ECOVACS DEEBOT 500 Robot Vacuum Cleaner with Max Power Suction, Up to 110 min Runtime, Hard Floors and Carpets, Pet Hair, App Controls, Self-Charging, Quiet, Large, Black

I went to a friends house and her robot vacuum was working. She told me how great it was. She just retired from tech industry and if it were anybody else I would have dismissed it. We moved into a new home at the beach with our two dogs. We’re constantly bringing sand and other dirt in even though we have a no shoes policy inside our home. I was sick and tired of bringing out the mop and broom. I did some research and even though I didn’t want to spend the money (I bought this when it was $1599) I decided to go for it. When my husband found out that I ordered it, he flipped out. When roomba first came out, 15-20+ years ago, I bought one and we had a hard time setting it up and getting it to work. We have now had it for 7 weeks and we love it! So easy to set-up. The charging station was bigger than I anticipated and heavier—even without the water storage. The first time I used it, the hardest part was figuring out how to use the app. Customer service tried to be helpful but the language barrier was difficult to overcome. My husband and I watched some YouTube videos on it and those helped. On the app, there are ways to use quadrangles and lines to delineate where the robot should go. For me, this was the biggest hurdle to learn in order to max out our robot’s performance. We have large treads for our patio doors and we have a lot of them-about 60 linear feet. At first we watched the robot get stuck trying to vacuum them. Once I placed boundary lines where the treads were, cleaning improved. Other than that, the robot does a quick map of your home, including furniture. It does go around my dogs. When we first got it, we had work going on in some rooms, that we told it not to go into. After work was done, I removed the boundary lines and I didn’t even need to have it remap. It just went in and cleaned those rooms since it detected those rooms were there on its first mapping run. We have had towels, boxes, dog toys, and shoes on the floor when it runs and we haven’t had any issues with those. It hasn’t gotten any of our upholstered furniture wet or dirty and hasn’t dinged up any walls, doors, or furniture. We are still getting boxes and artwork delivered and I was nervous it would run into the art frames but we haven’t had any issues. We have tile and wood floors, museum-style baseboards. I haven’t done a white glove test yet but it seems to get under the baseboards. We usually run it at night before we go to bed and it’s been such a delight to wake up to clean floors. You can also change the suction of the robot. I just cleaned it for the first time and I was dreading it. I was planning on just taking it apart and wait for my husband to just do it for me. I didn’t have to. It was very easy to clean and quick. Probably took me less than 10 minutes. I found a lot of sand in the station and in the robot. It comes with a little brush. I think a tooth brush would work better for cleaning. I used scissors to cut out hair and other stuff that got tangled up in the vacuum and mop brushes. The manual says to clean it more often but it worked for 28 hours before I cleaned it for the first time. It takes about 2 hours to get 1000sq ft done. At first, I added cleaning fluid to the water tank but I found that it doesn’t really need it. Another thing I have bragged about has been the self cleaning feature. It cleans and dries the mop brushes on it’s own. I love it so much, I’m thinking of getting it for my sister who has 4 small kids to help make her life easier. My husband says this is one of the best purchases I’ve ever bought—up there with the Instant pot and air fryer toaster oven.

It requires maintenance, especially if you use it to mop. I have two big pit bulls one is a German shepherd pit bull mix and he sheds a lot!!!! This thing keeps our floors spic and span and smelling great!!! The carpets are always clean too! But I find myself emptying and refilling the water compartments almost every other day. I run this vacuum constantly, however. It does not bother my dogs. Even on full power with the loud noise. Both my dogs are free to roam indoors and out to our big backyard. There is about 2,650 sqft to clean. It gets the job done! We don’t have to clean around the house as much! But we do need to clean and maintain the robot, which is a small ask. I’ve replaced the washing pads and the brushes and filters and emptied the bins about once a month. Also cleaned the water and scrubbed in the back of the compartment of the robot. I highly recommend this robot vacuum but it only works well if you maintain it and take care of it! Don’t just set it and forget it, inspect it after every use and make sure the bags don’t have to be emptied or the water compartments changed and that nothing is stuck in it, etc. we’ve had this vacuum for about a year now, this vacuum is well worth the purchase! Update: we have been using about a half cup of shark vacuums cleaner solution in water for our mop. It is lavender scent and works great! It is only $9 and less than half the price with more oz of solution than the Omni recommended brand. You can find it here. https://a.co/d/641Mw1b The vacuum does take a long time to charge so it can take an entire day to clean 2,400 sq ft. We usually split up rooms so half the house in one day and the other half the other day.

