Many, many moons ago, we tried out a robot vacuum, a couple of them in fact. At the time, it was a Roomba, as that was really the only show in town, and they weren’t all that great. Perhaps somewhat stupidly, we dismissed them as a gimmick and got on with our lives, that was a mistake.
Rise Of The Robots
Last year we were doing some research on appliance stuff, as we are want to do, and came across a whole bunch of these things that seemed to be pretty popular and, from our last visit it wasn’t any longer a case of a machine to vac and a machine to mop but both in one.
Then we started researching online more and watching endless YouTube videos etc of people reviewing these things. Some of which are great and some, not so much.
We got around to thinking about trying one for ourselves to see what the fuss was and to that end, with our own had cash bought one.
After much research and even more procrastination, we settled on a Deebot N30 Pro Omni (catchy, eh?) from a company called Ecovacs.
The current leaders seem to be Ecovacs, Dreame, Eufy, Shark, Switchbot, Roborock and a few others as well as very iffy-looking Chinese clones on Amazon etc.
One consideration we had, that was important to us as much as our readers, is that it had to be long-term maintainable, so any that had little or no ongoing support were nixed from the get-go.
Whilst this is a review of sorts of the N30 it’s actually more of a general overview of what these cleaners are, how they work, what we think others haven’t pointed out and so on as thus far we’ve only tested the one model. If any makers want to send us more to test we’d gladly look at that but, unlike others, it takes us weeks if not months to test a machine as we’re looking for a more long-term and considered report.
Anyway, on with it already.
The Robot Vacuum Basics
Unlike the old machines we’d tested in the past, these new ones are like comparing stone age tools with modern power tools, they are kinda the same, but nothing like the same.
The old ones bumbled about sucking up dirt, sorta poorly, bouncing off things or being redirected by battery powered beacons you had to place to stop the cleaner escaping the room you had it in and you had to guide them back to get charged somehow, it was all very prehistoric compared to the new ones.
The new ones have LIDAR (mostly) as well as a bunch of other sensors on them that read and then map the environment the cleaner is in. This is then saved so the cleaner can batter around the place cleaning up without smacking itself off every object in your home.
All the decent ones will also have sensors underneath to stop if from kamikaze’ing down a set of stairs (though this can cause issues, more later) and that detect if the floor is hard or carpet. Certainly in the case of the N30 and we suspect most decent ones, it remembers where there’s carpet and where there’s not, even if it’s a doormat or something like a rug on a hardwood floor.
When you initially fire most robot cleaners up they will ask you to map your home where it’s being used and It goes about doing it’s thing figuring out all the above out without any intervention from you, then saves it to memory.
That’s not to say it won’t figure out things if you move stuff about, a rug, say, it’ll work out and “see” that the position is a little different and compensate.
Other than that all you need to do is follow the absolutely ludicrously simple setup of the base station and the robot but you’re walked through all that before you even get to the mapping bit. This is really, really simple stuff and hardly worth mentioning.
Then you can set up rooms and zones, which can be a pain to go through, but once done, it’s done, really, unless you decide to change it or alter your home.
But once you’re done with that then you are ready to go.
Cleaning
After the bemusement fades of watching this circular marvel move around autonomously for a while, you might start to see that yes, the floors look cleaner for sure, but perhaps not spotless, and we’ll talk more about that later.
But the thing will zap about sucking up dust and dirt, mopping hard floors behind that and all is well.
Once it’s done, almost all now, unlike those old ones, will head back to it’s station to charge itself up, clean itself and empty any dirt and dirty water. It’s very clever.
There’s no fuss, no drama or much to report. If you’ve watched any videos on robot vacuum cleaners, you’ll likely be aware that watching them clean after the initial novelty wears off is slightly more appealing than watching paint dry, although not by much.
The only thing that can cause an upset is the cleaner getting stuck on something or eating something they shouldn’t have.
Most robotic cleaners we looked had boasted some form of AI object detection and we’re not going to get into the whole AI thing here, we’ve done that already in other articles but suffice to say, it’s not infallible.
