Last Updated on December 17, 2023 by Kimberly Crawford
Every day our dear, funny pets give us a lot of positive emotions that remain in memory for a long time. However, at the same time, they also give us fur and hair that remain on clothes, furniture, and the floor. Unfortunately, hair is considered to be one of the most challenging debris, as tenacious hairs get firmly attached to any surface and can cause an allergy attack. It also requires daily cleaning, because animals shed constantly.
But not every one of us has the desire or even the banal opportunity to vacuum the floor daily. In such a case, robot vacuum cleaners come to the rescue, they clean the floor as often as necessary and use a variety of technologies and functions for the best results. Among the leading devices are Roomba robots, especially the latest i7 and s9 models.
Let’s see what tricks they use to clean up fur and facilitate our everyday life and which one is the best for pet hair.
The list of the best robot vacuum cleaners is pretty long. We’r recommend you read RoboVac vs Roborock, Roborock vs Deebot, Deebot vs Shark comparisons. But for this review, we took the current best-selling models by the iRobot brand – Roomba i7 and Roomba s9.
Before we start the review, we’d like to note that both i7 and s9 models are very similar in many ways. Both robots were released in 2019, so manufacturers provided them with the most innovative technologies, which we’re going to examine in more detail. However, the Roomba i7 as well the Roomba s9 has slightly improved models – they are i7+ and s9+ respectively, which are equipped with the Clean Base Automatic Dirt Disposal function. This technology significantly reduces the need for manual cleaning of the container.
So, theoretically, any robot vacuum cleaner is suitable for hair cleaning. However, to get the best result, you need to buy a robot that will have specific functions and characteristics aimed at cleaning such a type of pollution. Consider these functions on the example of Roomba s9 and i7.
Battery capacity and suction power are among the first things you should pay attention to. The more powerful the battery, the longer the robot can clean the room. In addition, if the robot is able to determine the most polluted areas or increase the suction power, for example, on carpets, then the energy consumption will increase significantly.
The i7 robot has a Li-Ion battery with the capacity of 1850 mAh. It can work for about 75 minutes and take 180 minutes to restore the charge. The s9 is somehow more powerful and can work on one charge for up to 120 minutes. Manufacturers say that the charging time is also 120 minutes. Both robots have ten times (for i7) and forty times (for s9) higher suction in comparison with the Roombas of the 600 series.
It is essential that the robot not only sucks up all the dirt but also captures and collects debris with its brushes in the most thorough way. Therefore, these newer models are equipped with well-designed systems of lateral and central brushes. Robot vacuum cleaner iRobot Roomba i7 has one side brush and a double turbo brush which consists of two rollers made of rubber. These unique silicone rollers have different design of their blades.
They don’t coincide while moving which provides complete contact with the floor surface regardless of its texture and better hair collection. Turning over the s9 robot, you can see elongated central rollers-brushes and a side brush with five limbs instead of the usual three. Long central rollers can catch more debris at one passing, and improved side brush simplifies cleaning in hard-to-reach places. Manufacturers also changed the shape of the s9 case – now it looks like letter D, which provides the best cleaning in the corners and along the baseboards. The brushes and rollers of both robots prevent hair winding and further possible damages.
Most often, hair accumulates on fabric and nap surfaces such as upholstered furniture, clothing, and carpets, as well as along baseboards and in the corners of rooms. Cleaning in such places is not always thorough enough, so dirt gradually accumulates.
For best cleaning in the corners and along the baseboards, the Roombas use the side brushes, which were already mentioned above. But Roomba s9 copes better with such cleaning as it has a more useful shape and the PerfectEdge technology aimed at corner vacuuming.
The robots have several cleaning modes that are either manually set by the user or selected by the device itself, depending on the type of flooring and pollution. This variety of modes helps improve hair cleaning and choose the most optimal at the moment and for this area. There is the automatic mode for simple everyday cleaning, the local mode for cleaning in places with heavy pollution, and the mode for vacuuming along the walls with the accent on the side brushes and the PerfectEdge function. Speaking about the Roomba s9, it’s worth noting that this model has the new technology Imprint Link. It means that the vacuum can be synchronized with the Braava robot for performing the consistent dry and wet cleaning.
After finishing his work, Roomba gives a command to the Braava robot, which completes the wet cleaning of the floors. So if some hairs leave on the floor, The Braava will collect them all.
One of the advantages of the robot vacuum cleaners is that they carry out independent cleaning of premises without human intervention. This fact would be impossible if they did not know how to navigate in space and identify the areas of most urgent cleaning.
When vacuuming hair, the vacuum cleaner mustn’t miss anything. It should detect such pollution, determine its type, and use the necessary set of tools to remove it. For the best navigation, i7 uses improved iAdapt 3.0 technology. During the initial movement, it explores rooms. Then the robot creates the Imprint Smart Map for each chamber. After that, it unites all the maps and forms a general map of the location of the premises, taking into account the placement in space (so this model can be used in houses with several floors). Later the device chooses the optimal order of cleaning, setting the algorithm for movement.
At the same time, it creates reference points for itself in order to understand where it has already cleaned up. So thus the device doesn’t return there again. The s9 model has similar navigation through the vSLAM function of building a room map. Thanks to sensors and the camera, the vacuum cleaner makes a plan of dwelling, zoning it into rooms and displays all the information in the app. Here manufacturers continue to use the relatively new technology Imprint Smart Mapping, which allows the vacuum to identify the rooms on the map and then clean them on your command.
Both robots can determine the type of flooring and boost suction and brush rotation, especially on the carpets. This function is called Carpet boost technology, and it’s quite essential for hair vacuuming as usually hair gets stuck into soft pile. The Dirt Detect technology helps find the most polluted zones.
As we mentioned at the beginning, regular vacuuming of the pet fur is extremely necessary for health, since a considerable accumulation of hair can provoke an allergic reaction. Families with children, people with allergies or weakened immunity pay special attention to this factor. Therefore, in addition to the eliminating of the hair itself, our two robots are also engaged in air purification. They use a high-quality three-stage filtration system. Due to this, the devices clean the air passing it through the several HEPA filters that can keep up to 99.9% of dust and neutralize allergic particles produced by animals.
In some cases, virtual walls are required for cleaning. They help limit the area of movement of the robot in order to concentrate its attention at a certain point or vice versa, in order to keep it out of unwanted places. For example, you can put a restriction around your pet’s bowls so that the robot cannot accidentally move or turn them over. Or you can make the device vacuum only your pet’s favorite place, where a lot of hair accumulates. The i7 has virtual magnetic walls in its set, and the s9 allows you to set limits using the mobile application. By the way, it is the iRobot HOME App that provides complete control over the robots. The vacuums also connect to the devices compatible with Alexa and Google Assistants.
So we see that the set of functions and the design that Roomba i7 and Roomba s9 vacuum cleaners possess are ideally suited for pet hair cleaning. Let’s briefly call them once again:
- powerful suction and battery
- developed silicone turbo brushes and case shape
- adaptation to the cleaning of any surfaces
- thoughtful navigation through the iAdapt 3.0 and the Imprint Smart Mapping technologies
- Carpet Boost technology
- Dirt Detect technology
- several cleaning modes including the Imprint Link function
- three-stage HEPA filtering
- virtual walls
All these characteristics make the vacuums the best for pet owners. If we compare both models, it becomes evident that the s9 slightly overtops the i7, but in general, this difference doesn’t have a significant effect on cleaning. So now you can literally vacuum hair every day whenever you want at the same time doing some other things.