Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo 920

It turns out to be eco waste after just 2 years – The Vacuum relies on software and mapping plus battery charging. The battery only lasts less than 2 years. Our vacuum can no longer function as it was originally designed. 1. Scheduling not longer works: The maps go out of sync a lot. The battery runs out before it can remap the house.. Remapping is essential for scheduling. That function is no… Read more

longer relevant or useful. 2. The battery lasts less than 35minutes now. 3. It can be LOT of work to round up all the obstacles and items it stuck on. Sometimes it created more work than it saved. At best it’s a short term novelty item. It is better to use a regular vacuum 95% of the time.

Refusing to Charge, Troubleshooting Does Not Help – We've had this vacuum for just over 2.5 years (more than some of the other reviewers here), and just after about 28 months of ownership, it started giving trouble and does not charge. At first, customer care advised resetting the device and trying to recharge using the app. This helped for about 2 months, and every time the device refused to… Read more

charge, we would hard reset it. Charging worked then, but as of 2 days ago, this hack is also not working. Customer care is advising to charge $99.00 to ship to their technicians (I asked if I can drop off at location so as to save some $$, but this is not an option). I don't believe the battery has gone faulty, or the docking station is bad. I believe something is wrong with their software, which when reset managed to charge (for over 2 months!), but now the software is refusing to work. It seems like this is just a money making gimmick asking customers to ship the product out after warranty has expired, and not providing any options like getting the battery or charging dock tested first. The ACCC should look into this, especially around the software these devices are programmed with. Everyone assumes this could be hardware issues, faulty batteries or docking station, but I believe it's faulty software. Also, Lithium batteries do last quite long (over 5 years in some cases), they just don't hold as much charge as when they are new, so 2.5 years (and for some people as low as 13 months) does not point to a battery issue. I would not recommend Ecovacs products and will not buy in future simply because customer service is not up to standard.

Great when it works, absolutely appalling customer service – Got it from ALDI during one of their specials for $399. For the price it is a great robot vacuum and the features are good too. Pros: 1. Good suction power - we have mostly carpet in our rented place and this thing cleans it up pretty well. 2. Easy to clean - does not come with auto empty bin, so you have to do it. Cons: 1. The app is… Read more

terrible - your maps goes missing every once in a while and makes this a useless equipment. Sometimes it remaps, but more often you are out of luck. It just cleans as it pleases.

2. After about 18 months of usage, gets a message saying “laser distance sensor is blocked” - troubleshooting suggested does not work. I tried to use a small blower (one used to clean keyboards and camera equipment) to see whether it can shake off the dust - but no luck. Got in touch with customer care and they want me to ship it to them by paying $100 to have a look. Then additional charges if there is an issue. I felt a $400 item should work more than 18 months trouble free. So now the item is just sitting there as an expensive electronic waste.

At the time of buying this can be considered a great buy. But now these things are cheap and not worth the hassle of shipping it out to the company by paying them.

Won’t recommend because of poor customer service and terrible app.

Shameful and Disappointing After Sales Service – Purchased the Deebot. Started having problems at about the 14 month mark. Spoke to customer service who stated ‘as it was out of the 12 month warranty period, they would not repair the item under warranty. They suggested taking item to repair agent Godfrey’s. Item sent away at our cost. Item received back 3 weeks later without any repairs… Read more

being conducted. Godfrey’s advised they are not an authorised repairer for that model. Unable to assist. Really disappointed that a $700 robot vacuum cleaner last only 14 months before breaking down. Now left with an unusable product that was just out of warranty. Would not suggest purchasing a DEEBOT.

Died after 14 months – ***Update 18AUG22*** - I wish I could drop the STAR rating lower! No contact from Ecovacs re the failed unit detailed below. Customer Service Rating = Useless Supporting their product with the customer = Useless STRONGLY suggest that if you are coinsidering ECOVACS - DON'T! Stay away. ***Original Post*** Battery failed and/or failing to… Read more

charge. Just out of warranty. Purchased by 83 year old widow who is on a pension. Service Centre is in Malaysia who put her onto the 'local service centre' proving phone number. The 'local service centre' is in Victoria, unit in Queensland. Want $88 up front to start the process to look at it. Service charges are ? $12-33 " per hour for labour (large variation) plus cost of parts. The unit is basically new as the lady who owns it maybe used it once a week...and frankly Australian Consumer Law should cover this for fair use. I also own the same unit (I sadly talked her into buying her Deebot 920) and we have had nothing but software problems with the unit having to reset it over and over and over (have the correspondence from Ecovacs stating the obvious but not actually sorting the issues out - as indicated when looking at feedback online). When it works it is a great unit. Problem is, it does not work functionally, effectively and CONSISTENTLY to give it any more than one star. Then add the pathetic after sales support...lucky to get even one start frankly!

