It can be a pain to constantly clean up after a shedding pet. While you love your furry friends, their hair and dandruff can quickly pile up and get caught in fibers or under furniture. Luckily, a robot vacuum can help take some weight off your shoulders by automating the cleaning process. It can travel around your home and pick up pet hair so you can spend more time with your cats or dogs. A robot vacuum can be helpful if you're in the middle of seasonal shedding, as you can program it to clean a room several times a day if needed.
We've tested more than 70 robot vacuum cleaners, and below are our recommendations for the best robot vacuums for pet hair. These recommendations are based on their pet-hair cleaning performance on different surfaces, their design, and price. For more, look at our lists of the best robot vacuums, the best robot vacuums for carpets, and the best robot vacuums for hardwood floors. If you're only interested in brand-specific options, consider our recommendations for the best iRobot vacuums. Or, if you don't mind doing the job yourself, check out our recommendations for the best vacuums for pet hair and the best HEPA vacuums.
The best robot vacuum for pet hair we've tested is the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra. This vacuum sits at the top of the Roborock line-up, and it excels at picking up pet hair from floors. Its twin rubber brushrolls significantly improve pet hair pickup on most surface types compared to the single roller setup found in the older Roborock S7 MaxV. Another outstanding feature is its multifunction dock. Not only does it empty out the vacuum's dustbin, but it also refills its water tank from a reservoir and washes and dries its mop pad. The dock also includes a fast-charging system, so even if your mischievous pet likes to traipse in the dirt a few times a day, there'll never be too much downtime between cleaning sessions.
This vacuum has a dual-sensor navigation system. Combining a LIDAR sensor with a structured light sensor, it can map out your home as well as identify and avoid common obstacles in real-time, like power cords, furniture legs, or even pet waste. It can store up to four floor maps and uses its sensors to spot landmarks and determine which room it's working in. You can even specify cleaning settings for different rooms. Unfortunately, as good as the performance is, you might need to manually clean finer debris piled up against walls or in corners; also, its mopping system isn't particularly effective and will require many passes for stubborn stains. Finally, while the dock makes for an excellent hands-off ownership experience, it's simply enormous and may not fit in smaller living spaces.
If you're looking for a robot vacuum with many great features for dealing with pet hair but at a more affordable price point, the Roborock Q5 Max+ is a great choice. For pet hair in particular, its redesigned dual-roller cleaning head offers performance on par with the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra. However, you lose the mopping function and the real-time hazard avoidance, and its dock isn't capable of fast charging, resulting in multiple hours of downtime between cleans. Nevertheless, this vacuum has a decently sized internal dustbin, so it doesn't need to return to its self-empty station too often, and it boasts impressive battery life (but again, shorter than the Pro Ultra's), allowing it to cover a lot of ground during each clean.
Despite its lower price, this vacuum has plenty of automation features, like multi-floor mapping capability and a 'Smart Recognition' feature that automatically determines which of its stored maps it's working in. Using the companion app, you can view and customize the 3D representation of your home after it's mapped out, label specific rooms, and send the vacuum wherever you'd like using the 'Pin n Go' function. That said, like the S8 Pro Ultra, it does a poor job of sealing fine allergens like pet dander, which can escape from gaps in its top cover.
The Wyze Robot Vacuum is a great option if you're looking for the best automatic vacuum for pet hair on a budget. Unlike the pricier Roborock Q5 Max+, it isn't compatible with a self-emptying dock station, so you must empty its dustbin manually at the end of almost every cleaning session, as the internal dirt compartment is quite small. As for its performance, while it isn't as effective as the more expensive Roborock for dealing with pet hair on bare floors and carpets, it still does a great job overall. Its companion app provides functionality similar to Roborock's, including support for multi-floor mapping, room labeling, and no-go zones. It's pretty good at sealing in fine allergens like pet dander, and it runs very quietly, which is good if your pet is sensitive to loud noises.
The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra is higher in Roborock's product hierarchy than the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra and has more pet-friendly features like the ability to take photos of your pet to check on them and even conduct a video call with them, but it doesn't pick up pet hair off low-pile carpet as well as the S8 Pro Ultra. It also has a smaller dustbin in the robot and a smaller dirtbag in the dock, both of which will fill up with pet hair more quickly.
See our reviewThe iRobot Roomba i3 is comparable to the mid-range Roborock Q5 Max+ and does quite well at picking up pet hair off low-pile carpet. However, it performs worse in many other ways. It also has a much smaller dirt compartment and a shorter battery life.
