Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 Aivi

Smart robot vacuum saves me so much time – Highly recommend this Ecovacs vacuum. I bought this after seeing this at a friend's house and she has a new born baby. I was convinced to buy this after seeing the new born baby didn't wake up when the vacuum was cleaning. Pros: I have owned this robot for around 18 months and have been using this at least once to twice a week for my tiled… Read more ·  1

floors - I would say my floor is 90% clean I only need to manually vacuum once a month to get a good clean One charge is good for around 90 minutes clean and 8 times out of 10 it can go back to its dock to recharge I haven't used the mop function yet, got to try this out Cons: Need to set up the wifi to map the house at the beginning after that is done, it's easy.

Ecovac Robotic Cleaner: These are no longer a toy but using technology to enhance life – I have seen these robotic cleaners on for sale for a while and to be honest I thought they were just a gimmicky toy. I thought the robotic cleaners would be only good for city apartments and small homes with minimal clutter and no pets, looks like I may have just been proven wrong. We share a reasonable sized single story house with a cat and two… Read more ·  1

large dogs. My wife who loves different textures on the floor; travertine flooring, deep textured rugs, sheep skin and cow hide floor coverings, not a place I believed for a robotic cleaner. The Ecovac Deebot Ozmo T8AIVI was an impressive un-boxing almost on a iPhone level, everything was clearly labelled and the instructions to get you started with very easy to follow. The Deebot comes with a Pro mopping head and a standard mop that inserts into the rear of the cleaner, spare cleaning pads and an extra set of brushes. The first job is to charge the cleaner I found a spare socket away from obstacles (recommended) while I loaded the app on an iPhone and Android and did the Wi-Fi setup. The Wi-Fi setup is basically so your Ecovac Deebot can talk to your phone app, so you can control the vacuum from your phone. One of the great features is once your connected you can use the Ecovac Deebot remotely from anywhere I set mine to clean the house when the house is empty and everyone is at work, from work. There are some great features on the app that allows your Ecovac Deebot to patrol your home like a security guard as there is a 2.0 megapixels camera built onto the unit. The second feature you can drive the Ecovac Deebot around your home by remote and actually talk from it, my wife said it was very creepy but there is not microphone so you can’t hear back from the cleaner. I receive messages to my phone from the Ecovac Deebot when its full and needs emptying and when its finished the cleaning. We found the best way to get started is to remove the obvious clutter like shoes and bags then set the cleaner on your phone app to map your home, make sure you leave the internal doors open. The mapping process will identify objects, carpeted areas and mats and give your rooms an Alphabetic identification letter so you can program the unit in more depth, I programmed it mop and vacuum my kitchen twice. How does it clean? I one word brilliantly. The Ecovac Deebot will vacuum under your cooker, your theatre couches (as long as your leave the foot rests up), bed, bed side cabinets, shelving unit’s legged chairs and tables. So on its first full time outing doing the cleaning be prepared to empty the unit a few times before it’s finished. We are seriously thinking about the Auto emptying station ($399) due to the pet hair and large carpeted areas. There are two mopping systems both spray water then a pad on the rear cleans, these are removable (almost like a Velcro fitting) to be washed, but It must be noted no detergents are used in the tanks. The second mopping head is powered and vibrates against the floor in a cleaning motion, very effective. We have learnt to adapt to the Ecovac Deebot to get the best from the unit, due to our large rugs we do a vacuum with no mopping with Pro Mop uninstalled as it has difficulty getting onto some of our rugs. Then the following day we use the Pro Mop on the non-carpeted areas (we have programmed special clean) where is does extra water and high vacuum speed. When cleaning is complete the Ecovac Deebot returns to its charging station almost like magic, but if it’s fitted with one of the mopping tanks it will have to be removed before it will charge. Pros We have ducted a ducted vacuum system that has not been used since the Ecovac Deebot arrived, it used to take about 3 hours to vacuum and mop the house. We plan ahead and I use my phone app to vacuum the home from work, and then mop. Cleans far better than manual vacuuming as it doesn’t miss a spot and there no huge hose to drag behind you and put away later. Loved the way you can program the power of the vacuum and water being applied by room, as the kitchen always need two goes as it’s a high traffic area. I think the text messages of “finished Cleaning” “Empty Dust in” are awesome and the occasional help message. Ecovac Deebot Ozmo T8AIVI has Long run time before charging about 2 hours, more than enough. Cons The mopping function is good but not as good as soap and water and doing it by hand as there is no detergent and just a microfiber pad. It did get stuck once in one of my bar stools to a point it was off the ground and very heavily jammed, but only once. It won’t traffic over thick rugs with the water moping system installed. Conclusion I don’t know why I didn’t buy one before, the advantages over manual cleaning are a no brainer and it’s no longer a chore. Getting the best out of life is using technology to enhance it and the Ecovac Deebot Ozmo T8AIVI gives you hours back for the more enjoyable things in life.

