Customer Ratings & Reviews

The DEEBOT M81 Pro is a promising take on the robot vac market, offering Alexa integration and an assortment of cleaning modes (auto, spot, edge, max). The M81 Pro includes the standard main brush option, a direct suction option, 4 side brushes ( 1 spare set), remote control, dock, an ‘advanced’ wet/dry reservoir with 2 cloths, and a measuring cup. The direct suction option is for everyday cleaning and to reduce hair tangling on main brush, I found it did a great job on tile/hardwood floors. The main brush worked well, but found it often managed to get hair tangled around it. Ecovacs includes a tool to remove hair and maintain the device, which is conveniently stored in the vac. The bot includes wifi connectivity with Alexa integration, however the 2.4 GHz band was not compatible with my band steering dual-band router. Normally, the access point will direct the client to the correct band but due to the way Ecovacs requires another device (iPhone/Android) to facilitate the setup it kept trying to join my 5 GHz band, failing every time. Make sure you have a legacy device to setup the M81 or a router/AP that can broadcast a 2.4 GHz only network if you want to utilize it’s network features. I was also disappointed with the ‘mopping’ attachment. It barely dampened the floors and always found its way to a carpet, defeating the purpose. Honestly I think a Swiffer type mop is far superior to using the M81 to mop floors, which isn’t saying much. My biggest issue with the M81 is it constantly would get stuck somewhere, usually under my coffee table which is on a rug. The M81 does not detect BotBoundary strips (magnetic strips) so there is not a reasonable way to prevent it from getting stuck in my home. One other gripe is the design of the dust bin. The inlet and access door are on opposite ends with the inlet being covered by a flimsy piece of mylar. Every time I went to empty the bin I would tilt it downward in order to open the access door, causing debris to fall out the inlet. Despite all my issues, I still feel it is a nice robot vac that may work well depending on your environment.

We have a good robotic vacuum of another brand that is more powerful that we like very much, so we were hopeful the DEEBOT M81Pro by ECOVACS Robotics would be similar. Our other one cost about $300 more than the Deebot, so in this case you do get what you pay for. The Deebot is a good robotic vacuum, but there are better ones available. The Deebot charges from it's charging station you place on the floor near an outlet - when in use, the Deebot returns to the charging station when its battery gets low. You can control it with the included remote control, or if you prefer using your phone for everything, you can download an app to your phone with the same controls as the remote. The Deebot has one button on the vacuum itself, and that's for the Automatic setting. If you push the Automatic button on the body of the Deebot or on the remote, it takes off crossing and re-crossing the room at different angles vacuuming in a "medium" power mode. If you want it to vacuum in its most powerful setting, you may hit the Intensive Cleaning Mode button on the remote, and its suction will increase. Of course this requires more power so the battery won't last as long as in Automatic Mode. It won't stay in the Intensive Mode if interrupted, but you can hit the button again for Intensive Cleaning Mode to resume. From our use, the Deebot seems to clean well on carpet or hard surfaces. It has a good sized dustbin so you don't have to empty it every time it goes to the charging station. It also has a little water tank that affixes to the underside of the Deebot over which you attach a wet/dry cleaning cloth (2 cloths come with the unit). As Deebot moves over a hard surface, it vacuums from the front of the Deebot and wipes the surface with the wet cloth positioned behind the vacuum inlet and brush. This has some drawbacks - unless you somehow restrict it to just a hard surface area, it will run onto carpet getting things wet there. Also, once the cloth gets dirty, it will smear the rest of the hard surface if you're not paying attention. The wet mop feature does require some supervision for reasons noted above. It has 2 filters, on in the Deebot and a replacement. These are paper filters so you will have to replace them at some point. Some other robotic vacuums use foam filters that can be cleaned and reused, which is more useful in my opinion. Like most all robotic vacuums, the Deebot has sensors to keep it from falling down stairs and such, and it does slow when approaching some objects and turns before making contact while with other objects it bumps them then turns - it may be wider objects triggers the avoidance sensors where less wide objects don't. In that case the Deebot bumps the object with its bumper and senses the object that way. It doesn't sense wires on the floor, so it can get entangled to the point where it can't extricate itself. Just like if you're vacuuming manually, move anything you don't want sucked into the vacuum including cords and wires. Even if the Deebot doesn't suck them into its vacuum inlet, it can get tangled up in them. There are a few things I don't like about Deebot. Our other unit actually senses the room with its closet (if the door is open between the two) and lays our a grid for itself in its little brain. It runs along this grid until the job is done, while edge cleaning as it goes. Deebot, on the other hand, takes off in a criss-cross fashion without creating a grid. So it goes all over the place until it's done - frankly, I'm not sure how it decides when it's finished a room, but with other rooms (bathroom, closet etc.) attached to the main room, it may clean one more than the other. While it has an Edge Cleaning Mode, you have to engage this with the remote rather than it doing it automatically while its cleaning the floor. If there's an area you don't want Deebot to go into, you have to wall off that area yourself with whatever there is to hand otherwise it will go into that area. In one of our bedrooms, we have a bed skirt that hangs down from the bed. I watched Deebot approach the skirt and it sensed it, slowed, then turned away from it and headed elsewhere. What I didn't know until later was that if Deebot has bumped one of the legs of the bed it will go around it and then turn back just past it. For whatever reason, Deebot's sensors doesn't pick up the bed skirt in that sharp turning maneuver and it pushes through the skirt right under the bed. Two problems here - if you've got various extension/power cords or wires under the bed, Deebot will run over them until its entangled, then it's move the bed to extricate Deebot. Secondly, if there's nothing under there to entangle it, then it may not come out from under the bed since on its way out from under the bed it will ordinarily sense the bed skirt and turn around repeating this until it runs out of charge while still under the bed. While Deebot is good at vacuuming, it needs work with its sensors being more attuned to objects, a better way to restrict it from going where you don't want it to go, foam filters rather than paper ones that have to be replaced, and better intelligence of the areas that need cleaning when dealing with more than one room. So often today, with open floor plans, some robotic vacuums don't seem to have enough computational power to sort it all out so that it requires less supervision.