***October 2021 update - Dropping to 1 star*** So I tried a free replacement N8 Pro+ but this time in my mom's house, who has no pets and wow, the experience was abysmal. Embarrassing even! Every step is an absolute pain starting with connecting the bot to the app. 30 minutes of pressing buttons, entering wifi passwords, scanning QR codes, over and over and over, finally it took for no reason. Then the initial mapping... a complete nightmare. The bot keeps going over the same areas, again and again leaving other areas untouched. Black rugs or rugs with any black at all will cause the bot to think its drop sensors failed. If you move the bot too far after getting stuck it will lose tracking to base and guess what? That partial map you just spent hours building... GONE! Unbelievably bad and support is non existent. I reached out to the company and got zero response, nothing. Do you yourself a favor and RUN away from Ecovacs! ***Original review*** If you've done your homework, watched Vacuum Wars videos on YouTube and compared all available options right now, you may have landed on the N8 Pro+ and Roomba i7 as your top contenders. The Roomba S9 looks nice but it's way too expensive and the reviews just aren't good enough. Roborock looks promising but their top end model is relatively expensive and doesn't have an auto-empty bin as of the date of this review. There is no "perfect" robot in existence right now, in my view. I'm a 5 year owner of a Roomba 960 that had to be returned 3 times initially and repaired once out of warranty before it reached a stable state for me. I figured it was time for an upgrade. I was not optimistic about the i7 at all due to previous 960 issues and for that reason purchased the Deebot first as an extremely impressive option full of advanced tech. I'll give you my experience with both and why, much to my surprise, I landed on the i7 as the robot I will keep. First up, the N8 Pro+ which boasts variable suction levels that auto-switch depending on the floor type, low noise levels, laser 3D LiDAR tech for navigation, object avoidance camera, dual rotating brushes, built in mopping capability and a physically thinner footprint so it can get under my kitchen cabinets where my 960 gets stuck, daily. The functionality of the Ecovacs app is all there but my gripes are mainly around the layout, button naming and settings menus. I didn't find it very intuitive at all but all the key features are there: house mapping and virtual keep out zones being my top priorities. I did have some trouble with the initial configuration of the keep-out zones but got there eventually. The robot functions very well in general and is a very good vacuum, all told. The downsides that I experienced, however, were enough for me to return it. The key cons here are battery life, recharge time, the auto-empty base and getting stuck. Your first step with the N8 is the initial mapping of your floorplan which must be completed fully before you can do anything, I mean anything. It runs the vacuum during this mapping so battery consumption will be high. The i7 by comparison can do mapping runs with the vacuum turned off making it a much more streamlined process. I found the battery life to be much lower than the advertised 110 minutes netting a maximum of 75 minutes. The bigger problem is that it takes HOURS to recharge, so depending on when you start your cleaning run, this thing could quite literally run all day. For example in my situation, 635 square feet cleaned took 110 minutes of total run time with a required charge in the middle. This netted a total of nearly 6 hours to complete! Unacceptable. Also important to note is that the N8 will want to recharge at 15% battery, so the most you ever really get out of this thing is 85%. The next big problem for me was the design of the auto-empty base. They opted to use a dual port discharge method that sucks from 2 doors in the dust bin simultaneously. If you have pet hair to deal with, like I do, it was unable to suck out any of it, just leaving stranded clumps hanging from each port in the dust bin, see the attached photo. The final nail in the coffin was that despite all the advanced tech in the N8, cameras, lasers, etc, it STILL got stuck under the dining room table/ chairs just like my 960 does. Too many concessions so I sent it back and tried my luck with the i7+. N8 Pros: -Competitive price (usually on sale) -Premium look and feel -Advanced tech (cameras, lasers...) -Powerful variable suction -Systematic cleaning pattern -Free in-box extras (bags, mop pads) -Awesome low noise levels -Lower physical profile so glides under kitchen cabinets N8 Cons: -Initial mapping will take a VERY long time and must be fully completed -Even with Lidar, mapping, sensing etc it still gets stuck -Battery life is terrible (more like 75 minutes at best) vs 110, charging time is worse (1 cleaning + charge cycle = 5 hours!) -85% max usable battery is abysmal, Roomba will drain itself to nothing -Dual port self-empty in the base creates problems, especially for pet hair With the N8 returned I found the i7 on sale for the same price and pulled