Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsComplex floor plan = can't find its dock before dying.
Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2017
FINAL UPDATE: I bought a Neato Connected and it is SENSATIONAL. It completely maps your home each cleaning with LIDAR. Works in no light, vacuums every square inch of my floor plan and closets, then returns to base 100% of the time. I have a lot of sq ft, so it cleans til low on batt, returns for a charge, then picks up exactly where it left off. It has a full brush and EXCELLENT suction. A M A Z I N G! Perfect vac
UPDATE: After living with the Eufy for 10-15 cleanings, the conclusions are quite clear, and none were never described in any of the many writte/youtube reviews I researched before buying. They are: the Robovac (and all the competition) must be within about 15 feet of the charging base, and facing it, when it gets low on battery, or the chance of it finding its base is inversely proprtional to your house size beyond that small arc. There are no other factors, because movements are random and it has no awareness of position. This is such a critical point that I can't believe none of the (100s?) of vac reviews I read ever mentioned it. Armed with the knowledge that there is no position awareness, or radio homing, or anything that could actually work, that makes a buying decision quite easy:
If you have a simple floor area of say, 750 sq ft or less with a clear view of the base, a robot vac will work reliably for you as advertised.
If you have more that floor area or it is complex, then the chances of the vac blindly wandering back into that arc, the base before i it dies, drops precipitously with more sq footage.
So the obvious, cost-effective answer is to add more charging bases. Why this is not discussed in any of the product ads I've seen is beyond me. The are more expensive vacs with some primitive mapping functions, but reviews are so so, and frankly, once you understand the general stupidity of these bots, the much cheaper and more reliable solution is going to be a multi-base solution. The bases look and feel like they should retail for under $10.
So all that said, it appears the Eufy line does not sell additional bases, but other visually near identical bots do. The iLifes and the Deebots sell bases for $25 each. So I took a chance and bought a base for an iLife and deebot to see if it would work with Eufy, but no luck.
Today Eufy left a comment to contact them, suggesting they might send an additional base for "my situation" (meaning: I live in a full scale house). Nice of them, but I would need at least two more, and this info should be in the product description of all vac bots.
So the answer is this: if you have a house without a continuous line of site to a charging base, buy a bot that sells additional bases. Its a much more cost effective solution than a gold plated bot, and is surely more reliable.
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3rd UPDATE: Unfortunately, even after Eufy proofing my entire 1st floor, he bot keeps finding new ways to get stuck. It's almost like its real intelligence is fightingy efforts. It rarely completes a cleaning without: 1) getting hung up, or 2) randomly being too far away when return to base mode kicks in, too close to dying. Great try, but it just doesn't work automatically which is the main point. Small floorplans where the base is always in and few sharp corners would have fewer issues.
2nd UPDATE: This bot apears to be identical in every way to the Deebot N79, which is $20 cheaper and adds a wifi link in addition to the identical remote. It also appears to be an exact match with the iLife A4, which is also cheaper.
UPDATE: Relocating the base in my largest room, plus blocking common jam areas (only a few nooks) has increased auto-docking chances to around 30%. The only reason auto docking improved from near 0% to 30% is because the probability of being in or near the lafgest room, when low power docking mode kicks in, is about 30% based on square feet. I think the Robovac 11 would work MUCH better if it auto-docked at about half power instead of 5-10 minutes from dead. Cleaning is still a little better than expected, but if you have a large or complex floor plan, you probably need a smarter/mapping robot vac. upgrading to 3 stars.
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I've only had the RoboVac for two days, so I hope to update this review with a better overall experience.
At first I was disappointed, then kind of ok with the purchase, then disappointed again.
First impression: the vacuum pattern seemed very random, and my 2400 sq ft downstairs is quite complex. The combination of the two makes for sporadic cleaning and a generally confused robot.
Next impression, considering the reasonable long battery battery life and cleaning time, the Eufy seemed to achieve descent coverage. I figured, if it runs each night, it'll work. It does pickup an amazing amount of dirt. With several cats, it fills the internal container in one use, no complaints, hopefully that will get better with time. Don't expect it to deep clean your carpets, its mostly a surface sweep, but it vacuums better than I expected from a crawling disk.
Unfortunately, mostly negating my starting to like it better ofr cleaning utility, the bot has yet to relocate its charging dock, and so it winds up beeping help after every attempted cleaning. The roaming pattern seems to have no intelligence at all, and even when it has direct line of sight to its charger, it still fails to dock before dying.
Don't know if this purchase is going to work out, considering returning for a pricier/smarter model. If you have a straightforward floor plan, I think it would work a lot better.