At first glance the Deebot M81 seems to be a cleaner that can pretty much do it all. However in my opinion it seems to take on more then it can actually handle. Deebot is a Chinese based company that focus on bringing affordable technology to the table at price that most people can handle. The Deebot has many different features, there are 4 different cleaning modes, Auto which allows the robot to move at its on pace, intensive which allows the cleaner to focus on the more stubborn areas, spot cleaning which creates a spiral clean pattern and edge cleaning which focuses on the borders all along the wall. You also have the option to change out suction heads for deeper cleaning and your also giving a mop attachment to allow the cleaner to mob tile or wood floor. Sounds great right? Well there are a few areas that are lacking so lets see if this is right for you. Out of the box your going to receive a few different items you may not be used to seeing. Your going to receive the bot, water tray, measuring cup, waste bin, remote with batteries, air filter, two brushes, two different suction heads, charging dock, and mop head attachment. I own a few different robotic cleaners with one of them being a very expensive brand name. The Deebot was going to have some very strict guidelines that i expect to be met in a decent robotic cleaner. First off not much is different then most robotic cleaners out there. The Deebot has edge protection which will not allow it to drop off stairs or offset drops. There is a bump protection and obstacle avoidance built in however right off the bat i noticed the Deebot was a little clumsy in this category. Instead of avoiding most obstacles it would run straight in to it and then would slightly adjust. Also another key note to keep in mind is the fact that it will not detect electrical cables such as cellphone chargers and power strip wires. This means that if you plan on leaving the bot alone to clean you had better make sure that all cords and small items are removed or you may leave yourself open to an interesting situation. The Deebot takes about 4 hours to fully charge and you get about two and half hours of run time which is actually really good in the robotic market. Once battery is depleted the Deebot will make its way home and dock with no issues. Cleaning schedules can be done via the supplied remote or app. The app provides access to certain functions such as bot status, schedule cleanings, replacement parts, and you can pull up a control pad which allows you to control it manually similar to a remote control car. With the remote control feature i found that it wasn't as responsive as i would of liked. There was a few seconds of delay when trying to command it where to go so i found this feature kind of useless. Lets talk about what everyone really cares about and that is how well it actually cleans. Your given two different suction heads to be able to handle two different jobs. One is for everyday cleaning and the other is for those deep clean and pet hair removal. As a owner of pets i find myself very critical of how well cleaners can pull up all debirs without tangling. At first go the cleaner did not pull up all the pet hair over its first pass. This can be normal and sometimes most robotic cleaners will get it on the second pass. The Deebot however took about four passes to actually pull up a decent amount of hair and even at that it did not grab all of it. I decided to switch out the heads to the deep clean suction and see if this would improve its performance. It did improve it slightly, it was able to pull up more hair and only took three passes this time however i noticed the brushes were starting to tangle up a bit. Luckily the Deebot has a very big waste bin to handle its multiple passes. In fact it is probably the largest waste bin i have seen on a robotic cleaner to date. Next i tried out the mop feature which i was very excited to see in action since i don't own a cleaner that has this function. The Deebot has a separate tank that you fill up with water with the provided measuring cup. You then install the water tank to its underside and attach the mop head. Simply set down on your tile or hardwood and boom your ready to go. The Deebot will vacuum up any debris it encounters all while spraying water directly on to the mop pad. This is a pretty cool feature in theory however it falls short a few areas. For starters it works really well at first but as cleaning continues you will find that the pad gets dirty very quickly and then starts to smear all the dirt rather than actually mop it up. Yes you can buy additional pads but man they are not cheap and the price is going to add up fast. I found myself just grabbing a swifter and mopping up my kitchen and floorboards manually. Another really big turn off with the mop feature is that unless you manually block off your carpet areas it will go into that area and lay water down on the carpet. And trust me it will not pull the water up from your carpet so now your left with this damp carpet floor that now needs to be addressed. This left a really bad impression on me because most robotic cleaners out there will provided either in box or additional cost boundary strips or senors that allow you to block of areas that the cleaner is not allowed to go in to. I was not able to find a similar product for the Deebot at this time that would allow me to block of areas. This means if you want to keep it from going somewhere your going to need to lay down chairs, boxes or other obstacles to keep it out. Here's my final take away from this product. Its very clear that they are trying to make a robotic cleaner that is capable of keeping up with some of the bigger brand names that are out there for a fraction of the cost. Yes it does the job and it does a decent job at best, however it falls short in many key categories. I truly feel that there are a lot more capable cleaners out there in this price range that will provide you with a way better experience. Deebot is a Chinese based company that while they may make good products this one tends to be one that needs to focus mainly on deep cleaning and not the mop feature. All in all its a decent product but just don't expect it to blow your mind away. At the end of the day you get what you pay for. Pros: -Long battery life -Large waste bin -Remote and app feature -Different suction attatchments Cons: -Obstacle detection can be clumsy -Mop head gets dirty fast -Lack of barrier strips -At times struggles to deep clean

