That might feel like overkill, but if you're planning to use the L40 Ultra regularly then it's going to save you a significant amount of time and effort.

Our reviews are underpinned by specific, standardized tests. Here's a rundown of our review process.

We’ve been waiting for Shark to enter the robot vacuum chat for a while, and we weren’t disappointed.

Great at cleaning a whole room, improving with each of its three runs as it learned more about where to go and what obstacles it faced

We would recommend choosing the version with the self-emptying charging base. It sounds like a jet engine when it’s emptying, but the bin holds weeks’ worth of dust and makes the robot basically fully autonomous.

Big-brand robovacs that are a couple of years old can often deliver the best value for money, with very few sacrifices in performance. And sales events like the Black Friday deals generally come through with strong discounts in this category too.

❌ You want high levels of control: This robovac doesn't always do exactly as its told when it comes to more complex instructions.

In our Lab tests: Robot vacuums are getting better, smarter and more self-sufficient all the time, and iRobot's Roomba remains one of the top performers in our GH Cleaning Lab tests. This Roomba S9+ picked up 99% of the dry oatmeal, sand, small screws and other debris we spread on hard floors.

Megan is the Good Housekeeping Institute’s homes writer. She loves diving into the latest product releases to find the very best buys on the market.  When she’s not writing about the newest gadgets and gizmos for your home and garden, you’ll find her cooking, running and exploring London’s foodie hotspots – or trying to make friends with every dog she passes.

It has a relatively advanced (and big) docking station – this one empties the vacuum bin, refills the mop and washes the mop pads – but it’s not the best we’ve seen at auto-emptying. On test, it didn’t happen automatically when the vacuum was full, instead clearing it at set intervals.

This robot vacuum and mop is a real overachiever – it self-empties, self-cleans and self-refills its Top 3 Automatic Vacuum Cleaners water tank. Of course, you’ll need to look after the docking station maintenance, but that will be a lot less frequent than dealing with the vacuum itself.

This one had us at retractable legs. A robot vacuum and mop that can clamber over obstacles really is a game-changer. Little steps though – this one can only manage obstacles up to 6cm, so think carpet strips rather than stairs.

The benefit of the dinky size is that this bot can reach places bigger bots can't, and on test we found it navigated confidently around furniture legs and into tight spaces.

Navigation is excellent and this bot can also be relied upon to identify and avoid obstacles as required, meaning you can leave it to do its own thing without having to worry about it getting stuck or trying to suction up something it shouldn't. On test we also found it was great at hosting itself over tall thresholds.