Pet Hair Doesn't Stand a Chance Against the Roomba 960 Robot Vacuum
We can’t recommend the Roomba 960 enough for pet owners who desperately want to keep pet hair on their floors down to a minimum. What sets this robot vacuum apart from the competition are its dual brushes, which are all rubber and avoid pet hair tangles better than any other brush on a robot vacuum.
To be honest, we don’t know how the 960 does it, but hair doesn’t even get caught around the brushes’ axels — a problem we experienced while testing every other vacuum. Less hair getting stuck on the brushes means less time you’ll have to spend hovered over a trash can with a pair of scissors trying to get it all untangled later on down the line. The hair goes right into the bin — which, speaking of, is larger than any other Roomba’s.
Here's everything else that makes the Roomba 960 the ideal robot vacuum for pet owners.
Agility and Navigation
The Roomba 960 intelligently maps and cleans your home using a camera. It's smarter than most other robot vacuums and is an excellent cleaner for large spaces. During our tests with it, the Roomba had no issues navigating a 2,500-square-foot single-story home that has both carpet and hardwood floors. It promptly returned to its base when it was finished cleaning.
The 960 includes an accessory, dubbed the “Dual Mode Virtual Wall Barrier,” which looks like a 4-inch-tall lighthouse. You place it on the ground to create a virtual wall or circular perimeter next to the space you don’t want the Roomba to travel to. During testing, we placed it behind our dogs’ food and water bowls so the vacuum wouldn’t get stuck or make a mess. It worked wonderfully.
Unfortunately, the Roomba 960 doesn't feature any interactive mapping features, meaning you can't use the app to tell it to clean specific rooms or set up no-go lines (places you specify on the app where you don't want it to clean).
Suction Strength and Cleaning Performance
We tested the Roomba in a house with three endlessly shedding corgis, and it was a champ at eliminating pet hair. Plus, the Roomba 960 has a high-efficiency filter which traps 99% of cat and dog allergens.
Even better, it cleaned faster than the s9+ and i7 Roomba models, which are significantly more expensive. Its battery lasts about 75 minutes, which unfortunately isn’t as long as other robot vacuums. It still should be long enough for most medium-sized floor plans, though. If it doesn't finish before dying, it'll return to its base, recharge, and start up where it left off.
The pet-focused Neato D6 robot offers up to 2 hours of run time on its Eco Mode. But we found that its spiral combo brush didn’t handle pet hair as well as the Roomba’s dual brushes. The 960 was more impressive at deep-cleaning carpets, and its lower profile lets it reach hard to reach spaces where dust bunnies hide.
Ease of Use
Like other iRobot robot vacuums, the Roomba 960 is an absolute joy to use. You can fire it up with a single press of a button or you can trigger it remotely via a smartphone app. Our biggest complaint about the iRobot app for this model is that you can't instruct the vacuum to clean specific rooms. On the plus side, the Roomba 960 can pair with your smart speakers so you can use voice controls to begin and end vacuuming sessions.
Wrap-Up
Considering the fact that the 960 costs about $140 less than competing pet-centric robot vacuums, we think its minor tradeoffs are easy to forgive given its more affordable price and still above average cleaning performance.
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