The Roborock S6 is exactly what robot vacuum cleaners should have been all along 

Roborock S6

£570, amazon.co.uk

A couple of years ago I was having a light, non-committal chat about the possibility of getting a cat, and returned home to find my wife saying with a smile: ‘Well, here’s the cat.’ 

Apart from the fact that both my children are so terrified of the grumpy, ancient creature that they won’t even walk past it on the stairs, it’s been a roaring success. So I welcomed the arrival of the Roborock S6, a robot vacuum cleaner ‘specially designed’ for pet owners (with a built-in mop and the ability to clear pet hair off the rotating brushes). 

My children are far less terrified of the robot than they are of the cat. The Roborock is simple to set up, unlike a lot of rivals, and trundles off to clean any flat space, without fear of it plunging to its doom down the stairs. 

It has a laser rangefinder plus 14 other sensors – including accelerometer, odometer, infrared cliff sensors and compass – ensuring that it doesn’t spend hours bumping amorously against a chair, an all-too-common character flaw in robot vacuums. 

It has a laser rangefinder plus 14 other sensors – including accelerometer, odometer, infrared cliff sensors and compass – ensuring that it doesn’t spend hours bumping amorously against a chair, an all-too-common character flaw in robot vacuums

You can opt for varying degrees of clean (silent, medium, turbo), with built-in mapping software working out where it is on your floor and returning it to the charging pad when not in use. 

This means that you can put it on while you sleep, or while you’re at work, and have a reasonable chance of coming home to find your floor actually cleaned – which is basically what these gizmos should have been like all along.