Robot vacuums are fast growing in popularity but when you talk to people who have bought them, it's rare they get rave reviews.
Often it seems you're either getting a substandard product that doesn't do a great job of cleaning up, or you're paying well over $2000.
The latest Ecovacs offering attempts to give the best of both worlds - what you'd get in one of those super expensive models for around half the price.
The company's Deebot N10 Plus has recently gone on sale in New Zealand for $1200, which makes it cheaper than many of its competitors, despite offering similar specs.
I've been using one for the past few weeks and have been generally impressed with how it's performed, albeit with a few disappointments.
Some of those disappointments come with any robot vacuum - like how you have to really clear all the floors before letting it start, so you don't have to worry about it getting upset over a stray sock or maybe eating one of your electrical cords. But other problems I encountered are more specific and will hopefully be remedied in the next iteration.
But there's certainly a lot to like. This thing vacuums well, mops OK, is fairly smart and takes some of the pain out of other forms of floor-cleaning.
My favourite thing is how it cleans under the beds in my home, some of which are really heavy and annoying to move about for non-robot vacuum cleaning.
I also really like putting it on mop mode and setting it to work around all the hardfloor areas of my home. These are generally easier to clear than the carpeted areas, which get covered in various toys, clothes and other stuff.
You're not supposed to put cleaning liquids into the water tank though, so essentially it's just vacuuming, laying down a bit of water and then wiping that up with the mop. For messy spills, this can mean it just smears it along the floor and only cleans a little of it up, leaving me to manually clean the rest.
It would be great if it could see where it's left a mess and go back and forth over it until it's genuinely clean. Alas, it's not quite that smart, despite being smart enough to sense where tiles meet the carpet and not try to wet clean the carpet.
As for suction power, the N10 Plus is said to pack 4300Pa, which is a different unit to what companies like Dyson use for measuring their power (air watts or AW). This makes it difficult to compare them on a stats basis - but I certainly put them to the test alongside each other.
There are three suction power options for the N10 Plus and I generally use it on the maximum one, unless it's in mop mode. Even so, after it's completed a vacuum, if I go around afterwards with my Dyson stick vacuum I'll still pick up a bunch more dust, at least from the fluffier rugs.
For general cleans of dust and debris of the floors though, it's fine. It mapped out my home on the app and allowed me to make zones fairly easily, then schedule it to start cleaning whenever I like or manually tell it to from the app at any time from anywhere.
That's great, but less great in that I have to make sure the floor is cleared before setting it off. It's not like you can discover you have guests coming over after work and remotely set it to do an unscheduled clean, for fear a piece of clothing, cord or something else might be left out and cause a drama.
Another issue is the replacement bags. It's great that the N10 Plus empties itself into the dustbin after each clean, but when that dustbin is full, you have to throw out the bag and buy new ones. It would've been much better if it came with a solution where you could just empty the bin and clean it later, rather than going through the inconvenience and cost of buying new bags.
You also need to buy replacement mop heads, although not every time - it can be cleaned, dried and used again, but will wear down.
Battery-wise it's packing 5200mAh, which seems plenty. I've never run out and had it working for a couple of hours straight in one session. They say you get up to five hours, which I imagine is in low suction mode.
All in all, I was mostly impressed with how this robot vacuum performed. It does a good job - but not a great job - at vacuuming and mopping. It's fairly smart, has a great battery and handy app.
I would still want a regular vacuum to supplement this one: using the two together for different areas at different times would be a convenient and effective way to get a cleaner, healthier home.
For people who have been burned by robot vacuums in the past, the Ecovacs Deebot N10 Plus may well address some of the issues they encountered and probably asks for a lot less money than folks have shelled out for similar devices before.
It's far from perfect, but for the price it's asking, I reckon it's a pretty good deal.
Newshub was supplied with a Ecovacs Deebot N10 Plus for this review.
