Budget-friendly robot vacuums are way smarter than they used to be. Even without all of the fancy features, the best cheap robot vacuum can absolutely shave some time off of your chore routine — if it works the way it's supposed to.

But many of the super-inexpensive robot vacuums cut corners too close to the sun, quickly going from helpers around the house to agents of chaos. Let's say that their low price stems from basic bumper car navigation instead of smart mapping, or from outdated obstacle sensors that get confused by table legs. Your chances of coming home to a vacuum stuck under the couch are higher than the chance of coming home to a fully-swept floor plan.

It's also more likely than not that any old cheap robot vacuum caps suction power at 3,000 or 4,000 Pa. And that's simply n

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