It costs the same as an iPhone Pro, it has a charging base as big as a bedside table and inside it hides more or less the technology of a NASA lunar rover: the new Deebot cleaning robot from Ecovacs.
The company, a multinational of Chinese origin which also check the Tineco brand (here is the test of the vacuum cleaner Pure One Station), has been at the top of the robot vacuum cleaner and floor cleaning sector for a couple of years now, capable of even putting iRobot and its Roombas in difficulty: it is to test their qualities that we asked to try one of its new products unveiled at the beginning of the year. Here we tell how our apartment test went, what we liked and what we didn’t like of the Deebot X2 Combo.
The latest cleaning robots tested by Italian Tech
Tech Test
Dreame L10s Pro Ultra Heat, the proof: a compact, powerful and smart flooring robot
by Pier Luigi Pisa
Tech Test
How it’s made and how it goes Robot Vacuum S12, Xiaomi’s vacuum cleaner (and floor cleaner)
by Emanuele Capone
Tech Test
V15 Submarine, the first Dyson vacuum cleaner that also washes floors on test
by Bruno Ruffilli
Ecovacs Deebot X2 Combo, the technical characteristics
The robot, which has a list price of 1599 euros, arrives in a huge and heavy box, so heavy that there is even a warning: “Attention, weight over 15 kg!”. Inside there is the robot, slightly square in shape, the charging, washing and drying base for clothes and even a portable vacuum cleaner which is exactly the same as used by Tineco. The idea, it seems, is that it is purchased only one product instead of two: the robot takes care of dusting and washing the floors and the vacuum cleaner can be used for the upper parts of the house.
The base, which is objectively bulky (is 52 centimeters high and 55 wide), houses the two tanks for clean and dirty water, the bag for the automatic emptying of the robot after cleaning and hides a drawer in which to store the accessories of the portable vacuum cleaner. The robot, that is just under 10 centimeters tallit does not have a turret for the lidar but integrates two lasers on the front that work together with a camera system for navigation, mapping and obstacle detection, it has a suction power of up to 8700 Pa and two washing cloths that lift automatically in the presence of carpets and also they are washed at 60 °C and dried with hot air, which should avoid (and in fact avoids, in our experience) bad smells. The central brush is made of rubber and anti-curl, while unfortunately there is only one front brush, which however seemed to work effectively.
How is the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Combo, the test
Assembly and configuration are very simple and they don’t take more than ten minutes: you download the Ecovacs app, pair it with the robot, let it recharge in the base if necessary while filling the tank with clean water and then you can start.
The first step is obviously map the houseor in any case the environment in which the device will operate: the robot took so little time to do it that initially we thought he hadn’t completed the job and we made him repeat it. Instead it was simply very fast, because (we realized by following it and checking in the app) the depth of vision allowed by the lidar is truly remarkable and with one glance it allows you to cover an entire room. The map can be viewed in 2D or 3D, rooms can be divided and named (useful for any selective cleaning), furniture can be added and even no-access areas can be established, for example around cat or dog bowls.
Il advantage of this type of product, which in a certain sense justifies its purchase, is that it should take away some tasks and hassles, meaning not only cleaning but also remembering to do it. For this, we used programming to establish 3 cleaning and washing cycles, Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning: you choose the time, the intensity of action, the areas of intervention and you don’t think about it anymore. The robot goes into action and does everything autonomously. As can be seen from the graph (more down)he employed about 60 minutes to take care of around 50 square meters of floor space on which we let him act, even speeding up operations as he learned the house.
There is little to say about vacuuming and washing: everything works well, if not very well. The robot also seemed effective with the cat’s hair and with the crystals of its litter, with some stains on the wooden floor and even on the carpets (but when it passes through them it increases the suction power and becomes very noisy) and also good to extricate themselves from difficult situations, such as crawling under a kitchen trolley and then getting out easily. In the various cleaning sessions during the weeks of testing we encountered no problems, except for one morning when it thought it had cleaned the whole house after 20 minutes, but in reality it had only cleaned two rooms and we made it start again from scratch. As mentioned, he does everything himself except the things he can’t do alone: every 20-30 minutes it returns to the base to clean and dampen the clothes again and it stops and warns (with a notification and by voice) if the water runs out. Which must be added by a human, obviously.
Is the Deebot X2 Combo a robot worth buying?
In conclusion, the new Deebot X2 Combo is a product that we liked and also the 2-in-1 concept makes sense and somehow it makes the price more acceptable: instead of buying both a cleaning robot and a vacuum cleaner, you buy only this one. Undoubtedly spending a lot, although promotions and discounts are not unlikely which will bring the cost down in the months to come.
Economic commitment also has another consequence: we tend to justify defects lessbecause what you give to a 300 euro robot (like this one, from Xiaomi) is less acceptable for one that exceeds 1000. And yet, the defects we found in the Ecovacs device are so few and negligible that the purchase is recommended. Even more so if you don’t have budget problems and you want to the pinnacle of technology that this sector can currently offer.
Berlin
A bike, a gym, two stoves and other things we liked at IFA 2023
by our correspondent Emanuele Capone
What we liked
What we didn’t like
#Ecovacs #Deebot #Combo #Ferrari #cleaning #robots #test
– 2024-04-03 06:10:46
