ECOVACSDeebot Ozmo T8 AIVI Robot Vacuum Cleaner & Mop with Auto-Empty Station Smart Objection Recognition Advanced Laser Mapping High Efficiency Filter Ideal for Pet Hair 3+ Hours of Runtime

After reading reviews I was nervous but bought anyway. EXTREMELY happy I did. I'll update as the weeks go on, but so far it's better than I hoped.[Update Oct 3,2021...11 months after purchase]I love this thing! After almost a year it's been awesome. I have all wood/laminate floors... no carpet. It rand for 3 months every day without me needing to do anything. Okay, might have gotten stuck 3 or 4 times during that stretch. But is amazing. I have it run when I'm not home. The dog likes to leave toys around and it avoids them. Floors are clean. At about 6 months I needed to replace the main brush as it was loud and annoying. Replaced and back to normal. At 11 months I've only replaced the bag in the autoempty bin twice. Read the rest of this review for how I made it vacuum my dirt shop.[End Oct 2021 update]As for the negative reviews...my guess... mostly user error. I even tested the things I think people do wrong, and I was right.1) mapped first time great, but takes time. It isn't "smart" the first time cleaning and mapping.2) the app works great mostly. The map edit could be improved.3) auto clean: after your first map created. Autoclean is the best setting. Area clean works well. Custom clean (select an area manually) works, but not intuitive at all.4) don't let the charger get moved. If it's adjusted, say 30 degrees, off the wall, you'll mess up the map. If that happens and you catch it, pick up the vacuum and place it in an area such as a different room, and it will re set.5) mop. I bought to vacuum, not mop. But I'm amazed at how clean my floors are. Vacuum is totally automatic daily at set time. I can set it and forget for a month. The moping needs to be done manually to fill the tank, pre wet the microfiber towel, and clear the area. I use HOT water and then spray a light amount of floor cleaner on the floor. After each area, i clean the pad and then do the next. I know it's only a light mop, but my floors are really much cleaner than I thought they would be.6) if you have bedrooms, bathrooms... the doors are closed sometimes ... that changes the map. My son prepped his room, so I told the T8 to do his room... but it didn't. I realized the last time it was by his door it was closed, so I set up a custom area clean that included his room and part of the hall way. Then it went to vacuum the hallway, and seeing the bedroom door open, it did his room too.7) the t8 got stuck on a towel left on the floor. The next clean and it was super careful in that area, even though the towel was removed. It remembered it had trouble and was very careful next time.8) avoids objects okay. If you're dog poops in the house (then get a better dog because I've never once had that problem after the dog was 6 months old) the AIVI will work... but not every time. Nothing beats training your dog.I'll update more as I have more experience.Update 6 weeks later:I used it to vacuum the upper level of a shop used for lawn care. Extremely dirty/ dusty. After I've set it up on the new wifi, it applied the new area as a second map in the house. I didn't bring the autoempty bin as there was a LOT of dust. The first time I emptied the dust bin every 30sq feet or so. The second run I emptied it every 200sq feet. Then I left and ran it a full 3rd time while I was gone. Got stuck on fishing line which was a nightmare to fix but not its fault. After the 4th run the floors were so clean the bin was barely full. So under the most extreme conditions it was very effective. I used to do this one a year with a good vacuum and this little guy did much better and was more thorough.

Been using this for over a month now. I am very adept with electronics and computers, I am confident that my issues are not user error.1. After learning the maps, it forgets rooms, it adds rooms on its own, and it merged rooms on its own. All of which customer service says should not happen. In my picture, it merged 4 zones to create n1, and dropped the bathroom on the right. It assigns rooms starting at A,B,C... And adds numbers after that, you can not name rooms, only give them icons. So you can see how many times it has dropped and added rooms.2. The mop does not function. Even when the manual water feed button on the tank is pressed, no water comes out. Customer service has offered to fix, if I send the whole robot back with no return ETA. Even then, it is a damp washcloth dragged behind the unit.3. With all my dealings with "customer service", their customer service department helps like a poorly scripted text bot. They pick up on one thing you say and run with it like a squirrel. Every time I start talking about mapping, they tell me how to create a map, then the next is how to label the map. Then they go through my options to make sure it is set up properly, even though I have already answered the questions previously.4. All these problems happen to other people, I went to social media, found a group that was tips and tricks, and found many people with the same issues.I have not even taken the auto empty bin out of the box because I wanted to be an expert on the rest of the operation first, but the product simply does not work. I should not have to babysit a smart vacuum every single time it runs to try to fix what it messes up. When it works properly, I am amazed by it, but at least 9/10 times it has a hardwired software issue I have to correct and I use it every day.--update: I sent it in for "repair" get it back and there are roaches in the box, and the darn thing does not work. It does not even connect to the wifi.Garbage