E-waste after 16 months – This was a great robot vacuum. I really like the level of suction, the smart mapping, and the quality of the app. Overall, a very satisfied customer. Until 16 months after purchase, the robot refuses to charge. I've checked the voltage output of the charger - fine. But however many times I place the robot on the charger, it just refuses to charge.… Read more

Contacting support wasn't helpful. They cited the 12 month warranty, and want to charge $60 just to diagnose the issue - outrageous! A product like this should last at least 2-3 years.

It is Now Unreliable with Worst Support – I had published a good product review of "The Quality and Functionalities are Expected" 8 months ago after 6 months weekly use. But it is short lived. After 11 months weekly use, there was battery issue and I had sent it back for warranty repair. But I was told that there was no issue to the less than 75 minutes battery life and everything was… Read more

working. They simply sent it back and promised that they would provide me the testing report in three separated phone calls & emails after requests. But I had never received the promised "no battery issue testing report". Their support people are just play the game and lying to their customer regardless their credibility. It is now 14 months and it becomes unreliable - when start clean, the saved map was loaded. But after selected & started area clean, the robot lost the map and then it starts building a new floor map. Today it is the third times we had experienced this worst issue. Fortunately we found it and stopped the process of new map building to avoid wasting several hours for the new floor map. The saved floor map is still stored in the cloud server but it can not be reloaded by the robot. The possible real issue is that either the bad robot communication software design or the unreliable cloud server for the data loading. To resolve this we have to reboot the robot and wasting hours to retry loading the saved floor map!!! I believe that nobody would like to spend such amount of money to have a short lived product from a company with no credibility.

For the price the vacuum does a great job BUT only for about 6 months – We bought this vacuum in Dec 2020 was working perfectly until about May - June 2021 (5-6 months) the vacuum stopped picking up the dirt & pet hair into the catcher, so all the dirt & pet hair collected is stuck on the brush or laying somewhere around the room. Contacted the service team & sent them the video showing the issue. Machine sent to… Read more

their service team to check & was told there's nothing wrong with it (took about 2 months). When we got it back it nothing was fixed still the same problem!!! So we contacted them again to tell them about the same problem, had to sent it back to be serviced AGAIN only to be told the same thing! nothing's wrong with the machine. Something is clearly wrong with the machine!

Good device bad quality – Bought from aldi in March , awesome machine, beats our dyson for cleaning and the software is great and it returns to dock and has a sort of mopping function, which is so so BUT Since March (6 months) I have had to factory reset 4 times, battery has played up and the famous LDS issue….. Did the “workarounds” and worked briefly but had to send… Read more

back to be repaired in the end , then they said nothing wrong with it and then a few days later told the LDS has been replaced

Awesome machine, dodgy quality

A truly excellent robot vacuum for a remarkably low price [Edit: I was wrong, it's dead after just six months] – [Edit 6: It is dead again and "out of warranty".] This time the drive wheel has failed (again) and it doesn't come back to life from a power down. Surprise surprise, they want me to pay for the repair because it's over 12 month old. Sounds like consumer affairs need to get involved because the ACCC are very clear about that sort of thing… Read more

(https://accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-services/warranties).

NEVER buy an Ecovacs!

[Edit 5: It is dead.]

The LDS (laser distance sensor) has failed. Half way through a clean of the house it simply stopped. Tried a full reset and the LDS still won't spin. Off for repair - at least they will send me a prepaid label to cover shipping.

[Edit 4: It's dead, no it's alive - enough said!]

Just six months old and it's failed completely. Today I am faced with the message on my phone "The driving wheel is stuck. Please check'".

