The best robot vacuums

How we will decide this list

Criteria are fixed before testing starts, so a pick cannot be reverse-engineered from whatever we happened to like.

1. 01Pick-up performance on hard floor and carpet with standardised debris.
2. 02Navigation and obstacle avoidance in a furnished, lived-in space.
3. 03Noise measured at a fixed distance.
4. 04Consumables: cost and replacement interval over three years.
5. 05Data handling — what is uploaded, and whether mapping can stay local.

The picks