I have owned and tested different robotic vacuums from Shark to Roomba. This ECOVACS company is new to me so I did not have any expectations. Upon opening the box I can see everything has been packed very well and the vacuum itself looks sleek and compares well with the competition. An included remote or a downloadable app allows scheduling, cleaning jobs and return to base. The suctioning and cleaning performance is good but it needs to run over areas multiple times for optimal cleanliness; this leads to more battery usage. The battery life is quite good. We have cats and the M81Pro does a pretty decent job picking up their hair. The wet mopping feature is ok but the problem is no option to prevent the wet mopping of our rugs which are scattered around. You simply fill up water tank with included cup plus mopping brushes are machine washable. Overall the M81Pro’s cleaning coverage could be better plus I wish their are options to prevent mopping of certain areas. It is a pretty decent robotic vacuum and this company seems to have potential in a very competitive vacuum market.

The DEEBOT M81 is an entry-level robot that tries to set itself apart from the competition by adding features but it unfortunately omits some of the biggest necessities on its way and misses the mark on some basic operations. First off, I love the look and feel of the M81. It’s sleek and seems well built. However, shortly after unboxing, I started to realize this little guy wouldn’t be a breeze to get up and going. For some strange reason, Ecovacs decided not to build in support for 5 gHz wi-fi signals. During setup, I kept getting errors and failures based on wi-fi issues. I had to go into the settings for my Velop to shut off the 5 gHz band before I could get the setup completed. This is an issue that shouldn’t be necessary in today’s exploding market of smart devices, especially in the case of one that’s supposed to be simple and save me time like this bot. Anyway, after setup the vacuum worked basically like my old bot that is used upstairs. It zigs and zags and usually misses spots and gets itself hung up on stuff. Remember, even though robotic vacuums have been out for a while, the technology is still in its infancy (and don’t expect cleaning performance on par with your normal vacuum as that’s really not what these things are designed to do). The obstacle detection sensors on this bot are far and away worse than on my competitive model though. Sometimes it will slow down and barely touch an item while the next time it will slam into the same object at ramming speed. Unlike competitors, no virtual barriers are included (nor could I find any to purchase) so if there’s somewhere you don’t want to be vacuumed, start building your own. This bot uses dual rotating brushes which dies seem to help it pick up more dirt and debris. Unfortunately, that also doubles the chances of it catching a cord, curtain or bed skirt and getting itself hung up. One of the features I was excited about was the ability of this machine to mop. Having a dual-role machine is substantially better than having a dedicated vacuum and separate mopping robot. If Ecovacs could pull it off, that truly would put this machine in a class above. Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed. The machine doesn’t really “mop” anything, it simply runs a dampened cloth around in its wandering pattern. The built-in reservoir holds enough water for 10 minutes or so of running around. Remember that part about no virtual barriers? Yup, when in mopping mode you will likely end up with a damp rug or part of your carpet. And the suction from this machine is nowhere near enough to pull that moisture back out so you will be forced to get out another cleaning utensil of some sort to clean up the soggy mess your “helper” left behind. While the included remote is a neat add-on, I simply do not want or need another tiny remote to keep up with. Since the bot is app controlled, I think the remote is a gimmick at best