The help system suggests I check the two main wheels for anything tangled around the two main drive wheels - there is a tiny bit of fluff, nothing more - but now we have a bot that makes all the noise but doesn't move. Let's see what their customer service is like for repairs, though I don't hold out much hope, based on my experience so far.

Oh, maybe it runs Windows... I turned it off (full power down, turned it on again after ten minutes) and it lives! Not the most reliable but at least it works again. This thing is hard work, I won't buy one again.

These things are currently on sale at ALDI - buy at your own risk.

[Edit 3: I am putting this at the beginning of the review because I believe it so important.

This robot vacuum itself is great BUT the biggest problem I have with the app - it is the repeated problem of losing or reorganising the map of the house. Days and weeks go by without a problem then, for no apparent reason, it loses the map of the house - it just blows it away and creates something else. This is intensely frustrating, it should simply reload from the server (the cloud).

You then have to wait for it to rescan the entire house the next time you tell it to clean, leaving all the doors open (awkward with kids and pets), then re-identify all the rooms, re-enter all the carpet no-mop zones, all the virtual barriers and finally reconfigure all the schedules. In a large house like ours (over 200m2) this takes the better part of a day as it needs a recharge 2/3 through.

Alternatively, as has happened of late, it remembers the shape of the house but not all the room boundaries. I have seen the "New environment detected, map with be updated" message so many times lately! Time and again I edit the map and reset the rooms, join areas, split areas, label areas, setup new schedules. Next time it goes out, it thinks the house has changed (unlikely) and redoes the whole damned thing again and again. The amount of time I have wasted re-editing the map... it's getting up to ten hours on my most recent calculations.

The whole idea of a robot vacuum is it should be set and forget. I have made numerous complaints about this particular problem, even going so far as to suggest a simple software solution (I'm a software developer by profession), and all I ever get it the same rubbish, scripted response. I've now taken to emailing them each and every time it does it wrong.

Until such time as they fix this simple but fundamental problem, I cannot in good faith recommend this brand of robot vacuum.]

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I recently reviewed a Samsung robot vacuum, $399 from ALDI, and found it to be very disappointing to say the very least, so much so that we got rid of it asap (ALDI kindly took it back). So when an Ecovacs DEEBOT OZMO 920 became available at ALDI at the same price we thought it would be worth trying, after all it couldn't be any worse.

Wow, what a difference, umm... $0 makes!

The first thing I noticed on unpacking the DEEBOT was the sensor pod on the top of the unit and the second thing was the lack of a remote control. Other than that the contents of the box were fairly typical - charging dock, spare brushes, mopping plate - but with a few extras - washable three stage filter, spare filter, disposable mopping cloths and a brushless direct suction adaptor. Just on these items alone I could see that I was in different territory to the Samsung.

Again, once charging, I downloaded the necessary control app and started it. Registration was a simple affair thankfully, no short-timed two factor to contend with. In direct contrast to the dreadful Samsung experience, adding the bot to the phone was also a pretty painless affair, it worked second time (and the first failure was my fault).

The DEEBOT vacuums use a laser mapping system to navigate (plus the usual bump sensor at the front), this is contained in the sensor pod on top and can be seen spinning if you look closely when the bot is moving. The accuracy this adds to the navigation, object avoidance and edge cleaning is an order of magnitude beyond the Samsung.

Once the unit is fully charged, you are advised to tidy the house of clutter from the floor, open all the internal doors to rooms to be cleaned, switch on continuous cleaning mode and set the unit cleaning. This first clean allows the unit to completely map the interior of your house so you can subsequently control scheduled and ad-hoc cleaning. The bot then works its way round all the home, cleaning as it goes, returning to the dock to recharge if required, until it finishes the entire house. Depending on the size of your house, this can take quite a few hours with multiple recharge cycles.

Upon completion of this first full clean, the map is saved in the app. It's actually fascinating to watch the map build up as it is generated, the laser flicking through doors into unexplored regions, amusingly including areas outside the house through full height glass doors, windows and mirrors. Another feature I noticed was that the areas of the floor where we have rugs or carpets (the house is mainly hard floors) were highlighted with cross hatching on the plan, as the bot identified areas where it had to work harder on carpet - it has an optional boost feature which allows it to increase the suction on carpet. Once the whole house is mapped and saved, further more advanced options become available in the app, it also gives statistics on the total cleaning time and total area cleaned.