the trigger to give iRobot yet another chance. Much less advanced overall tech here, the same "crash into everything" sensor mode as the old Roomba models, no fancy lasers here but the camera does use iAdapt to map out objects. This camera needs light, mind you. Out of the box is a very simple setup just plug in the base, set the robot in it, add the robot to the app. I was prompted with a firmware update right away so let that run and waited until the next day to do the initial mapping run. Being able to just wander around without the vacuum running is such a simple but meaningful feature here. One battery charge and you should have a map of your floorplan, vs 2 runs + 1 charge on my N8. The completed map was excellent and they even attempt to add room dividers so you can partition areas of your house for more granularity. This is really cool and allows you to choose certain areas to clean on certain days or times if you want. No-go zones and room labels are also easily applied here. VERY intuitive app layout, button naming scheme, settings menus. You can tell iRobot put a lot of effort into this. So I did the mapping run then followed with a "vacuum everywhere" run, no virtual barriers yet. Not only was the robot able to navigate my entire floor cleaning everything, it didn't get stuck once, even under the kitchen cabinets or dining room chairs, truly impressive. It did need a charge in the middle but at an hour or so to top up, the cleaning process completes in a much more reasonable time period. The rubber brush rolls are great for hair of all kinds and manage to pass it to the dust bin without tangles. i7 triggers the auto-empty base which is LOUD like a jet taking off but wow is it effective, nothing left in the dust bin after, not a strand of long cat hair. iRobot used a single port suction method for the base which works much better than the dual port design the N8 uses, so no problem with stuck pet hair. For comparison, the i7 cleaned 658 sq ft in 133 mins of cleaning plus a 75 minute charge. Half the total time of the N8. Cool! As for the downsides, there are a few but minor considering the system actually works well. First is the bump sensor design. I know the i7 first came out 3 years ago and once the robot learns your house it should be more gentle, as they claim, but this just feels like ancient tech at this point. Not only that, the RCON sensor, which is the protruding eye in the middle above the bumper, takes plenty of direct hits as it activates the bumper it sits on. This is the part I needed repaired on my 960 as one day it actually broke off due to years of repeated impact. iRobot should do like the others in this space and move it somewhere else safer! The unit itself is thicker than the N8 so doesn't glide under my cabinets but so far has managed to avoid getting stuck. The single rotating brush isn't as effective as the dual brushes on the N8 and you would need to buy a separate mopping robot, if you care about that. The other thing to keep in mind is that the Roomba can't see well in the dark, it needs light to do its thing. Overall I'm very pleased with the i7 and intend to keep it. All the areas the N8 falls short work as intended or better on the i7, despite being lower tech. And this is after I was almost positive I wouldn't buy another Roomba! i7 Pros: -Competitive price -Premium look and feel -Systematic cleaning pattern -Free in-box extras (1 bag, filter, rotating brush) -Excellent battery and charging performance -Excellent auto-empty base -ZERO issue with long pet hair -Intuitive and granular control via the app (clean zones, no go zones, defined rooms that can be scheduled) -Smart Maps works really well i7 Cons: -Old school vSLAM bump sensor tech that will mar the more stuff it bumps into -RCON sensor sits in harms way atop the bumper -Single rotating brush could be improved -Room lighting is required, this thing doesn't do well in the dark

This thing has had its funny moments from deciding to go hang out and sleep mode under my bed when its supposed to be cleaning the living room to going out of its way to beeline it over to the other side of the house and start running over some cables we had on the ground while we built a desk from the complete opposite end of the house it was supposed to be cleaning, It really is a toddler and has a mind of its own sometimes. Now besides it doing what it wants on its own sometimes it really is a good vacuum, does well picking up things off the floor and the floor washing isnt bad either though do note dont expect this thing to completely take over long term cleaning for you. The station does well at emptying the bin automatically and it will was the pads fairly well as long as you're not trying to have it clean up a large mess. The things I dont like on it however is its ability to maneuver around with the mop heads on it, it cannot get over the lip of carpets with them on unless your carpet is literally flush with the hard floor so I have to carry it around. Sometimes I have to yell "ok yiko" just to have the voice activation start to tell it to do something. (you can use the phone app