Her aim is to find the top-performing products on the market, to help take the hard work out of housework. Blossom’s most notable accomplishment in the lab has been toasting 528 slices of bread in her quest to find the best toasters money can buy. In her free time, she openly admits to being a music geek and indulges her creative side through crocheting, baking, singing and writing.  

Similarly, the mop was handy – removing the worst of our spillages, making it an ideal kitchen helper. Its charging time is quite lengthy, but as it plugs itself in, this isn’t too much of a bother.

If you have a lot of carpet in your bedrooms, an upright vacuum cleaner or canister with a rotating brush roll will do the best job, whereas a vacuum cleaner with soft bristles or a brush roll that can be turned off is better suited for hardwood floors.

If you have long hair, or live with someone who does, you might want to consider a robot vacuum with features geared towards ensuring it doesn't end up tangled all around the brushrolls.

Premium, but decent value given the features and performance. Worth the investment for pet owners who want something for regular use.

The market ranges from ultra-simple to extremely capable, with price tags to match, so it's important to pick the right one for your needs. I'm here to help with that.

The mopping is also so basic as to be not really worth bothering with; the robovac just drags a wet wipe across your floor. On test it also sometimes struggled to clear thresholds of over 2cm.

The object-recognition function meant it successfully avoided toys, piles of laundry and whatever else was left out on the floor. It mounted thick rugs with Top 3 Automatic Vacuum Cleaners ease, too.

If none of the robot vacuums above take your fancy, here are some other models worth considering. These robovacs all scored highly on test, but just didn't quite make our main guide.

It has a relatively advanced (and big) docking station – this one empties the vacuum bin, refills the mop and washes the mop pads – but it’s not the best we’ve seen at auto-emptying. On test, it didn’t happen automatically when the vacuum was full, instead clearing it at set intervals.

Finally, there's the Freo X Plus, which is significantly cheaper and more basic than the others in the range. It has mopping capabilities but the dock is just a simple charge dock.

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As for its cleaning, it's great on larger debris like Rice Krispies and can give a large room a good clean, but it fell down on finer dust and debris on carpet, so it's probably best for keeping on top of mess, rather than as your sole cleaner.

According to some em linha reviewers, its small wheels can get caught when pulling the vacuum along, and it clocks in at over 20 pounds making carrying it upstairs difficult for some.