The Best Robot Vacuum of 2025, According to Our Testing

Top pick

This bot is a top-notch cleaner and a great navigator that avoids (most) obstacles while keeping on top of scattered debris. It comes with a charging dock that sucks debris from its dustbin after it cleans.

If your pets shed like they’re planning to join a nudist colony or your kid is a human Cheerios cannon, a robot vacuum is a great sidekick to a more powerful plug-in model. The Roborock Q5 Max + ranked among the most thorough and quietest cleaners we tested, and it has useful smart features and mapping technology to boot. This model comes with a dock that automatically empties its dustbin into a bag.

It’s an excellent cleaner. In our tests, the Q5 Max+ cleaned better than any other smart robot at its price, sucking up almost 90% of the rice, Cheerios, fur, and baking soda we put down.

It’s an adroit, speedy navigator. Using its laser rangefinder (lidar) and bump sensors, the Q5 Max+ learns your floor plan in a swift, single session. In our tests, it quickly mapped the home before embarking on its cleaning run, which took about half the time of that of many other robot vacuums.

It can avoid obstacles and cross (some) thresholds. In our tests, even when the Q5 Max+ bumped into an object its lidar turret missed, it course-corrected faster and more accurately than other bots.

While you can’t expect this model to run up the stairs, it climbed a 0.75-inch bathroom threshold that most other bots didn’t even attempt to cross over. In our tests, only the iRobot Roomba 694 and the Eufy RoboVac 11S Max (sometimes) made it from the hallway into the bathroom.

It has a great app and useful smart features. Roborock’s app lets you map your home faster and more accurately than those of most other smart bots we tested. It is user-friendly and intuitive, and it can store up to four maps of your home in both 2D and 3D. The app also lets you turn on spot cleaning (to get rid of isolated spills) and auto-boost mode (for fur-covered carpets, for instance), as well as schedule cleaning sessions.

It is equipped with a remote control and a “Pin n Go” function, which makes it easy to direct the robot toward spots it may have missed. (We have, for example, used it in our baking soda/baseboard test.)

Compatible with Siri, Alexa, and Google Home, Roborock’s app generally responds well to voice commands—as long as you pronounce Roborock like Robo Rock, a common complaint among users. For example, you can say “Hey Alexa, send Robo Rock to vacuum the dining room,” and off it goes.

It has a long run time—and it cleans quietly. The Q5 Max+’s battery lasts for 240 minutes when used on bare floors in quiet mode. If the Q5 Max+ encounters the resistance of carpets and is run on Turbo or Max mode, its run time will reduce significantly but will still be enough to vacuum a 1,500-square-foot home. While we had to cover our ears and watch our pets bolt when the iRobot Roombas ran or emptied their bins, the Q5 Max+’s emptying dock was comparably quiet.

Its self-emptying dock actually works. Unlike that of the iRobot Roomba i4+ and j9+, the Q5 Max+’s self-emptying dock sucked in even heavy and large debris, such as rice and Cheerios, leaving nothing behind in the robot’s bin. The dock holds a 2.5-liter bag for dry debris, and it needs to be exchanged by hand once it’s full.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It misses spots. Like almost all bots we tested, the Roborock Q5 Max+ struggled with debris close to thresholds and baseboards. (Only the Eufy RoboVac 11S Max and the Miele Scout RX3 did markedly better.) In our tests, the Roborock Q5 Max+ spread cat litter and rice alongside a 0.375-inch rug and a 0.25-inch door threshold because its suction wasn’t enough to pick up debris when one wheel was on the rug or threshold and the other wheel was on the bare floor. We noticed that, in some instances, its brush kicked even more debris toward the transition. Similar to most robot vacuums, its effectiveness in removing fine dust from the edges of a room is lacking.

Roborock’s customer service appears inconsistent. An alarming number of Amazon reviews report frustration about Roborock’s customer service. When we called their helpline, however, our call was promptly answered. We were put on a five-minute hold while a courteous representative researched our dilemma.

It offers an industry-standard one-year warranty, but few replacement parts. While users can replace their Q5 Max+’s washable filters, brush, charging cable, and dustbin, unlike Eufy (and iRobot), Roborock doesn’t offer replacement motors, and while its batteries can be replaced, the company advises to call customer service first.