s9

Indeed it is. Not just for its vacuum ability, but it, and other VSLAM Roombas, are the only ones that can clean close around my round dining table pedestal. All lidar-based bots leave about a 1" gap of crumbs.

Yes, agree. I'm deeply disappointed and frustrated how things are progressing (regressing) in this regard. They can generally do parallel lines well enough, as long as the "intelligent" modes are turned off. But I find they generally require two passes to clean up what my older robots did in one pass. Glass sliding doors, or patterns in the floor, can cause them to swerve and miss areas. The Ecovacs in particular avoided a whole area on the floor because of a shadow cast by my countertop there. The Narwal made a perfect map of my upstairs, but when I directed it to go to only clean my laundry room, it went to every other room first trying to find a back way in, finally it got to the edge of the laundry room, turned around and again went to every other room, then got to the laundry room a 2nd time, and then finally went in to clean it. This repeated every time. I had a Dreame that would get stuck in some sort of virtual box until I moved it out with my foot. My dining table has a round pedestal base. No robot in the last few years will vacuum tightly around it. They all leave about a 1" gap, which is exactly where the crumbs tend to collect. I still keep my Roomba J9+ in service to go clean up after the others once a week. Another thing that foils modern robots is cleaning close around chair legs. I do a test, sprinkling some oatmeal around a chair leg. Modern robots will get about 50%-75% of it, but my old Roombas would consistently get all of it. It may be an unpopular opinion, but the best navigation, edge/corner cleaning, and overall coverage I've ever seen was from my Roomba S9.

Gotta get the roomba that’s rated for pet hair.

I boarded dogs in my house for 8 years, I got one of the beefed up roombas made specifically for pet hair and it helped cut down on the daily sweeping/vacuum. Still gotta break out the big vac and do a deep clean once a week but the roomba keeps it clean enough each day that you won’t notice a ton of hair floating around. If cost me 1k but it’s been going strong for all that time.

Only the Dyson and roomba s9 robots perform on carpet

I’ve had many roombas from the 650, i7, S9x3 (they sent me 3 replacements), and a braava jet 240. They work good for awhile, but the crappy software updates, constant errors and resets broke me. I seriously love iRobot hardware vacuum performance as in the amount of dirt they pick up, but the software is absolute garbage and a vacuum is completely useless if it can’t navigate correctly. I still have my first 650 bouncing around in my basement and the i7 has been moved to garage duty. The S9 ended up in pieces. My main two robot vacuums are roborocks and I love their navigation. I wish I could take the navigation from a Roborock and put it into a roomba.

Are you vacuuming carpet? Sadly nothing these days cleans carpets very well. Best I got was the Roomba S9

You forgot the most important question which is what your budget is. I have 2 German shedders and a chocolate lab. I've had an S9 that worked pretty well for the last 5 years on hard floors. Technology and anti-long hair tangle has come a long way and, almost any new bot in the mid-range or premium range are going to do great at anti-tangle. I know people really don't like roomba right now but, my max705 just did my while 900 sq/ft space without puking out clumps of hair like my S9 would, on a single pass. I tested a Dreame X50 too and frankly it was about the same result there too albeit the dreame did it much more quietly.

I agree with everyone saying to replace the parts if it gets wonky on you. I’ve had my s9 for going on six years. Four dogs, two homes, combo carpet and hardwood. I’ve only had to repair it once, and it was super simple! YouTube made it easy, lol. Also, if you have rugs that are being torn up / tearing up the roomba, I would just block that zone off from the machine. Unfortunately, most area rugs I’ve found are the enemy of all vacuums and vice versa.