The Roomba may have been the first robotic vacuum to capture the attention of fastidious homeowners — and cats — everywhere, but 15 years later, some of its imitators seem to have bypassed the original. Chief among them is the Ecovaccs Deebot M80 Pro, a cleaning bot that just might take the chore out of vacuuming.
The M80 Pro comes from Suzhou, China-based Ecovacs Robotics, an international company that has made a name for itself in the realm of home appliances. Its products have consistently performed well on Amazon, and The Deebot M80 Pro is one of the best-selling bots at its relatively affordable price point ( Buy Now ).
So what’s so good about this smart vacuum? First and foremost, it boasts a rather sleek design. The disc-shaped bot measures just over a foot in diameter and stands a little over three inches tall, so it’s not particularly obtrusive when it’s roaming around your home. While the top of the vacuum looks like glass, don’t be fooled — the entire thing is made of plastic, so it can withstand bumping into corners (though because it’s quite smart, it really doesn’t do much of that).
There are also the two spinning brushes attached to the base of the M80 Pro. As the bot moves about, these brushes sweep debris, dust, and whatever else might be on your floor into the suctioning portion of the machine. That way, it covers more ground in one trip than might otherwise be possible. And for added cleaning power, you can snap on a detachable mop.
You can also set various modes for the robot, like spot cleaning, which will have the M80 Pro focus specifically on one area, and intensive cleaning, which will have the robot go back and forth throughout a room several times.
The entire bot can be controlled via your smartphone, so whether you want to tell the bot to clean while you’re at work or charge while you’re on the way home, you can take care of that from the companion app. You can also control the bot manually, but really, the whole point of the M80 Pro is that you can just leave it alone to do its thing. When you’re ready to send it back to its charging dock, just press the home button and it’ll automatically navigate back to its station.
But how well does the M80 Pro actually clean your home? In our testing, quite well. We purposefully placed some pieces of paper, crumbs, and other normal home detritus in the path of the bot, and it swept and sucked everything away in just one pass. After running the little guy for about five minutes, the floors certainly looked clean, and sending the bot back to its dock was a piece of cake. Of course, it still can’t do everything a human can do — corners are a bit hard to reach, and because the bot is still 3 inches off the ground, it can’t go under a particularly low couch or bed. The vacuum features a 500 mL dustbin capacity, takes about four hours to charge, and can be scheduled to work on its own on a daily basis.