to have it do things too or just push the button on the station to have it do a full house clean) As for keeping the robot clean even though the station can empty the bin and wash the mop pads it wont just clean the robot itself which can get dusty fast and cover sensors so I have to clean the robot every 3-4 uses to keep it optimal. Is this vacuum annoying sometimes? Yes, yes it very much is. Do I regret buying it? No, I dont think I do. The vacuum is fun to have around and it does keep my place cleaner and I do not mind spending 20 minutes every Sunday cleaning the unit, it is entertaining to watch it do its thing and provides me a laugh or 2 when it decides to just act like a toddler. Just make sure to maintain the unit and maybe just setup the station on the hardfloor if you dont want to be carrying it back to the station when its done mopping and unable to clear that 3/8" lift on the carpet. ( Do note when the mopping pads are off I had no issues with it going from hard flooring to carpet, that is when the advertised floor offset it can go over is true)

I have owned a few robot vacuums, most of them from Ecovacs and have been mostly happy with those purchases. Before this unit, my main floor Deebot was the 900, which has been retired to upstairs area. The main thing that drew me to the 900 was one of the first lidar based robots which did a pretty good job over the last few years avoiding obstacles, but it was never perfect even after years of updates. I was very reluctant to trust that the new models have come much further, but I can say I was happily wrong. Initial unboxing and setup was straight forward, especially if you have ever used any robot vacuums. It was interesting to see the auto empty unit was already loaded with a vacuum bag, but others have noted the same thing. It is very possible they quality test the unit in the factory and load the first bag for this test. Not an issue. I placed the auto empty station next to the older 900 unit and its dock, and docked the N8 Pro+ robot after attaching the 2 side sweeping brushes and removing the protection sleeves with the pull tabs. Powered on the toggle switch and the unit indicated it was charging. I used the QR code found under the top cover to download the app (different from the old Ecovacs Deebot app, the Ecovacs Deebot 2017 app, and now called Ecovacs Home). The newer UI on the most recent app is more intuitive and better tools for map managing than the older 2 apps were. This was a welcome finding that they have updated this. The app setup is a bit annoying it that it wants to map the house before any other options are available, so just note setting up no go "walls", rooms, new names, etc are not shown on the UI until the completion of the first cleaning run. Also to note, make sure you have the auto empty station dock flat against a wall that is somehow perpendicular to your house design. This was a major headache if you don't do this. What I mean is if your house is mostly a rectangle or square layout, make sure the wall you start with is 90 degrees to your home layout and not against a wall that is diagonal or circular to your house layout, otherwise, your home map will be weirdly placed on the map it generates forever and all time. You cannot (under the latest version as of 5-28-21) rotate the map once it is generated and the robot/app situates the map of the home based off the angles it detects on first undocking. So if the wall behind the dock isnt flat and perpendicular to the other walls, it may layout your map diagonally. This may not seem like any particular issue until you go to edit your map, generate zones, place no go walls, etc, because the map only uses rectangles to set zones and no mop areas and if you map is off on a diagonal direction, you will have no way to easily set these areas other than virtual no go "walls" which can be diagonal. This seems like a very big oversight and something that could easily be fixed, but there is no current provision for this and will force you to reset the entire map and start all over again. Not the end of the world, but quite an annoyance if you are not aware of what is going on. Hopefully this saves someone that pain. Now for my first cleaning. That main reason I wanted to get this unit is the improved obstacle detection. I hate having to prepare the house for a run so that it doesnt get stuck anywhere only to come find it got stuck and a large reason my last vac didnt just run on a constant schedule. In a large home (4000 sqft) with 2 kids and a dog, it was really awful to assume it would run nonstop without issue. The old unit had horrible times with anything dangling from any possible reach. It was also bad about getting hung up on low pass areas under coffee tables, end tables, etc. This unit happily is not having those issues. The front sensors seem a lot more capable of sensing things it cant fit under perfectly and the map allowed to easily prevent any future (investigations) of those areas where it would only find it couldnt fit. Be very aware, it is known that the first mapping pass takes MUCH longer for the unit to finish and