Some things, especially small stuff like shoelaces and smaller gauge cables, can get wrapped around the brush roller as the cleaner fails to see them, we expect that they are too small, and this is a problem. You need to ensure that there’s nothing that can cause this or you’ll be fishing it out the cleaner and, it’ll halt cleaning and wait for you to sort the problem out.
High lips into a room also get it stuck, on the Deebot we tested anything of about 15mm-20mm or higher and it ain’t getting over it. It’ll try for sure but it won’t get there and will moan about being stuck or trapped. Ecovacs say it will climb 20mm but, we’re not so sure about that.
Neatly, the cleaner announces it has a problem, and the phone app also notifies you, if you see it in the blizzard of notifications we all get these days.
The N30 we’ve been testing also sometimes give odd objects a wide berth when it sees them, we don’t know why.
These are minor issues, though, that are easily overcome and seem to apply to almost all robotic cleaners.
What was amazing was the dirty water when we came to empty, as it was boggy, truly filthy. And here we were thinking the floors looked okay, but clearly they were not and the sheer amount of overall grime the robot lifted was impressive.
Doors, Edges & Corners
This is another area where the industry has made massive progress over the past few years, as cleaners of yore getting edges and corners just wasn’t happening.
These new ones are way better and, we do mean *WAY* better.
The Deebot N30 we tested has the usual spinning brush thingy at the front to throw stuff into the path of the oncoming main brush roll that works well enough but also a moving rear mop pad that extends out to get right up close to edges that Ecovacs calls TruEdge Adaptive Mopping. This system does work very well, although it can struggle a bit on actual corners, right into the apex of the corner.
That said, most people (clean freaks aside) probably wouldn’t notice this as the affected area is really small.
There are newer cleaners that can do a better job with this using extending side brushes to get all the way into the corners, but the extra cost of that we reckon for most people probably isn’t worth it. At least for now, these cleaners are advancing so rapidly at the moment and, prices are dropping so fast for “premium” features that this advice could change relatively quickly.
Edges and corners though, largely sorted.
Doors, not so much.
Where there are doors one thing that might annoy and, especially clean freaks (you know who you are!) is that it can’t close a door and once you have one of these cleaners and, you know it’s goign to clean you open all the doors wide so it can get about obviously.
That means the area behind all your doors will not get cleaned, and you’ll have to do that for yourself.
For most people, this isn’t a killer but worth knowing about.
Mopping
This is where we were impressed.
The cleaner just did it, cleaned loads and did it well, lifting loads of grime and dirt. With the huge benefit being, that’s being done almost every day so the floors stay clean and shiny, we love it.
Even after touching up some grouting the cleaner got the floors clean after a day or two and we have to clean the base station well as it’d picked up so much, which demonstrated just how good a job it did.
If you have a lot of wood, tile or other hard flooring this is a great thing.
Sensors
We mentioned the drop sensors before and said we’d talk about them and we did so as they can be a problem.
Apart from you having to keep them clear and clean, this is not a chore and rarely needs done, they can “see” very dark rugs etc as being an abyss to oblivion for the robot so, it will stop and not vac some areas where it “sees” these dark areas as being a big hole In the ground or a set of stairs.
If you have dark rugs this may be a consideration worth noting.
Multi colour items seem to faze it, but big dark areas do.
Consumable & Running Costs
Of course, as the Deebot N30 we tested is a vac and mop robot it needs water and, produces wastewater. You need to fill it with clean water and empty the dirty but the app and base station both tell you about this again, both with an announcement and notification.
This leads to them needing cleaning fluids, detergents in order to clean hard flooring like wood and tile effectively, as just water won’t cut it
On the Deebot N30 you’re supposed to use a solid cleaner cartridge and, at the time of writing, this was £46 a pop for one, that lasts approximately one month!
That’s sore, very sore.
You can get cleaning fluids, and you can also use those for a fraction of that price but the point here is that some of the consumables can be very expensive so, choose your robot cleaner carefully and do look at the cost of consumables.
Bags can also be expensive but there are a lot of third-party ones, just as good and way cheaper.