and a waste at worst. The M81 is not all bad. For an entry-level machine, it does an admirable job at vacuuming. Once it’s set up, programming to clean at specific times is relatively painless. It is substantially quieter than other machines in this segment and the dust collection bin is larger. Run times are about average and it will return “home” to recharge when it senses the need (although watching the return process can be comical since there is no GPS mapping feature on lower-end bots). Perhaps a software update can remedy the sensor issues and adding the ability to use virtual barriers would improve the usefulness greatly. Until then though, I wouldn’t recommend this machine as there are others on the market at this price point that don’t have these issues.

For a while now, we've been wanting a robo-vacuum. In the past, Roomba was your only, albeit costly, option, but thankfully nowadays there are numerous clones that supposedly do a good job. Enter the Deebot. Aesthetics: Looks like every other robo-vacuum. Squat cylinder with pull-up dustbin. Muted gray with black accents. Looks sleek. Controls: Easy enough, use the power button on the Deebot itself or use the remote to program the vacuum. Functionality: Now this is where the Deebot falls short. The suction strength on the Deebot is more than adequate to handle standard carpet. However, the navigational capabilities of the Deebot are pretty dismal - and really frustrating to watch. For better or worse, as there's been some controversy about Roomba's [not so] secretly saving their maps of your house, and iRobot now selling their stockpiles of home blueprints, the Deebot doesn't use smart navigation. Instead, it uses a series of crisscrosses to theoretically cover the entire space. In reality, however, this means if there's any obstacle at all, or god forbid, an obstacle course of toys left out on the floor, through random pingponging, the Deebot can end up missing large portions of the floor because it'll keep trying to either 1) circle around the perceived obstacle or 2) turn around and then proceed on its "Z" path around the rest of the room. Not only does the random Z lead to missing portions of the room, it also means Deebot can end up repetitively vacuuming the same patch of floor/carpet because it keeps bouncing at the perfect angle off a section of wall+toy+couch leg. So in summary, when it reaches where it needs to go, Deebot will vacuum pretty darn well. The problem is it can often get lost in the path. Heck, just to test it, I hit the "home" button to signal for Deebot to return to its charging base, and from my living room to the kitchen, Deebot kept zigzagging underneath the kitchen table and spent literally 20 min navigating the 3 ft over to the charging base. SO, if you don't have a lot of toys lying around that might confuse the Deebot, then the cost-savings is probably going to be worth it over a much more expensive Samsung or Roomba. However, if you're, like us, hoping to use the Deebot to clean your house in the aftermath of a curious toddler leaving his stuff everywhere, then having to tidy up the toys every single time you want to use the Deebot is going to be more frustrating than anything. YMMV.

This robotic vac has some nice features. The mopping feature is nice and the smartphone app is full-featured. However, my experience with the Deebot M81 Pro has not been positive. I put it in my bedroom and it got stuck 3 times and didn't complete the job. Once on the leg of an IKEA birch armchair, once when it wedged itself under the bottom drawer of my dresser, and once when it got wedged under some shelves. And that was on the first usage! I should add that another brand of robot vacuum did not get stuck in any of these places. Maybe my furniture is just not compatible with the Deebot. Maybe it will have more success in different room. If it doesn't get stuck in other rooms, I'll update my review. But for now, I would have a hard time recommending this over other brands.