will almost always not happen in the first go and require a recharge and resume. This is as designed as the unit takes extra time to map the area more closely. Once a map exists, the unit will traverse a lot more efficiently and take less time to investigate areas. I did notice this unit struggled slightly more than the 900 with tall rugs, at least at first, but then somehow it seemed to "learn" something and employ a turn around backup maneuver to get up on the rug in reverse since it has more clearance, turn around, and proceed to clean the rest of the rug (a tall pile rug on hard wood floor). I thought at first this would be a fluke, and it just happened to get up on the carpet this way, but multiple cleanings and it still does this to get over the lip of the tall pile rug. I really like the new mapping feature that detects carpet versus hardwood/tile and puts this on the map, even door mats that are carpet. This causes the vacuum to increase suction while over these areas which is a very welcomed feature. My family has already noted, this one if much quieter than the 900 and any other vacuum we have ever used while running. Slight increase over carpet, but being that it is now over carpet, not that audible since it is dampened by the carpet itself. Battery life, many indicate how this has less battery capacity then the last unit, and this is true, but I feel this is a cost cutting measure and not something that is a real issue with the unit. In my opinion, this unit is used differently from before as you can let it run more constant scheduling since it is more capable and can auto empty. When you free your mind to this concept and use it that way, battery life is much less an issue. On the initial run, it needed another charge to finish the entire 1st floor, but subsequent runs can finish on 1 run as it takes 84 minutes to complete the whole floor with some room to spare. If you schedule rooms alternating, etc, you should never run into an issue. The do not disturb times allow you to set this and sort of forget it. Just check the vac bag in the unit from time to time for fullness. One thing I want to mention from the old unit, the old unit was HORRIBLE at returning to the dock to charge, the N8 Pro+ is a lot better at finding the way back to the dock. The old unit would sometimes go in the opposite direction to get home first and sometimes run out of power while trying to find its way back. This unit generally drives right to it. Much better.

DISCLAIMER - I had to request a replacement for this product as the first one was dead on arrival, but my overall rating is not affected by that directly. Pros - Vacuum performance. Assuming you purchase this for its intended use, keeping a CLEAN house clean and run it on a consistent schedule, it does an amazing job. If you're expecting this to clean a floor that has been neglected, you'll be disappointed on multiple levels (same for every robot vacuum). My floor consists of carpet, hardwood, tile, and linoleum and works well on them all. - Mapping. I did have to re-map due to human error as I left some objects such as boxes on the floor that made the initial map sub-par, but once the floor was clear of temporary items, it created a very accurate map can is able to get everywhere the robot can fit. - Battery life. I've seen several complaints about the smaller battery on this, but the size of the battery makes sense with the size of the dustbin. Running this every other day with pets, my dustbin is pretty full at the end of its run, so a bigger battery would be useless since the bin would be filled regardless. Cons - Auto empty station. Overall if this runs often it's not an issue, but with pets or someone with long hair, the two exit ports on the dustbin will make emptying it counter productive as the hair will try to be sucked out both holes, playing a game of tug-a-war. I've seen some people block one hole to solve this, but it hasn't been a huge issue to start altering the hardware. - Software. It's terrible and they really need to invest some time and energy into it as there's definitely going to be some people who would prefer a slightly less effective robot with better software. The app is slow (on a modern smart phone), it seems like it needs to connect to their servers to do anything as I'm usually stuck on a loading screen just to display the robot status. While the robot mapping works well, doing anything to the map makes you want to pull your hair out. I have an open layout so the mapping didn't split all the rooms, but they have room splitting so thought it wouldn't be a problem... it was. For some reason the developers thought it would be a good idea to only allow rooms to be split from OUTSIDE wall to OUTSIDE wall, because apparently homes don't have rooms with interior walls. This needs to be updated to make 1/2 the scheduling and "smart" features useful since you can't schedule a specific room if it doesn't auto-detect it or connect to an outside wall, nor can you sequence rooms, or have different settings for different rooms. - Customer support. Like a mentioned before, my rating isn't affected