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Ah, vacuuming pet fur - the Sisyphean nightmare of every pet parent. We’re all looking for a solution to the perpetual furballs, and these days a robot vacuum should do the trick.
Not every robovac will actually make the process easier though. Some are prone to tangling hair and fur, and some don’t quite have the suction to power through it. In this guide we’ll take a look at what to look for in a device, what to avoid, and the best robot vacuum for pet hair that we’ve tested.
While there are a lot of robot vacuum cleaners that tick the right boxes for dealing with pet fur, the Roborock Qrevo Master is our top pick. Not only does it have enough suction to pull fur from carpet, but it also comes decked out with edge cleaning, zero-tangle rollers, and fast object detection.
In our testing we found that the Qrevo Master was able to pull up dog fur from both carpet and hard flooring. While other robot vacuums have a tendency to whip lighter debris into corners, or along the edges of walls, the Master’s edge cleaning gets close enough to suck that up too. It successfully navigated around my dog, rather than chasing it or banging into her feet like other devices have done in the past, and the overall operation was quiet enough not to bother her. Well not too much - she is easily bothered.
Finally Roborock’s Zero-Tangle dual roller system has proven time and time again to tackle pet fur and human hair with ease. With this system you won’t have to cut bundles of fur off the roller, and in turn letting the robovac do it’s job more efficiently, for longer. You may, however, need to pick up some furballs from it. You can read more about that in our full review, but in my opinion, it is still the best option out there.
Not only do we test mountains of robot vacuums each year, but our pets play a huge part in how we review them here at Reviews Australia. Across the team we have maine coons, mischievous kitties, pugs, doodles, and a kelpie x border collie with a never ending undercoat. None of us are strangers to furballs, and we pit every vacuum against them. Just check out the squad these vacuums go up against.
Although no tangle rollers are a relatively new addition to the robot vacuum cleaner line up, they are an epiphany for pet owners. Traditional rollers tend to get hair and fur stuck around them as they clean. Robovac manufacturers got around this for a while by giving out cutting tools with their devices. Sure, this made the cleaning process easier, but it was still a slog to get through.
These days, no tangle rollers remove this issue altogether. They are designed in a way that stops the hair from getting stuck, and instead whips it into the dust bin of the device. Since this is still a new innovation, there are kinks to work out, but the overall experience is worlds better on vacuums with them as opposed to those without.
This comes as a given, but to get pet fur out from the carpet you need good suction. In our testing we found anything with 8,000pa suction or higher worked well on hard floors, but to really get into the carpet fibres, look for vacuums with 10,000pa and up.
Most pets don’t love loud noises, and lets be real, neither do people. In their specs, robot vacuum cleaner manufacturers include the decibel range during operation. The lower these numbers are, the quieter the vacuum will be. Obviously every pet is different, but anything above 75 dB irritates my dog, and ultimately puts me off using the vacuum. I don’t want to freak her out!
Similar to the quiet operation point, you’ll want to avoid any robot vacuums that don’t have a dedicated Do Not Disturb mode. Generally I put this on over night, and while it is on the robot vacuum won’t make a peep. No scheduled cleaning or updates, no chatting to itself. It will just stay silent.
Pets can make it difficult to sleep as it is (whose cat hasn’t swatted them in the face at 3am at least once?), so you’ll want to minimise any nocturnal distractions that could spook them.
There are a few intelligence aspects to look out for when picking a robot vacuum, but if you’ve got pets you’ll want it to have good real-time object avoidance. This will stop the vacuum from bumping into your pets legs, and potentially setting them off, or injuring them.
Real-time avoidance refers to how quickly the robovac is able to change course when a new obstacle pops up. This could be your cat rolling around on the floor, your dog inquisitively following it around, your own feet, or a door opening into the path. Excellent avoidance will have the vacuum quickly diverting its path before making contact with the new obstacle, while the flip side could see it ramming into your otherwise peaceful pup, and sending them whimpering.
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