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We have a ritual in my house. I bring home a random gadget, deposit it somewhere in my home and my wife asks me what it is, gives me side-eye and then ignores the gear until it is removed from the premises. With the new iRobot Roomba 980, however, she broke the routine and as I traveled, she quietly put the new robot vacuum to work.

IRobot’s robot vacuums have always been the kind of product whose inherent simplicity invites even the most technophobic to give it a try. You set the robot cleaning by pressing one big clean button. My wife likes that.

Of course, watching Roomba clean has always been an exercise in frustration. It usually starts by making crop circles on your floor or rug and generally seems lost. I like the Roomba and believe it can be a good vacuum, but have long counseled owners to not watch the robot clean.

iRobot Roomba robot vacuum expertly handles hard floors and rungs like this. Image: Jhila Farzaneh

The new Roomba remarkably makes the robot even easier to use and, most importantly, makes it much, much smarter about cleaning a room — even an entire first floor.

It’s an appliance

With the exception of needing an initial charge (which takes a few hours), Roomba 980 is ready to clean out of the box, just like a regular vacuum. Similarities with your traditional upright more or less end there.

Since the original robo vacuum almost 15 years ago, the Roomba has been disc shaped (roughly a foot and a half across) and a few inches tall. It includes suction power, rolling brushes and a sweeping brush that extends out from one side to get stuff in the corners. There’s a rather spacious dust bin and a filter to catch the finer particles. The 980 also ships with a pair of virtual walls. Over the years these have shrunk from something a bit larger than a clenched fist that took two D-size batteries into sleek 1-inch cube towers that take just a couple of AA batteries.

For years, you’ve been able to use physical remote controls to control Roomba and set cleaning schedules. That‘s become kind of quaint in our always-connected, smart-device-filled homes. Fortunately, the Roomba 980 brings with it Wi-Fi connectivity and an iPhone app.

Getting the Roomba 980 on my home network was pretty painless. The app assists by finding the network your phone is already on. You do have to temporarily connect your phone to the Wi-Fi signal emanating from the Roomba and then, if all goes well, your Roomba is on your home network. Once I had it on mine, I got to name it (you can control multiple Roomba 980’s from one app). For now Roomba cannot connect to any other smart devices or networks in the home.

The app mimics the simplicity of the vacuum. Your main interface is one big “Clean” button — just like the one on top of Roomba. When I pressed it, Roomba made its signature little toodle and then left its charging station in search of dirt.

iRobot's Roomba App is the model of simplicity. Guess which button you press. Image: screenshot

Roomba is far quieter than most big home vacuums, but it is by no means quiet. When I sent it out, my son who was a couple of rooms away asked what the noise was. When Roomba rolled from a wood floor to a carpet, the sound got significantly louder, which is actually a good thing. It meant the updated AeroForce motor was working harder on rugs. This ability to auto switch modes depending on the sensed floor surface is new and welcome. I noticed that it never failed to switch, even when it was only rolling over a door mat.

Which way did it go?

For the first time ever, Roomba’s cleaning seems more purposeful. As I watched it head out in my great room (a connected den, dining room and kitchen), I noticed that it went straight, no seemingly random curves, no crop circles. It navigated around furniture using both its bumper sensor and the brand new VSLAM integration. It’s VSLAM (Visual Simultaneous, Localization and Mapping) which allows the Roomba to finally see a room and the objects in it. This makes it much more efficient and smarter at cleaning and allows it to work in a series of lines instead of a random cleaning pattern.

Of course, this works great in rooms like my kitchen, which has almost no furniture. In the dining room, it still has to work its way around six chairs and the base of the table. From what I could see, the Roomba 980 did this fine, though it looks a bit more like its old random Roomba self when it’s doing it.

iRobot Roomba 980's new, more powerful and smarter AeroForce motor. Image: Mashable, Jhila Farzaneh

I let the Roomba 980 work its way through the first floor of my home for almost two hours. Unlike a human, it just kept going with nary a complaint. In fact, it never got truly stuck. It did struggle a bit with the threshold between my kitchen and living room, but the drop off is almost three-quarters of an inch. As a result, Roomba got stuck cleaning in the living room. Eventually, I had to pick it up by the integrated handle and move it to dining room. For subsequent cleaning jobs, I used a virtual wall to block it from entering that room.

Later, I used the app to set a weekly schedule of cleaning, which was super easy. You just turn on scheduling on a per day basis and then set the time.

The other tester

I had to travel during my Roomba 980 test period and left the robot in the care of my wife, whom I figured would ignore it unless I set it out on a cleaning job while I was away (something I can do with the app and the Roomba 980’s Wi-Fi connection).

When I checked my Facebook feed, I noticed my wife had posted a blurry picture of the Roomba in action. She joked she was testing my products for me. I was surprised since I hadn’t trained her on it or explained how it would work.

When I got back home she told me she had just pressed the clean button and then let it get to work. She was, she said, surprised at how well it did, but did notice a couple of issues. It did seem to ignore a portion of the kitchen, got caught on a plug and my wife had to rescue it and then, finally, it indicated that the dustbin was full, but that message never came to the app, even though I should’ve gotten an alert.

iRobot Roomba 980 looks sleek on top and like the workhorse it really is on the bottom. Those big wheels help it traverse high-pile rungs and event obstacles like wires. Image: Mashable, Jhila Farzaneh

I took a look at the Roomba 980 and saw the red indicator light and when I pulled the dustbin, a column of gray dust trailed out of the front of it. It was quite full and, to be honest, I was pleased to see just how much dirt it had actually picked up. It was impressive. I also pulled the filter and shook the dirt and dust off it, as well. I have to say it’s easier and less of a mess to clear the Roomba than it is any traditional vacuum.

App control

As I mentioned, the app makes it easy to start cleaning and it’s also just as easy to pause or stop a job. You just hit the clean button during a cleaning job and the app will ask if you want to stop it. When I did this, the Roomba 980 paused and then began searching for its charging station, which was about a foot away from it. Unfortunately, the Roomba 980 could not find it and, after almost 10 minutes, announced an error 18. When I hit the little “!” on the app, it gave this explanation: The Roomba 980 could not find the charging station.

The iRobot Roomba App gives you instant feedback and pretty constant control of the robot vacuum. Image: screenshot

The problem, I think, was that it was sitting next to a hutch that blocked part of the signal. When I moved the charging station forward so that it its front edge was nearly aligned with the front of the hutch, the Roomba 980 easily found it. If you buy the Roomba 980, I would suggest you put the charging station in a spot where it can be seen from all angles.

Clean at a price

At $899, the iRobot Roomba 980 is easily one of the most expensive vacuums on the market. Even a Dyson DC39 canister vacuum costs less (roughly $479). What you’re paying for here is the intelligence and drive. This is a vacuum and personal assistant all in one. It has the mechanics of a good vacuum and nearly the intelligence of a human to run it. The addition of Wi-Fi connectivity and app-readiness is more than welcome,; it's a must they should have added years ago. Getting it connected to other smart home devices is something I hope iRobot accomplishes soon.

Watching it clean, I’m pretty certain it does a more thorough job than most human vacuumers. And the Roomba 980 it does something none of the other traditional vacuums do — it frees you of the task. You can set it and forget it, except when the Roomba 980 needs cleaning, extricating from a jam or help finding its charging station. Those things do happen, but they are still rare enough to make Roomba worth the money.

If you need further evidence, ask my wife, who, after using the vacuum and learning the price, still said she wanted one.