by getting a DOA product as that's bound to happen occasionally. I did however factor in their customer support. I sent them a ticket with my issue and a bullet point list of things I tried while troubleshooting; literally a ticket that would take 15 seconds to read. First response was them ignoring my actual issue, regurgitating the manual, and ironically a bullet list of things to try to troubleshoot... all of which were included in my original email. Took THREE attempts to get them to do something other than copy pasted responses before I just threw in the towel and asked Amazon for a replacement as clearly Ecovacs would rather you just RMA for everything instead of possibly finding an easy solution. - Updating map. While the robot WILL update the map if you had a close door or an area it couldn't previously see during it's initial run, it will not allow you to merge or even identify new rooms without starting a new map. - Lack of full dustbin sensor. I have seen so many complaints about this, I had to include it. While it's a shame this one doesn't have one, personally it's never been an issue for me. BUT since I've also seen people saying they're returning it and getting something like a Roborock (which to be clear also doesn't have this feature), I thought I'd help future people out who can search; iRobot has a patent on this feature and must be generic enough because Roomba's are the ONLY robot I've seen that has this feature. But again, if you run it on a regular basis, it shouldn't be an issue, or if it is, schedule rooms at different times. Overall I think this robot has a lot of potential and can easily compete against the more expensive competitors like the Roborocks and Roombas, but I think the software at the bare minimum really needs some time and effort invested into it as it's frustrating when you want to do any sort of customization to how the robot vacuums. Also, please train your customer support and improve that experience; I shouldn't have to send multiple emails to get past generic copy paste responses when I took the time to provide all the information up front then be forced to give up and get an entirely new replacement.

Nov 2nd updated review: After posting how disappointed I was by it, and how I would have liked to exchange it in case I just got a faulty unit but was unable to, Deebot's customer service reached out to me and sent a replacement unit which I'm relieved to say HAS performed the way I hoped the first unit would, and I have been using it daily without issue since the end of September now. One thing I did differently this time, just as a precaution, was to use water that has been through a softener to fill the clean water tank. My city has extremely hard water and it does cause a buildup on faucets and shower walls etc. No clue if this was a factor with the first unit malfunctioning the way it did, or just a coincidence, but the new one has remained trouble free, so I'll stick with the softened water! I do still use a little handheld vac to get stray kitty litter from areas that are right next to the box, as it doesn't vacuum very effectively right next to things, and although I have enabled 'strategic particle removal' it does still tend to fling larger debris, like dry pet food, instead of picking it up. But these are pretty minor annoyances overall, and nothing I haven't encountered with any other automatic floor cleaner. So overall, a great product with outstanding customer service and support. I'm grateful I was able to give it another try and confirm that the first unit probably just had a faulty sensor or something along those lines. Original review: I wanted to love this, but it just didn't perform. I have a one bedroom apartment, all wood floors, no rugs or carpets. It's not a large or difficult area. I have two cats and was tired of having litter stuck to my feet, I was excited to spend less time sweeping and mopping to avoid this. I have long hair myself, so I'm pretty used to having to clear it off the rollers and wheels of vacuums of all kinds, so I wasn't that surprised to find that the same was true of this vacuum. Every couple of days it would shut down and not say why. The app would just say it was 'paused'. So I would turn it over, clear off any long hairs I could see that were wrapped around the roller or on the side brushes and it would run again. Not a dealbreaker for me. However, the last few times it happened it was obvious that one of the wheels was malfunctioning. I would clear off the roller and side brushes and when I fired it back up again it would get stuck trying to rotate in one direction, and immediately 'pause' again. I would go through every stage of the recommended cleaning & maintenance processes outlined in the manual, wipe any dust off the sensors and use a can of compressed air to blast any possible debris out from under or inside of the wheels. The first two times that worked. It was time consuming, annoying, and hardly the 'hands off' cleaning experience advertised, but returning it seemed a hassle. (It's extremely heavy, even without water in it and I live in a walk-up) Unfortunately