Ecovacs has typically impressed with its Deebot line of robotic vacuums, however its newest providing—the Deebot 661 Convertible Vacuuming or Mopping Robotic Vacuum Cleaner—doesn’t fairly rise to the identical stage. That stated, the Deebot 661 nonetheless fills the necessity for an inexpensive vacuum/mop hybrid.
The Deebot 661 measures 13.1 inches throughout by 3.1 inches excessive, and it weighs about 7 kilos. It continues the design language of different Deebots with a black plastic physique and shiny end. An auto-clean button and Wi-Fi indicator gentle are on the highest of the vacuum, an influence swap and reset button are on the facet.
On the underside of the 661 are a most important curler brush, twin spin brushes, a swivel wheel, and a pair of driving treads. The dustbin is slotted in to the again and could be swapped out for a water tank to mop flooring.
The Deebot 661’s low top allows it to get below couches and cupboards.
Setting up the 661 follows the identical steps I’ve seen with different latest Deebot fashions. To use it with its bodily distant—which offers buttons for automated cleansing mode alternatives and handbook management—you simply set the vacuum on the charging dock, flip its energy swap on, and let it cost. It takes about 4 hours for the battery to achieve full capability, which provides you with as much as 110 minutes or run time.
To management the vacuum with the Ecovacs Home app, you have to take the extra steps of scanning the QR code on the facet of the 661, urgent the reset button to pair the 661 along with your cellphone, and following the onscreen prompts to connect with your Wi-Fi community. There are sometimes loads of hiccups when pairing good units with their apps, however the Ecovacs course of was usually seamless.
The 661 has three cleansing modes, which could be activated from the distant management, or the app. Auto cleans your complete flooring in a random sample optimized for carpets. Spot mode cleans a small space of concentrated filth in a spiral sample. In Edge mode, the vacuum cleans alongside the partitions for the total perimeter of the room. There’s additionally a Max setting, which doubles the vacuums suction energy for harder messes.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGThe Ecovacs Home app shows real-time details about cleansing jobs.
While the vacuum is cleansing, the app shows real-time knowledge together with the scale of the realm cleaned in sq. meters, the period of the cleansing, the battery stage, and the present cleansing standing, together with a visible illustration of the vacuum cleansing.
The app offers pop-up alerts when the 661 runs into bother. These establish the difficulty—the vacuum is lifted off the ground, for instance—and are accompanied by a mild beep from the vacuum so you’ll be able to find it. You can faucet “ignore” to shut these notifications, or faucet “view” to open a web page that explains the right way to repair the difficulty. The app retains a file of all these messages on a separate tab.
You can schedule automated cleansing within the app. This lets you select a cleansing mode, choose a begin time, and apply it to explicit days of the week. The app additionally tracks all cleansing jobs in an in depth log, together with the utilization of the vacuum’s brushes and filters for simple alternative.
You can management the 661 palms free as properly. It works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant to assist easy voice instructions.
Mopping
The 661’s considerably distinctive mopping system interchanges the dustbin with a 0.3-liter water tank. The tank comes with a mopping material velcroed on; all it’s a must to do is pull the rubber plug off, fill the tank out of your faucet, exchange the plug and slot the tank into the again of the vacuum.
The vacuum will routinely convert to mopping mode when the water tank is inserted. It will then cowl the whole lot of the ground in an up-and-down sample. It can’t detect the distinction between onerous flooring and carpet although, so when you’ve got areas the place one flooring sort adjoins one other, you’ll must supervise mopping jobs because the 661 doesn’t assist any sort of digital boundaries.
Performance
The 661 typically did a very good job vacuuming up frequent family particles like meals crumbs, pet hair, and mud. Its modest top additionally allowed into such low-clearance spots as below cupboards and couches, locations the place many different robotic vacuum’s I’ve tried can’t get to.
Michael Ansaldo/IDGThe app alerts you to issues throughout cleansing and presents guides to fixing them.
It had a harder time negotiating completely different flooring surfaces. It had no drawback transitioning from carpeting to hardwood and again, however it struggled getting over a throw rug in my entryway, repeatedly setting off an alert that it was off the bottom. It additionally tended to double again over areas it had already cleaned on the expense of areas it hadn’t, which didn’t make for the best effectivity.
The mopping operate labored about in addition to I anticipated, on condition that the 661 basically wipes down the ground with a moist material and performs little agitation. It lifted floor filth with relative ease, however deeper grime was left behind for me to go over with a mop.
Oddly, the 661 solely comes with one material, so I needed to wash and dry it after each cleansing. That wasn’t a lot of a difficulty, although, as I’ve little uncarpeted flooring. It will get tiresome when you’ve got a lot of onerous flooring that wants common mopping.
Verdict
The navigation shortcomings I encountered with the Deebot 661 are frequent to many low-priced, non-mapping robotic vacuums, however as I noticed not too long ago with the iLife A9, there are robotic vacs which have fewer points than this one. If you are able to do with out the mopping operate, you is perhaps higher served by one of many many non-hybrid robotic vacuums that may be had for across the identical value because the 661. If you’re set on a vacuum/mop hybrid mannequin, although, the Deebot 661 is understandably robust to withstand because it prices roughly half as a lot as our present high decide on this class, the Roborock S6. True, you received’t get that mannequin’s assist for a number of flooring maps and digital no-go zones, however should you’re residing area is uncomplicated and uncluttered, you received’t miss them both.