The side brush, main brush roll and mop pads also need to be replaced reasonably regularly but using the N30 for 157 cleaning sessions, cleaning 43 square meters a day, five days a week the main brush roll has about 67% life left, side brush 30% and filter 18%. The dustbag has been changed once in that time.
The mop pads you can take off and stick into the washing machine with towels, so they’re reusable. We’ve not had to replace those at all, just swap them a couple of times to clean what we had.
So, cleaning solution aside, this is actually very reasonable for the job it does in our view.
Unsaid By Most Reviews
As we mentioned, we read and watched a lot of stuff on robot cleaners before we decided to test one and comment on it, and after our time with the Deebot N30, we saw a glaring omission from most info out there.
What nobody says is that the cleaning these robots do is cumulative.
As in, we have this little robot whizzing about five days a week, both vacuuming and mopping the floors. There’s no way a human will do that, clean freaks aside.
Most people will maybe do this every couple/few days at best, whereas the robot just goes and does it.
This means that floors are being constantly cleaned and dirt isn’t building up so the floors look cleaner after a week or two and stay that way.
This is a massive benefit to using the robot.
This constant cleaning also means that the one benchmark they all shout about, the suction strength in Pa (Pascals), is probably not a big a deal as many people think, as it’s going about doing this all the time. How wel it does on each pass is a thing, sure, but not the be all and end all, it is more about how well the robot performs overall.
The same for mopping speeds and force.
Our point being, don’t get too hung up on getting the one with the greatest numbers, that’s not the most important thing to look at.
And, another thing often left out, acknowledging limitations behind doors, etc, as noted previously, is that the places the robot gets to will almost certainly be the high traffic areas that are clear, so it’s doing all the heavy lifting. When you do get around to cleaning the bits it missed, your job is way easier, as those areas are clear and clean so it’s saving you time in that respect as well.
You also need to keep in mind you need to clean the base station, they do get a bit of dirt in them and can look grubby after a while if not cared for.
Pets
Given the nature of the above, it’s cleaning all the time, we didn’t find this a problem at all. In an environment where there were pets, we didn’t notice anything of note; the cleaner just did its thing and cleaned.
Admittedly, we only tested where there were small dogs, but in all kinds of weather, the dogs dragged in dirt, muddy paws etc and the cleaner coped fine with it.
And the sensors see pets so as to avoid them although, in our experience, the dogs got away from it PDQ!
After a few days the dogs just ignored it, got out it’s way and that was that though your mileage may vary here depending on the pet.
We have had no issues with things getting tangled, pet hairs etc at all other than the cables and shoelaces we mentioned previously.
Durability
Thus far, long-term wise this is an unknown.
The only real area of concern we’d have on the n30 tested is the swing out arm for the mopping pad as, it’s mechanical and mechanical things all break in time.
Other than that, most things are not that different from a normal cleaner, although you do have all the base station gubbins and water stuff to contend with. That said, most of these things should be fairly robust and we’d expect at least 4-5 years out any of the more decent robot cleaners.
By then, the battery will also likely be on its last legs, another consideration.
Plumbed In Option
We could have gotten a plumbed-in machine to try; the SwitchBot cleaner was the one we looked at, but we didn’t opt for that as we didn’t think most people would be able to accommodate that facility. We could, of course, for testing but felt that would have tainted the look at the format we reckoned most people would go for, a version with tanks.
How well this would work, we can’t say although we’ve little doubt that it would work well enough, how well we can’t say for sure.
Conclusions
After the use we’ve had from the N30 it’s really hard to see us not using one in future. That is, we’d think, a very strong recommendation.
There’s a high initial cost for these robots, sure, but even a decent one like this was about £500 so it’s not outrageously priced for what it does.
It’s reasonably economical to run. We reckon that if we got the anticipated five years, plus consumables, you’re looking at about £150 a year to run one, including the electricity. And although that might sound a lot that’s getting the floors vacuumed and mopped all the time and, not you doing it. Ask yourself what your time is worth.
Does a good enough job.
Doesn’t get on anyone’s nerves.
There really is a lot to like about the robot and not very much to be moaning about. For those of us that are busy or just can’t be bothered vacuuming every day, this is a good machine and the notion of a robot cleaner isn’t a bad one.