“Very versatile, clever and effective robotic cleaner” – Having used a good quality wand cleaner for some years (for both wood floor and carpets), along with a hand mop for our polished wood bamboo floors, the prospect of a “robot” cleaner that could do both without us having to actually do any work was appealing, though some doubts remained as to the capability versus the good old-fashioned way of… Read more ·  1

cleaning our floors and carpets!

Unpacking the Deebot and revealed a machine showing quality in its build with sufficient weight to apply enough pressure to effectively vacuum and actually mop the floor at the same time!

Along with the robot machine is a kit with spare side brushes, pack of disposable mopping pads, a Pro Oscillating mopper / scrubber (using disposable cleaning pads) and Ozmo mopping system washer (using a washable / re-usable cleaning pad). The robot comes with standard charging dock – an Optional auto unloading bin / charging dock can be purchased for an additional $A399 – this will enable days of use without having to unload the robot’s dirt bin after every use.

Charged up the robot (as instructed before use) and then went through the process of connecting to the internet app and starting work – there are instructions and an QR code to download the android / iOS app onto your phone – we learned 2 things here (we were having problems with our modem wireless which we had fixed, and the robot uses 2.4ghz band – our modem is dual band 5ghz / 2.4ghz, but if you only have 5ghz router then you will have problems connecting and running the app. The app is very good and gives you full control of all functions and settings.

Once charged and connected we fired up the robot (there is acknowledgement by way of spoken commentary and notation on the ecovacs app of what is happening – it tells you if the unit is being charged, battery running down, water low etc.) – First job is run through on vacuum Auto clean mode to “map” every room in your house - it may help to leave the lights on in your rooms first run whilst the robot “maps” your house, but it has video camera at the front and laser detectors so it knows where to go and also did a good job of recognizing drop offs (we have sunken lounge) and solid objects. The Aivi in its name stands for “Intelligent object recognition” which seems to work very well and recognises that some situations may be a potential problem - not sure about stairs and big drop offs, though ours picked up the sunken lounge edges very well and avoided them.

The vacuum level has 3 settings: Quiet – lower power, would only use for light soiling and mopping; STD – effective for most vacuum and mopping – if vacuuming only, will “auto increase” the suction power when moving from solid floor to carpet; MAX – doubles the suction power but may halve the battery life – would use max power only in heavily soiled area. For our house it did a full clean easily on the battery (160 M2 cleaned, used about 60%) - our mix is about 50% bamboo floor and 50% tiles and carpets.

So, the robot took about 2 hours to work through and “map” our house – it was able to transition from wood floor to carpet and back again. You can see the profile of the carpet as a cross hatching on the screen map that is created for each room – it handled our deeper pile carpet ok (lifted up to compensate and increased the vacuum power accordingly) – it was able to “jump” onto floor mats without any problem (but soft bath type maps need to be lifted out of the way as it struggles with these) and in the 2 hours went into every room and cleaned – it then went back and found the docking station ok – you have the option at any time to command the robot to return to the dock at the press of a button on the app. You can watch the robot work through your house and build a map on your app as it goes, so you know where it is at any time.