Returning to the bot itself, I noticed that it was significantly quieter than the Samsung - the sound was also far less harsh. The laser mapping ensured that the brushes went right up to the edge of the skirting boards and left no strip of debris around the edges. I also noticed that the battery life in this unit seemed longer, the Samsung lasted about 90 minutes, whereas the DEEBOT lasted a few minutes short of two hours with standard suction and the main brush fitted. It is actually quite entertaining to watch the bot navigate a dining table and chairs, as it whirls round each leg in turn, trying alternative routes to get to all the voids created between them and squeezing through gaps only slightly wider than itself. Hmm, new game... bot obstacle course racing!

One of the optional parts supplied is a Direct Suction Adaptor, this replaces the main brush and is ideal for pet owners as it does not get clogged by hair. The direction suction option also uses slightly less power and is good for daily cleaning - the main brush is better for deep cleaning. I loved this feature as a number of occupants in our house have long hair, this saved me from having to clean the main brush regularly. When doing a full house clean with this adaptor fitted, the bot managed 122 square metres and 121 minutes before it had to go back for a rechange.

A delightful aspect of the intelligence of this bot is the notifications that it can provide through the app. On day one, while cleaning under a bed, it got tangled on a piece of ribbon - ping, up came a notification telling me the main brush was tangled. Same again when it encountered an electric cable it couldn't negotiate. Better still, no need to check if the dust bin is full or the filter needs cleaning... ping, it tells you! When it is cleaning, the app also displays where it has cleaned so far and its current location, very useful for finding it if it is stuck somewhere. We would regularly come home to find the Samsung charging dock empty and have to play hunt the bot. I might add that I was appalled to have the "empty bin" notification come up on my phone just half way through this bot's second day of cleaning. I didn't think the house was that mucky but the evidence was there to see and, if I'm honest, the house does look cleaner (oh, the shame of it).

Back to the app.

Once the map has been generated and saved, the app attempts to break down the house into logical areas, based generally on doorways. These areas are then able to be divided or joined, and labelled for use when scheduling cleaning of different regions of the house. In addition, it is possible to erect barriers (lines) and/or regions (rectangles) on the map where the bot will not enter - useful for keeping it away from power boards or other hazards. Furthermore, no-mop areas can be defined to restrict the bot from mopping the carpets, these can be easily identified on the map from the cross-hatched areas identified during the first clean.

For all its complexities there are a few deficiencies in the map management, I feel. If a room was inaccessible during the first clean it can never be fully integrated into a map at a later date. It is necessary to delete the current map and perform a new full clean, this being despite the bot being able to subsequently enter and clean the room - it just never gets labelled.

It would also be nice to be able to delete areas and to mark windows. Nice though the idea is that the bot could clean the cat run and the patio, I really don't want to let the bot outside - it would just be nice to be able to permanently remove those areas from the map and mark them as "invalid". Similar to the windows issue are full height mirrors. In true Narnia style it would appear that we have an entire extra master bedroom jutting out of the side of our house and into the road, accessible through our wardrobes, if the bot is to be believed! It is my intention, later this week when I'm working from home, to re-scan the entire house but I will cover the bottom foot of the windows, doors and mirrors, so that the generated map will be as accurate as possible. Another minor niggle with the app is the room labels - they're a predefined list of icons, I'd prefer an editable list of words, very minor though.

Since this bot is actually capable of being told to ignore areas when mopping, I decided to give the mopping function more than a cursory look. The biggest difficulty with the mopping function is making sure the no-mop areas are correctly defined, if not then the edges of the carpet get mopped or the mopping misses the edge - a bit of trial and error was required but a satisfactory result achieved eventually. Ignoring that fact, however, the mopping function is not bad.

The unit comes with a mopping plate with a microfiber pad, plus five disposable cloths. Fitting the mopping plate and filling the reservoir with water enables mopping mode. Once enabled, the app allows areas to be selected or scheduled and the bot goes off to clean. It's a shame that the guidelines recommend only water be used but if you do a full manual clean with a real mop and cleaning fluid first and then allow the bot to do maintenance cleans, the device makes a reasonable job of things. It was interesting to see the unit navigate its way around a number of newspaper no-mop zones that I put down and it made pretty good work of the mess of flour, cocoa powder and water.