See our reviewThe iRobot Roomba 694 is a budget robot vacuum that does better at cleaning pet hair off low-pile carpet than the Wyze Robot Vacuum and is better at cleaning hard floors. But it's harder to maintain, has no HEPA filter for trapping allergens, and performs worse on carpets in general. Its random-pathing navigation system and bare-bones app make it far less autonomous than the Wyze.
See our reviewReplaced all the Notable Mentions for relevance and current availability. Checked that all information was up to date and accurate.
Verified that all picks are valid and available. No change in recommendations.
We've verified that our recommendations are available and represent the best choices. We've also made edits for clarity.
Oct 09, 2024: We've done a major overhaul of this article, updating our recommendations based on our new pet hair testing and to reflect the best available products on the market. To this end, we replaced the Roborock S8+/S8 with the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra, the Roborock Q5+ with the Roborock Q5 Max+, and the eufy RoboVac 11S with the Wyze Robot Vacuum.
Jun 19, 2024: Replaced the Eureka Groove with the eufy RoboVac 11S because the Eureka is getting hard to find.
Our recommendations above are what we think are currently the best automatic vacuums for pet hair for most people. We factor in the price, feedback from our visitors, and availability.
If you would like to do the work of choosing yourself, here's the list of all our robot vacuum reviews ranked by pet hair performance. Be careful not to get too caught up in the details. While no vacuum is perfect for every use, most are good enough to please almost everyone, and the differences are often not noticeable unless you really look for them.
What do you think of our picks? Let us know below.
Looking for a personalized buying recommendation from the RTINGS.com experts? Insiders have direct access to buying advice on our insider forum.
Update: Replaced all the Notable Mentions for relevance and current availability. Checked that all information was up to date and accurate.
What do you think of these changes? Let us know
Heya luk4s, appreciate the feedback! The ECOVACS DEEBOT N10 Max+ is definitely something we’d like to test in the future, especially considering the fact that the T8 AIVI is a fairly old robot vacuum at this stage in time. And yes, concerning your point about budget robot vacuums - the overwhelming majority on the market require a fair bit of monitoring or preparation to make sure they don’t get stuck somewhere. You can cast a vote for us to review the N10 Max+ in the product pipeline page, and we’ll go ahead and buy it and run it through a test bench if it does win the popular vote!
Thanks. I bought the N10 Max+ and yep, software is no good. The item does not navigate efficiently, forgets the map regularly, does not allow you to edit the map rooms or tell it to start with room 1, 2, 3, etc., runs over small items despite having dToF sensors and relies more on the bump sensor AND WON’T ACTUALLY RUN ON THE SCHEDULE. And potentially wrong charging dock was sent? It takes about 6 hours to charge.. Though I am on day three and it is beginning to get a little better in terms of actually learning the dang house, but the map sometimes still doesn’t get recognized when wanting to do a spot clean randomly and will randomly forget the map and try to re-map. Talk about babysitting… I wish robovac companies would let you export and import lidar maps.
edit again: It appears to be getting better with time, AND you can segment rooms and set which rooms to begin with (it just took more than two dang days to recognize there was an actual map for those features). I can’t seem to cut part of a room properly, so the app is definitely a bit janky. Otherwise for $144 refurbished with two year warranty, can’t go wrong for the price
Heya luk4s, appreciate the feedback! The ECOVACS DEEBOT N10 Max+ is definitely something we’d like to test in the future, especially considering the fact that the T8 AIVI is a fairly old robot vacuum at this stage in time. And yes, concerning your point about budget robot vacuums - the overwhelming majority on the market require a fair bit of monitoring or preparation to make sure they don’t get stuck somewhere.
You can cast a vote for us to review the N10 Max+ in the product pipeline page, and we’ll go ahead and buy it and run it through a test bench if it does win the popular vote!
For the honorable mentions, the Deebot N10 Max+ is a far better choice than the T8 AIVI especially if you have carpet. While the T8 AIVI has an ultrasonic mop pad, the N10 Max+ has not only more suction, but also has dtof sensors along with lidar which are more reliable and accurate than just simple lidar alone with AI assistance. They are the same $144 price in eBay right now in like new refurbished condition with two year warranty.
But I’ve heard bad rumors about the ecovacs app… I’ve had to deal with maps being forgotten on my eufy which wasn’t great to deal with but ultimately I want something to avoid any sort of pooptastrophe… AGAIN. The budget eufy robovacs don’t have dtof sensors and object avoidance isn’t great whatsoever. Have to babysit it
Update: We’ve verified that our recommendations are available and represent the best choices. We’ve also made edits for clarity.
What do you think of these changes? Let us know