The vacuum was very effective, the internal bin filled up which was then easy to empty, simply wash the foam filter and brush out the paper filter (don’t wash) – maintenance is not difficult. The dust bin seems big enough to handle a reasonable size area (150 m2 or more)

We then gave the floor a mop using the Ozmo Pro Oscillating scrubber attachment (and disposable cleaning pad) – we did have some initial difficulty using the map that the robot generated – we named each section of the house and sort of “geo fenced it” and asked the robot to scrub the rooms selected – we didn’t seem to have some clear boundaries and the robot double cleaned some areas, so we then set it off in “auto clean” mode with the Oscillating scrubber attachment and it then cleaned only the wood floor area of our house – it recognized the carpet and matted areas and avoided them – was pleasantly surprised that just using water only (chemical not advised, but using filtered water to avoid any scaling of the tank and nozzles) the floor was cleaned very well – there were some really sticky spots that didn’t clean 100% but they were minimal and overall a very good job from the robot, with no visible “water trails” left behind – it dried fairly quickly with no “flooding”.

Next time we mopped the floor, we tried the std. Ozmo mopping system (with the washable cleaning pad) and even though it is quieter in operation than the Oscillating cleaning pad, the Oscillating scrubber did a superior job, as this one just “drags” the mop around on the plate with no oscillating action, and less scrubbing action.

The mapping is improving as it learns (and we learn!) and we will spend some more time understanding how the mapping works fully and how we can better manage it – its early days but so far, the cleaning is very good, we just need to refine the programming but running in “Auto mode” works fine anyway and very happy with it. We thought about wiping the map and starting again but the mapping seems to get better each outing.

The robot has interactive video through the app which can allow you to “drive through” – This presents as further opportunity to explore this very capable robot. Has speakers as well so you could speak to pets if you see them in the way of the cleaner - haven’t used this function, probably won’t, but it is there for those that could use it!

There is any number of control settings in the app – vacuum power, water consumption, boundary control, battery status, return to dock settings etc. etc. You can also create a schedule for cleaning programmes whilst you are out etc. – the programme feeds back on how many obstacles have been avoided to the app – the app sends you messages if the robot has gotten stuck, run out of water etc.

Have seen some reviews of previous models and types of robots and seen comments about poor vacuum power, unable to distinguish carpet from solid floor when scrubbing, poor battery power etc. etc. – first time owner of a robot, haven’t experienced any of the problems have seen in other model reviews, but taking that on board, it seems that most of those operating concerns don’t seem to exist in this robot, and for us seems to be an excellent machine – battery power is strong (can do up to 300M2 on std setting), carpet avoidance when scrubbing is effective, boundary mapping seems very good so far, vacuum power is adjustable (auto power increase works well when it goes from wood to carpet) and auto cleaning mode works very well – it’s basically quiet in operation, though you know its scrubbing as it oscillates back and forward but not over the top noisy.

We now have a number of family members who have seen our machine at work and want one!

All round, apart from some “learning quirks” and minor operating issues, this is an excellent robot cleaner and we are very happy with it!

PROS • Well built – solid and very well built • Fairly easy to set up with the app on the Internet - make sure you have 2.4ghz router option • Quiet on vacuuming, reasonably quiet on scrubbing - no invasive noise • Good features – vacuum, wet mopping and heavy-duty wet oscillating scrubber attachments • Auto clean function works well – knows how to run around your whole house. • Laser mapping allows to work in the dark. • Can use the house mapping in the App to select areas to schedule and clean (or use Auto) • Good battery life – up to 3 hours run time - depending on vacuum setting • Aivi intelligent object mapping seems to work very well – it maps around obstacles very well • Easy to empty the vacuuming bin and clean the filters • Able to jump over obstacles up to 20mm high • Carpet detection works well enough - avoids carpet when scrubbing.

CONS • Some occasional difficulties with getting stuck in confined areas – can get itself “cornered” sometimes – it tries very hard to move back and forward and get itself “unstuck” but sometimes needs help – it sends you a message in the app when it gets stuck, for assistance. • If any anything significantly changes, the review will be updated – we are not experts yet, still learning, but the basic simplicity of the App and the operation / maintenance of the machine is testimony to the obviously complex software and “intelligence” built in to make this a mostly good experience.