While there is no specific edge mode with this bot - useful with hard floors - it would be possible to mimic one using a large exclusion zone in the middle of a room. However, without multiple maps being available (only for multi floor properties) it would be a pain to have to repeatedly add and remove these. It would be much nicer to be able to store multiple copies of the basic map with different blockings, etc. Schedules could then operate according to a selected floor plan.

The scheduling options of the app are intelligent and adequate. Auto Cleaning - is a simple "clean what you can get to" mode. The bot starts at the preset day/time and cleans all it can reach, if continuous mode it enabled it will return to recharge and resume if necessary. Area Cleaning - the user selects one or more of the areas on the map to be cleaned and only those areas will be cleaned when the day/time is reached. This is a great mode for, say, cleaning the kitchen and family dining areas perhaps twice a day, or perhaps cleaning the area where the cats' litter tray is on a regular basis throughout the day.

To conclude, therefore, do I consider this bot better than the Samsung? Put it this way, if the Samsung were a Model T Ford, this would be a 2021 Ford Territory. It's not a Tesla or a Ferrari, but this Ecovacs Deebot is so in advance of the POWERbot as to make the thing redundant - we're selling the POWERbot at a loss (if anyone will have it!) because the DEEBOT can do so much more and so much better, it's much quieter than the Samsung, by a lot!

The fact that you can pick up one of these deebots for the exact same price as the POWERbot should make Samsung reconsider their place in the robot vacuum market. Sure, the DEEBOT has a few niggles (all correctable in the app) and it doesn't have the top end features like auto emptying of the dust bin but, Wow, this thing knocks the sox of the POWERbot and makes robot vacuums a far more accessible luxury item for a lot more people.

So, if you've ever thought about owning a robot vacuum and you see one of these in ALDI... grab it and run for the checkout.

[Edit:] I do have to add that there needs to be a better way of editing maps than the currently provided "re-clean the whole house".

I have just specifically re-cleaned the entire house to recreate a new, clean plan - even with paper on mirrors and windows and doors to stop it scanning the outside and "mirror" rooms! It took almost seven hours including one charging cycle and, disappointingly it decided not to complete the job properly.

The unit decided to restart with the charging at 90% complete, not full, which meant that the door to the theatre was not open when it started, so it skipped that room entirely, and the because the doors to three rooms it had previously cleaned were closed when it restarted, it decided not to label them at all so they cannot be scheduled in "area" cleans, there is simply no way to label them.

This is lame. Once the basic floor plan is created is should be possible to edit it better - perhaps download an image of the plan from the website, make corrections and re-upload it. This sort of stuff isn't rocket science, I've been doing this sort of thing for literally decades (started writing software in 1977!). This failure, regretfully has to go into the review and spoils an otherwise excellent product.

[Another Edit!:] I have found a way to add new areas and label areas previously unlabelled/unscanned.

This is not ideal but, if a door was previously closed and a custom cleaning area is set to be cleaned, which covers both an existing labelled area and crossed into an unlabelled area (possibly unscanned), the software pops up a message "New environment detected. The map has updated". This does mean I don't have to re-scan the entire house yet again, just have to clean both sides of a previously closed door. Took a bit of working out but I got there at least.

Now if only I could rotate the map...!

Great for the first 9 months – This was an amazing robovac for the first 9 months but then we started to experience issues with the sensors failing. Started doing some odd things and spinning in circles a lot. Unfortunately left it to the 12 month mark to contact Ecovacs and they were really unhelpful. Show details

Hasn't lived up to our expectations – This robot vacuum started so promisingly for us. however over time we've found it's performance has dropped significantly. We've also had issues with its' brushes getting jammed in its wheels and the mop function has stopped working unless on the highest water flow setting. We've also had issues with it's bumper pad incorrectly detecting barriers and the robot starts going in circles. Show details

Really happy with the deebot 920 – So we’ve had it for 6 months and it’s great. Suction is excellent. The bin size is good. The robot is really quiet. I really like being able to select which rooms to vacuum, in which order, and set boundary no go zones which reduce potential hazards for the robot. Also great is that when on carpet the robot automatically increases suction power.… Read more ·  1

Once set up properly and house & map is prepared, the robot is fine to operate automatically without human intervention. Amazing.... love it!

