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SHOP $500, irobot.com
Welcome to the Esquire Endorsement. Heavily researched. Thoroughly vetted. These picks are the best way to spend your hard-earned cash.
When my roommate adopted a dog this summer, one thing became very clear: we couldn’t be skimping on sweeping and vacuuming anymore. All of my clothes are covered in white dog fur, and I just want you to imagine what my floors were like—especially after a trip to the dog park, where half of the dirt, grass, sticks, and leaves somehow accompanied us back home.
We went from needing to do a light vacuum every day to needing to do a heavy-duty vacuum, sweep, and possibly Swiffer about three times a day. Who has the time? More importantly, who has the arm strength? Not us. But we soon stumbled upon a certain little buddy who does: the iRobot Roomba i5+, a Self-Emptying Robot Vacuum that’s become integral to our home.
Seriously, I love this little guy. He’s smart. He makes my life easier. He’s pretty quiet and compact, too. It would seem I’ve grown attached to my Roomba, but when I think about all he does for myself and my home, how could I not?
SHOP $500, irobot.com
It’s legitimately smart.
If you’ve ever had a self-vacuuming robot and found yourself disappointed by the half-cleaned results it left behind, this is not that robot. I had the same fear; that I’d spend $500 on a Roomba, and still have to follow in its trail to sweep up the remaining dirt and dust it left behind. I can’t speak for any other robot, but the Roomba i5+ leaves nothing behind.
When you first set up the Roomba, you pair it to the iRobot app on your phone—a seamless, easy process that takes, like, five minutes. The Roomba then goes on a scouting journey to map your home; it learns where the corners and carpets are, where the different rooms are, and maps it all to create a route for future cleans. You can do everything from the iRobot app; send it out to clean remotely, send it back to base, have it empty, or select specific rooms to clean, if not the whole house.
I don’t know what kind of mapping technology this Roomba has, but it’s better than Google Maps. The robot can sense where my bedroom is, where the kitchen is; it can tell when there’s a dog toy blocking its path, and sends me a little notification on the app to clear the way. If the Roomba gets stuck somewhere, it’ll ping me, too. I can use the app to see the battery life, the cleaning status, and the map of my house.
If the app didn’t make cleaning easy enough, I discovered that the Roomba is compatible with Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, too. We have a Fire TV, so I paired my Roomba to Alexa; if I’m home and want to clean, all I have to do is say, “Alexa, vacuum,” and my little Roomba will begin its action. Ah, technology—it’s never been better.
SHOP $500, irobot.com
It takes the tediousness out of cleaning.
The Roomba isn’t just smart—it’s actually, truly, incredibly helpful. It’s worth the investment a hundred times over, for how seamless and easy this thing makes your life; having spotless floors is literally the last thing on my mind, but I always still have them. I wake up to clean floors and come home from work to clean floors, and all the parts in between are made easy, too.
The Roomba is compatible with both hard flooring and carpet, and adjusts its sweeping or vacuuming based on the surface. It detects dirtier areas and cleans them more thoroughly, too; when it’s on the floor, the rubber brushes adjust to best suit your floor type.
The best part, in my opinion, is how independent the Roomba is. This thing knows how to take care of itself; after it finishes a clean, it returns back to base and self-empties. The enclosed emptying bag has capacity for up to 60 days worth of cleans, meaning you literally don’t have to think about emptying your Roomba for two months at a time. You don’t have to think about cleaning at all, really; it does the work for you, and can have scheduled cleans via the app, or cleans in the moment. If the Roomba has to return to base mid-clean to recharge or empty itself, it’ll pick up right where it left off when it’s ready; no waste of time involved.
And if you, like me, have a curious pet (or if you have a baby), fear not; the Roomba has a child and pet lock you can toggle, so even if your little one starts pressing random buttons on it throughout the clean, it’ll continue to do it’s thing.
SHOP $500, irobot.com
And it actually cleans like a pro.
Aside from all the features that make this Roomba so worth it, let’s get into the nitty-gritty—literally—and talk about how good of a clean this thing’ll give your home.
After an initial, very easy set-up, it’s smooth sailing. You really don’t have to do anything besides empty it out ever again. The Roomba is designed to clean in straight, uniform lines, up and down and back and forth, so no inch of your home ever goes uncleaned, whether carpet or flooring. It has a 3-Stage Cleaning System with strong performance technology, so all the hair, dirt, and dust is either vacuumed up or removed with the rubber brushes. I could brush my roommate’s dog on the middle of the carpet, leave the hair there, and feel confident that my little Roomba will come and gather it up. And even if you don’t have a dog, you have dust and dirt and debris that needs cleaning up on the daily—and the Roomba will have you never even thinking about it again.
Because the Roomba is actually on the small side, too, it’s great at going under and between furniture, and getting those tricky corners. I honestly don’t know how it does it, being round in shape, but somehow, it gets into those sharp crevices in my home and sucks the dust bunnies right up. Seriously, hands-free cleaning has never been so, well, hands-free. Now I just need a Roomba that’ll take care of my laundry for me.
SHOP $500, irobot.com
Photographs by Joe Lingeman. Prop styling by Heather Greene.
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