Amazing, wish I had bought it sooner – I love my Ecovac T8. I run it once a week and it does an excellent job. It picks up a large amount of dust, dirt and hair. It is the best value for money item I have bought in a long time and has freed me up to concentrate on other tasks I wouldn't otherwise have had time to do. I feel great living in a clean house. Worth every cent. Show details

Big step up from Crash-Bang Robot Vac's – I have had a number of floor vacuum robots over the last 10 years and I must say the Ecovac Deebot Ozmo T8AIVI has been the best one yet. I must admit though that my previous robots have not been “smart” and have been the “crash bang” style. See my previous reviews for more about them. Our modest sized 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom home has composite… Read more ·  5

wooden floors with the occasional scatter rug and carpet. We are a “shoes on” household and have two large dogs that are occasionally allowed inside to cool off on hot days, but even so, somehow their fur sneaks inside anyway. :-\ The T8AIVI manages to quietly cover the floor area easily with battery life to spare(~60min), even on powered mopping mode. The T8AIVI features automatic power boost when it encounters carpets and rugs, but avoids these when in mopping mode, lest it get stuck. If it does get hooked up on anything it has a nifty “wiggle jiggle” dance to extricate itself, and if that fails, it sends out a distress call via the app for you to come and release it from captivity. The unboxing of the Deebot Ozmo T8AIVI was straight forward and the packaging was mostly recyclable cardboard, with only the robot itself sandwiched in the box by two soft plastic foam pads. The robot comes with a mopping reservoir installed, a reusable microfibre cloth for this, a charging dock, spare brushes and filters and a motorised mopping unit with a pack of disposable cloths for this unit. Why disposable I ask?? The multi-lingual manual has a “Quick Start” guide to prep the robot for action, ie removing all the protective plastic film and installing the brushes etc. and then its just then a matter of waiting 6-7 hours for the robot to charge. The charging dock has handy storage in the back of it to wind up excess power cord and keep it off the floor. After downloading the phone App, I tried to connect to the robot, but I had my phone on 5.0Ghz and the T8AIVI uses 2.4Ghz WiFi. I had to switch my phone to this band to connect and then I could register the device and configure it. You can use the T8AIVI without the App, ie “manual mode”, but you will miss out on 90% of its features if you do.