The challenges as I see them:

Initially had some difficulty getting the robot to finish mapping the house and hence save the map, but since then I’ve had no major problems.

From a users perspective the mapping software isn’t great, but works well enough. Major flaw is the saved maps can be lost. Also the setup and config via the app doesn’t allow for precise adjustments in terms of creating accurate boundaries where robot can’t go etc, or establishing where rooms start and finish. So I set up how I think it should be, test it, then make adjustments as required. gets the job done.

The robot rarely gets stuck (unlike a previous robot we had) but some furniture configurations where there is limited space can cause issues and robot to spaz out. In such a case I either move furniture to allow more space, or put a boundary in the mapping software to stop it going there. This isn’t a common occurrence.

Our place has different height floor sections, so ive put in ramps to enable robot to navigate the house. This works well enough, tho sometimes it will loop around 3 or 4 times before making it over ramps as if quite confused. But it always seems to get there even if it takes a few goes.

The robot also gets a little confused with low boundary areas, like where we’ve a 6cm heigh rise for the shower. the robots continually try’s to get over it rather than run parallel. Solved by setting up a boundary in the mapping software.

I don’t use the mopping feature as this Lowers the clearance of robot so it doesn’t climb up and down the ramps as easily. I also don’t use auto start feature as I need to raise the curtains off the floor before vacuuming else they get chewed.

Battery life is ok. I was wondering if it was reducing in capacity tho. After seeing reviews with others stating the same that’s disappointing. None the less it can still just do my house on one charge so long as it doesn’t waste time on mapping revised furniture locations.

I’m really happy with it. It’s not perfect by any means, but after working out what it can and can’t do, i just work with that and set things up accordingly. So long as the battery don’t die too much I’m very happy with the purchase - it literally vacuums the house for us, that’s seriously fabulous!

Perfect for apartment living – Bought this item with some misgivings after reading many reviews stating poor battery,unable to find docking station,loses map etc. However I have been pleasantly surprised- app is simple, easy to use , fantastic at picking up dog hairs( main reason for purchase, have 2 fawn pugs) and no probs with map. Perhaps not for a house but ideal for city living in a unit. Show details ·  1

waste of money and time – Bought a week ago, it is still trying to create a map of my house. It tried several times, but the poor battery life prevents it to go to all areas. It usually does 75-80 m2 per charge, and then starts again. This is not enough for an average home. The option to start again after recharging does not work. The only way to create a map of your house… Read more

is to empty the floor, remove the carpets and let it run. Without a map this is pretty much useless device. This is the bad part. The ugly part comes next. The algorithm that decides and controls where to go is terrible. I watched it sitting in one corner for 8-10 min without making any progress - just like a headless chook hitting the wall again and again and again - the battery is gone before you know it. The charging time is 6+ hours. It is impossible to be used in normal environment. Then, it tangles with anything on the floor, and stops working/moving. You have to remove everything from the floor. But, if that's the case, people are better off to use a vacuum cleaner - faster, better and saves money, and gives you some exercise. The last drop of my patience was when it could not find the charging unit. Several times. Just wandering around in space until battery runs out, usually under a bed, and I have to "fish" it out. This unit is so frustrating that I am seriously considering cutting off my losses and throw it away. Conclusion: the unit and its software are in its infancy. I would recommend waiting several years before buying this kind of devices. Unfortunately it is very difficult to find a honest and decent review - I did my "due diligence", all reviews I read about it were raving - the best unit of 2020, the best unit money can buy, and so on and so forth. Well, the truth is different.

Poor battery life and support, otherwise OK – The vacuum cleaner does an OK job creating maps and I have no complaints regarding the suction power on standard carpets. It is however easy to lose a map at the rare occasion when the robot gets lost or is lifted off the ground and one doesn't follow instructions correctly to recreate the last map. It takes roughly one minute to clean one square… Read more

meter, which I find is OK. My main criticism is the poor battery life and bad support. The battery lasted about 85 minutes (110 minutes were advertised) when I purchased the unit 4 months ago and is now down to 75 minutes. This means that I can't clean my 90sqm unit in one go. I contacted support and haven't heard back for a week now.

Update: The vacuum cleaner has been with the company contracted to do repairs for 11 days now, haven't heard back from them yet.