The iRobot Roomba i3 Plus EVO is on sale for just $349 right now. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
Cleaning is probably one of the most tedious tasks for many people, which is why the right robot vacuum can make for a fantastic gift (and cat Uber, of course). And while there are plenty of heavily-discounted robovacs available right now for Black Friday — including the top-of-the-line Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra and Roomba j7 Plus — the iRobot Roomba i3 Plus EVO offers great bang for your buck, especially since it’s currently available at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target promotion for around $350 ($201 off), matching its best price to date.
In addition to doing a terrific job of cleaning your house, the i3 Plus Evo comes with a few perks that just make life easier. Its advanced mapping features, for instance, mean you can program it to clean up select rooms at certain times. Meanwhile, its support for virtual assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant means you can control it with just your voice (or using the accompanying app, if you prefer). This particular model even features the same suction level and similar battery life as the Roomba j7, though, it’s still prone to getting stuck on cables, toys, and other items strewn about your home.
Best of all, it comes with iRobot’s Clean Base auto-empty dock, helping cement it as our favorite auto-emptying robot vacuum. True, it doesn’t have the AI obstacle avoidance or keep-out zones our favorite robot vacuum, the j7, offers. Yet if you don’t need those features, the i3 Plus Evo is still an excellent robot vacuum that’s significantly cheaper today.