Ecovacs Deebot-M88 Floor Cleaning Robot Review

I have always been a little sceptical about the robot vacuum craze, I have always assumed their dust storage capacity would be annoying and is it really any easier to use than just quickly getting the vacuum out? So, I was curious to try one out when offered an Ecovacs Deebot M88. The Ecovacs Deebot M88 is actually a floor cleaner, not carpet, so I was a little restricted as to where I could use it. With the floor cleaning models, you get a mop function too as well as a brush vacuum. A full list of the specifications can be found on the Evacs website here. In summary, it is a smart floor vacuum that you can control via an app, and it can sense where things are, where stairs are, etc. It also has an alarm it gives off when it gets stuck. It also comes with a handy remote so you don’t technically need to use your mobile. Price at around £399 the Deebot sits somewhere in the middle ground of robot cleaning gadgets, it is much cheaper than the Roomba or Dyson vacuums but more expensive than lesser known brands. The set-up is quite straight forward, you need to charge it for 4 hours, and go through the basic sign up procedure on your phone. Technically the app isn’t required, as you can just use the remote to control the device. Once charged and set up you can set the Deebot off on itself, due to my mixed floors at home I generally just left it to one room and closed the doors. For the most part, the app didn’t provide any advantage over the remote, however, the app does have a high-performance mode, if you have a particularly messy floor (like most of mine). As you would expect from a robot vacuum, it navigated around the room intelligently, and it managed to cover all my floors it could get access to. In my kitchen, I have a missing kick board and it would often roll off the flooring onto the wooden floor beneath, it also got stuck when I left one of my doors open and it got stuck on the trim between the 2 rooms. So, its intelligent features are limited a little, but it is easy to work around once you get used to it. Cleaning performance, in general, seemed good, there were no obvious missed patches when it did my rooms, and its storage capacity was enough for my rooms. The mop function is a little less techy than I expected. It is basically a thin water reservoir that fits under the Deebot and has a mop cloth running along its bottom. The water then soaks through mopping your floor at the same time. I guess the simple ideas are the best, and it did work. I am not sure if  detergent is allowed in the reservoir and I didn’t want to break my review sample. Battery life seemed decent, it cleaned several rooms without needing a charge, and it has the ability to navigate hope to self-charge. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the Deebot. Yes, it does the same job as a cheap vacuum cleaner, and if you are specifically vacuuming one room it probably isn’t much more efficient. In the past, I would clean a room maybe once a week. In the kitchen and bathroom, there would be a lot of mess by the end of the week so they generally always look a bit grubby on the floor. With the Deebot, I would set it off to do its thing on a daily basis while I went about my other chores. Compared to vacuuming a room every day you do save a lot of time and effort, and therefore the Deebot does justify the increased priced over a traditional vacuum.