retailer feed.
| Product | Score | Price band | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roborock Roborock S9 MaxV Ultra | 8.8 | $1,300 – $1,600 | Mixed carpet and hard floor homes with pets |
| Dyson Dyson V15 Detect Absolute | 9.0 | $650 – $800 | Allergy households and hard floors |
Methodology
Every product here was tested in a working home against standardised tasks. Scores are the mean of five measured criteria and are never adjusted for commercial reasons. How we test · How we review.
The Home Brief
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We measured pickup, filtration leakage and real runtime under load.
Two philosophies of robot cleaning, tested over six months in the same home.
Twelve months of daily use, measured pickup and honest runtime figures.
We ran both flagships through identical debris, carpet and filtration tests.