The phone App is not covered at all in the manual and I did not find it that easy to use at first. (The manual only covers the setup, the mopping systems, some specifications and troubleshooting guides.) After floundering around in the App for a few hours I managed to get the basics to work and set the robot on its way to map the house. (The “help” on the App and online was actually "helpful" and addressed most of my puzzled frowns) The first time you run the T8AIVI it will create a map of your house for future navigation purposes and for you to later have it perform specific “Area Cleans”. The instructions say to clear away any obstacles and have the house as uncluttered as possible…also to turn on the lights in dark rooms and open all the room doors. (Sorry teenagers) The first map it created was a bit messy, so I deleted it, removed all the bar stools, boxes under the beds, shoes off the floor etc etc, and had it map the house again. The second map was much better, but I later found out the robot updates the map each time anyway, so I needn’t have bothered resetting and de-cluttering. Our home has floor to ceiling windows and external sliding glass doors. These caused some issues with the mapping as the robot thought there was another room outside that it couldn’t get too. I couldn’t find a way to delete these unrealised external rooms from the map, so I eventually closed these off with multiple virtual boundaries. The App has a whole bunch of other features that are too numerous to go into here but the main and most important one that I will mention is scheduling. This is found in the ••• section. You can set 3 kinds of schedules and as many of them as you like… “Auto Cleaning”, “Area Cleaning” and “Home Patrols”. Yes, it can patrol the house and you can watch through the camera. You can also talk through the speaker, but you can’t hear any response… good for telling teenagers to get out of bed or the dog to get off the couch. My wife particularly likes this feature :-) The dust hopper is not the largest I’ve seen in other robots, but it is adequate for the job and more frequent cleaning will avoid any issues. The hopper is easy to remove by simply flipping open the robot’s top and can be cleaned and even rinsed in water, as can the foam prefilter. The paper filter can be tapped to remove dust or vacc’d with another vac if necessary. As mentioned earlier, if the robot gets stuck on anything during a vacuum run it does a clever “wiggle jiggle” dance to extricate itself. I saw this when it got stuck on a 12mm square tube section TV stand that has stopped other robots in their tracks. On its first ever run it had a slight problem with a thick rug (10mm, sans tassels) but managed to find a way off it and hasn’t had a problem since. Once the Deebot T8AIVI has completed a clean/mop, it sends a map to the App identifying any “Avoided Objects” it may have encountered. This is a nice feature but needs improvement. The “Avoided Object” map is not zoom-able and is not retrievable once you dismiss the screen. Also, even though the AI identifies objects for you e.g. shoes, cables, etc it is not infallible. A quick test with two phone charging cables proved this. One was flat on the floor and got “eaten” and the second was slightly coiled up and raised off the floor. It was successfully avoided. Moral of the story, you still have to pick up thin cables and tiny objects before a scheduled clean, just like other vacuum robots. Ok lets talk mopping… The T8AIVI has two mopping systems. The simple “drag around behind” style and the motorised “jiggle” mop, as I call it. The drag around mop has a washable microfibre cloth that does a mediocre job of mopping. It leaves a damp trail behind it which is only about half the width of the mop. I bumped up the water flow rate using the app “cleaning pref’s” for it to work a little better. However, the “jiggle” mop is a lot better and does a much better job. Pity that it only takes disposable mop pads. The robot automatically recognises that the mop units are attached and that the reservoirs are full, so it vacuums and mops only the hard surface and avoids the carpeted areas. I consider the robot mopping to only be a “top up” mopping and it will never really clean the floor as well as dedicated human operated wet mop. Remember to follow the instructions and voice prompts to remove the mop and empty the reservoir when mopping has completed. In summary the Ecovac Deebot Ozmo T8AIVI is a great machine and certainly a step up from my previous “crash-bang” robot vac’s. After talking with friends who have similar smart floor vacuum robots, the Ecovac Deebot Ozmo T8AIVI has a few extra features such as the camera, speaker and remote control. The mobile App is a little frustrating to get used too but you’ll figure it out eventually… and can I say, probably not for a techno-phobe. Another minor irritation is that the robot can get stuck in tight situations when mopping i.e. when a carpet is the same distance from the wall as the robot is wide. It moves into the space but can't turn around or reverse to remove itself with the mopping plate attached. In this case it would be handy to be able to take control of the robot navigation, from wherever you are on the planet and steer it out of trouble.

Just buy something else – - Works well when it works - House map breaks constantly. Makes barriers and per room cleaning features useless. - Drop sensors break giving the deebot false positive readings causing it to go around in a small circle. Requires repairs to fix. See attached video. - Has been repaired twice for the same issues inside of 12 months - Issue occured again outside of warranty.

Worked well for 3 months. Expect poor customer service from ecovacs with warranty assistance. Don’t recommend this brand – Will definitely pick a different brand next time! After the first 3 months of working perfectly It now wants to remap house before each clean. The unit is a still within the 12 month warranty period, Have sent unit back for repair with no change on return. Ecovacs will not replace unit as requested, I feel like they are only interested in… Read more

wasting our time sending unit back and forth with no actual fix happening until warranty is up.

We have a 3 bedroom single story house with floor boards. Map time takes around 3 hours to complete before clean starts.

The Mop function is a great feature when vacuum was working correctly.

UPDATE: Total waste of your money – 2/8/24 Update. I've just literally thrown it in the bin, completely useless! We have not been able to use our robot for the last 12 months or so due to constant problems with it. I'm really not sure what has happened to it. Area clean just does it's own thing and doesn't care what rooms you select. It is always having some issue or error in areas… Read more

that it used to work fine. The map constantly gets out of whack and we need to restore, which means we have to set up all the boundaries and change/merge areas etc. We spend 10 minutes going around the house, setting up 'boundaries' will pillows etc to ensure th epoor little thing doesnt get stuck but to no avail. About 4 weeks ago, the map disappeared altogether and we could no longer restore. After resetting the robot, we have not been able to get it to map the house again. The piece of rubbish will only get around half of our house before it needs to recharge for 7 hours and then it will always get it self stuck or something, causing the map to skew and resulting in us having to reset it again.

DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR, DO NOT BUY ECOVACS!!!

I’ve been using the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI daily for nearly 4 weeks now and my floors have never looked cleaner. I have tiles, carpet and a number of rugs throughout my home. I’m quite shocked how much dust and hair it vacuums each day! It picks up so much just on the standard setting and is very quiet. We can easily have it vacuum around us whilst watching TV. I’ve purchased 2 other robot vacuums from other brands in the past and have had to return them both as they did a terrible job but this one has changed my mind.

It was easy to set up and comes with a spare filter and spare brushes which was a nice touch. You get the OZMO mopping system tank and also the OZMO Pro Oscillating system tank which is used with disposable cleaning cloths and gives a more thorough clean. Whilst it can’t replace a traditional mop, particularly when you have food etc stuck to the tiles, it does a great job and leaves the floors looking clean and streak free. I don’t bother using the standard mopping system as it just isn’t as good as the Pro Oscillating system.

The docking station has a molded area at the back to allow any excess power cord to be tucked away neatly. I placed my charging dock in a tight space between a wall and a cabinet and was worried the robot would struggle returning to the dock but it finds its way back to the dock easily.

Connecting the unit to the app was an easy process and after charging the robot, I started a clean of the house to allow the mapping system to create a map of my house. The Deebot missed some areas of my house during its first run but found these on the second clean and added the missing areas to the original map. The mapping system automatically divides the house up into ‘areas’ but I found that some were not ideal. For example, 1 area included one of the bedrooms, the adjoining hallway and the toilet. Using the app, I could easily separate these into separate areas and also merge other separated areas into a single area.

The robot automatically detected rooms that had carpet and shows these on the map with a textured overlay. Another great feature of the mapping system is the ability to set individual cleaning preferences for each area. I’ve used this to set the robot to use max suction in particular heavy traffic rooms and then standard suction in other areas. I also have it set to go over some rooms twice.

I like that I can have different options such as cleaning the whole house automatically, or I can select certain areas only to be cleaned or a custom section of the house by drawing a rectangle on the map. I can start these either manually or set an automatic schedule to clean whilst I’m at work.

The battery is also much better than other robots I’ve tried. When cleaning the whole house, I have most areas set to standard suction power and some areas set to max power and the robot easily gets around my whole house on a single charge. To compare, my house has a floor area of 250m2. If I have it set to max power for the whole house, it can’t complete the whole house in one go but when battery power gets low, the robot goes back to the charging dock and resumes the cleaning from where it left off after recharging.

A feature I initially thought was a gimmick but I have found myself using is the video patrol. I can use my phone to drive the robot around my house manually whilst watching live video or have it patrol to set locations around the house on a schedule. This is great for keeping an eye on the pets when I’m not at home. The footage quality is surprisingly good and I can also take photos and talk through the robot using my phones microphone.

Now for the annoyances. Whilst the radar system is great, it can knock into some objects and keep bumping around for a while. I really need to pick up smaller objects off the floor but it is fine with furniture. It struggles with my dogs water bowl and pushes it around a bit before it finally goes around. I’ve now set up a virtual boundary around my dogs bowl to overcome this.

Within a week of having the Deebot, I decided to buy the auto emptying station. This is easy to set up and you get a new dust bin that has chutes on either end to evacuate its contents. I had some issues where it wouldn’t always empty the bin after a full house clean and there was quite a bit of long hair from the ladies in the house. I came across a tip that closing off one of the chutes in the dust bin with packing tape allowed the empty station to pull all contents through one opening and this has worked a treat. Another solution could be if the app would let me set certain points during a clean to return to the dock to empty the bin so that it didn’t get so full. I could also do this by setting a number of different schedules to do certain rooms and return to the dock, empty and go back out later to do other parts of the house.

Overall, I’m very happy with the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI and have no regrets with it.