the third time this happened I went through the entire cleaning and maintenance process as I did the other times and it did not resolve the obviously defective wheel situation. I had only a couple of weeks of trouble free use out of it, and while the floors felt very nice when it was functioning, this is far too soon for a product with this price tag to be developing issues that required so much maintenance. It's faster and easier to sweep my apartment myself, as I was before. In addition to that, the fabric of the mop heads snags on anything and everything, I was cutting pulled threads off of them daily. It is also quite high profile for a robot vac with the little nub on top, so I had to put my couch and nightstand on furniture risers to get it to clean underneath them. In terms of suction, It did not always manage to clear my floor of the cat litter crystals. They are pretty small, so I was ok with the few that it missed, but it also had a problem picking up stray kibbles and usually just flung them across the room to another location instead. I actually wanted to exchange it, thinking perhaps I got a faulty unit, but there is no option to do that. Only return it and buy a new one, which I wont be doing since it is now $200 more expensive than when I purchased it. TL/DR Hefty price tag for an extremely finicky product that quickly developed non-resolvable problems. If you like babysitting machines that are supposed to decrease the burden of cleaning, this is the one for you though.

I have wasted hours upon hours of my life trying to get this vacuum to work and I've come to the conclusion that it's more of a psychological torture device than a vacuum. Not only is it incredibly buggy for such an expensive product, it teases you with the promise of seeming like you fixed it, only for something else to go wrong three days later. With the time I've spent trying to make it work, I could have scrubbed every floor in my house with a toothbrush several times over. The worst part is that the vacuum and mop feature actually do a really good job cleaning the floors, but I barely remember what that was like at this point. Within a week I started having issues and after 6 months of light use, it's nearly unsuable. Among the many problems I've had, the worst are: - The mop feature stopped working after about 3 months because the pump in the base station stopped refilling the reservoir. Despite spending literal hours following the troubleshooting instructions from customer support, it's nonfunctional and the company won't replace it. Since the mop function was most of why I bought the machine, kind of an issue. - It constantly forgets the map for no apparent reason despite the map being clearly visible in the app. For a while, I could get it to work by doing an elaborate routine (per customer service) of manually turning of the unit for several minutes, rebooting the base station, sending the robot back to the station, and trying again (which honestly probably took longer than it would have to just vacuum myself). This has happened probably once every one to two weeks since I started using the machine, and over the last two weeks it happens literally every time I use the vacuum. The only way I can use it now it to put it in auto clean mode and let it bumble around aimlessly and eventually covering most of the floor space. Oh, and then it forgets the new map it just made and gets lost again. - The dustbin clogs frequently and doesn't fully empty, but the robot apparently has no way to notice this and carries on about its merry way scattering the dirt it can't pick up all around my house. Yesterday I ran the vacuum while I was in the shower and came out to floors that were literally dirtier than they were before they were vacuumed. Almost weekly I have to pull apart the brush compartment and manually unclog the dust bin, which is super pleasant and definitely the user experience I was looking for when I spent $1000 on a self cleaning vacuum. - I foster rescue animals and went with Ecovacs because they advertised that it would avoid dog poop. The disgusting messes I've now had to clean up twice determined that was a lie. So now I only use it when I'm at home and can supervise both dogs and the vacuum, again defeating the purpose of why I bought it. - Even though it gets lost three feet from the base, it will always find the one power cord I forgot to put away and immediately try to hang itself. - If it encounters an issue during cleaning (which you've probably surmised is often), it will frequently just announce it with the device speaker but the app won't tell me what it said if I didn't happen to be standing within a few feet of the robot when it made it's announcement. Also, it's hard to hear said announcements over the vacuum. Would have thought a vacuum company would realize vacuums make noise, but oh well. I have been so disappointed in this product. When the mop worked and the software functioned correctly, it actually did a great job cleaning the floors, so I've invested so much time and frustration trying to get it to work, but I'm about to throw in the towel.