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A truly great cleaning tool doesn’t just clean. It saves you time, effort, or both, and that’s the bar we set when testing several new cleaning tools for BobVila.com’s 2026 Tool of the Year. This year we put new releases from push vacuums to robots to work on windows, hard floors, pet hair, and everyday messes. Major cleaning brands like Ecovacs, Narwal, Dreame, Black+Decker, and others all continue to push forward on making chores easier and achieving a more complete clean.
Five products stood out for combining effective cleaning with features that genuinely made the job easier. A few more came close behind them, including standouts in air care, workshop, and pool cleaning.
Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni
Photo: Glenda Taylor for BobVila.com
Window cleaning can be tedious even when the glass is easy to reach, and that’s what made the Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni the most unique cleaner we tested this year. We liked that it automates more than just washing the window. Its multifunction station uses Vortex Wash to clean the robot’s dirty wiping pad in about a minute, which eliminates one of the messier maintenance steps between windows. It can also operate from AC power or its battery for up to 130 minutes.
Once firmly attached to the glass, we watched as the Winbot planned out the cleaning route, and its spray system sprayed the glass ahead of the pad. It features TruEdge—a retractable scrubber that works within about 1.1 millimeters of edges and corners. It methodically moved horizontally and then vertically, scrubbing the window as it crawled, until the glass was as clean as (or cleaner than) we’d have gotten it by hand.
For homes with lots of window area, we like the idea of letting a robot tackle one of cleaning’s most repetitive chores. Users will still need to use a ladder to affix the Winbot to an upper window, but after that, it does all the heavy lifting.
Narwal Flow 2 Robot Vacuum and Mop
Photo: Glenda Taylor for BobVila.com
Robot vacuums are increasingly good at collecting crumbs and dust, but mopping can still amount to dragging a dirty pad around the floor. That’s what made the Narwal Flow 2 stand out. Its FlowWash system uses a continuously rotating track mop that refreshes itself with clean water as it travels, helping remove grime rather than simply moving it from one area of the floor to another.
Its dry vacuum is just as ambitious. With up to 31,000 pascals (Pa) of suction, a tangle-resistant roller and side brushes, and a pressure plate designed to increase efficiency on carpet, it didn’t leave debris behind. We liked how much routine upkeep the dock handles. It washes and dries the mop and can hold collected dust for up to 120 days. The Narwal Flow 2 features TwinAI obstacle avoidance and a large 7,000 milliamp-hour (mAh) battery. This robot is designed to do more of the cleaning without asking its owner to constantly intervene in the cleaning process. It’s more hands-off than many we’ve tested.
Dreame Aero Ultra Steam Wet Dry Vacuum
Photo: Amazon
Some hard-floor messes need more than suction and a damp roller, and that’s where the Dreame Aero Ultra Steam Wet Dry Vacuum comes in. Rather than relying on one cleaning method, it combines vacuuming with steam, hot-water cleaning, and a foaming cleaner for greasy, sticky, everyday messes. Its 30,000 Pa suction collects dirty water and debris as the roller works, so you’re washing and extracting in the same pass.
We’ve tested other steam mops before, but the Aero Ultra seemed to produce more hot steam for powering away tough floor stains. We tested it on dried blood and mud stains, and in two to three passes, the stains were completely gone.
We also liked its 180-degree lay-flat design because it drops the body to just 3.88 inches, and we were able to reach under low furniture without giving up suction. Depending on the job, users can choose steam, hot water, smart, eco, or suction modes. After testing, the dock took over with a dual-heat self-cleaning cycle and high-temperature drying, so we didn’t have to deal with dirty-roller cleanup.
Black+Decker Dustbuster Reveal Cordless Handheld Pet Vacuum
Photo: Glenda Taylor for BobVila.com
There’s still a place for a simple handheld vacuum, especially when hauling out a full-size model would take longer than cleaning the mess. The Black+Decker Reveal Dustbuster is lightweight and easy to grab for cleaning stairs, furniture, car interiors, and small messes that appear throughout the day. We especially liked its motorized pet brush that easily lifted stubborn hair from upholstered surfaces.
One of its smallest features is also one of the most useful: an onboard LED. It shines across the cleaning path so hair, crumbs, and dust are easier to spot. The vacuum offers up to about 16.5 minutes of runtime without attachments. (The use of the motorized head may drain the battery more quickly.) When we finished vacuuming upholstered furniture and crumbs from the carpet, we simply set the handheld vacuum back on its charging base, and it automatically charged for the next cleanup.
Ecovacs DEEBOT X12 OmniCyclone Robot Vacuum Mop
Photo: Glenda Taylor for BobVila.com
Plenty of robot vacuums can mop, but the Ecovacs DEEBOT X12 OmniCyclone goes hard after dried-on spots that usually demand a second pass by hand. We liked its FocusJet system, which detects stubborn stains and directs crossed jets of water at them before the OZMO Roller 3.0 mop passes over the area. Meanwhile, up to 22,000 Pa of suction makes quick work of loose debris, and the anti-tangle brush keeps hair from wrapping around the roller.
Its dock is another reason it earned a winning spot. Rather than relying on disposable dust bags, its PureCyclone 2.0 system empties debris into a reusable 1.6-liter bin that can hold up to 48 days’ worth of dirt. Not having to order replacement bags is a real perk.
We also appreciated its fast-charging system, which can restore 13 percent of the battery in just 3 minutes before the robot heads back out to finish a large cleaning job.
More Top-Rated Cleaning Tools That Deserve Recognition
Our five winners weren’t the only cleaning products that performed well enough to get our attention. These include tools for workshop cleanup, indoor air, everyday vacuuming, and pool care, each with a feature or performance advantage that made them especially noteworthy.
- SMARTER SHOP-VAC FILTRATION: The Vacmaster Professional Beast Series FLT+ 10-Gallon Wet/Dry Vac pairs a 6.5-peak-horsepower motor with an external flat filter that handles wet and dry pickup, frees up tank space, and reduces clogging, plus HEPA filtration and a self-cleaning filter function.
- SERIOUS POOL-CLEANING VALUE: With 6,800 GPH of suction and up to 5 hours of runtime, the Beatbot Sora 70 Robotic Pool Cleaner cleans the floor, walls, waterline, surface, and shallow platforms in pools up to about 3,230 square feet, and it matched pricier models in our testing.
- BIG AIR-CLEANING CAPACITY: The compact Coway Airmega Mighty2 Air Purifier refreshes the air in up to 1,800 square feet once per hour through a washable prefilter, activated carbon, and HEPA filter, while its MegaScan laser sensor delivers real-time air-quality feedback.
- SEE WHAT YOU’RE MISSING: The Levoit VortexIQ Pro Cordless Stick Vacuum uses a wide-angle green LED to reveal fine dust and pet debris, and it delivers up to 110 air watts of suction, up to 60 minutes of runtime, and a 180-degree lay-flat design.
- AI-POWERED POOL CARE: The Aiper Scuba V3 Ultra Robotic Pool Cleaner uses dual-camera AI vision to recognize more than 20 types of debris and obstacles, backed by 8,500 GPH of dual-pump suction for floors, walls, the waterline, and the surface.