I've had this for over 2 years and have recently added another vac/mop robot to assist. The best thing I can tell you is setup autocleaning in separate rooms throughout the day if you have pets. If you try the whole house once a day, it misses a lot too vacuum up because hair clumps and then can't be evacuated in the autobin. I have set up the whole house to be done over 3 different sections like 3 hours apart in the day.

I've had this vacuum for about a week now. We also purchased the i7+ Roomba to compare together (also because we were worried about getting the best price during Black Friday). We thought we were going to choose the i7+ Roomba with the Braava bundle over the T8+, but we were very wrong. We decided to purchase a robot vacuum for maintenance vacuum/mopping. We fully didn't expect to find a deep cleaning machine to replace the need for us to vacuum or mop anymore. We have a little less than 400sqft first floor the vacuum was going to be kept. About 120sqft of that is hardwood floors. So, not a huge home by any means, but we have two dogs, two full-time careers, and two "part-time" (more like full-time) student hours. Vacuuming and mopping weren't happening. We have tumbleweeds of dog hair rolling around the house.A few things that were important to us that helped us make our decision (this isn't an exhaustive list and each person is going to find other things more or less important than we do, so keep that in mind):NAVIGATION/TECHNOLOGY:The T8+ is far superior to the i7+ in terms of navigation. The mapping is way more accurate. It learns more and more with each run. It is SO much fun being able to watch the little bot go around your room in real-time. It makes it a lot easier to find it when it gets stuck or lost. Also, you can see the entire route it took for the whole cleaning when it finishes. It also keeps a log of each run so you can go back and see where it went, what it ran into, and how much time it took. The i7+, the mapping isn't as accurate, it doesn't appear to learn much after confirming any mapping, and it seems to have "archaic" technology when comparing to T8+. Also, it doesn't share a map created by the i7+ with the Braava (which we thought was weird and inefficient). You can't see where it is during a run and it only shows highlighted areas instead of an exact route. You can't watch anything in real-time, it only says what it's doing at the moment. You can mark "no go" zones with each app after mapping, but the i7+ is more limiting. The i7+ is more block-based rather than T8+'s more fluid map.EFFICIENCY:The T8+ appears to be more efficient. The T8+ took 35-37 mins to vacuum the entire floor and the i7+ took 48-55 mins. Although the T8+ can miss some areas occasionally, it doesn't miss every time because it continues to learn. The T8+ gently guides itself around furniture and obstacles. It works on the perimeter of the room first, then traverses through the middle and moves on to the next area. T8+ makes it easier to increase productivity by being able to choose which rooms to clean first and in what order, something you can't seem to do with i7+. The i7+ seems to ram into all obstacles and furniture, especially during mapping. It's a bit jarring. It traverses through the middle of an area, then very slowly around the perimeter. While it looks like it gets every inch of the room with each run, you definitely pay for it with time. Considering the battery life of these robots, efficiency is key.NOISE LEVEL:The T8+ is FAR quieter than the i7+ when vacuuming. The T8+ does allow you to adjust the suction strength of the vacuum and switches to high power on the carpet. You can hear the difference but is still MUCH quieter than the i7+. There is no power adjustment for the i7+ and it is very loud. I couldn't watch TV while the bot was running. We were also concerned about the emptying stations when considering setting these bots to clean while we were sleeping. Both sound like a full-sized vacuum when emptying for about 10 seconds into the tower, which is louder than we expected. Still, the T8+ was quieter in that area as well. The T8+ is so quiet, we didn't even notice the bot was running and emptying. Neither did our dogs and they bark at every noise in the house like someone is breaking in.PERFORMANCE:While we were expecting the i7+ to clean the carpets better than the T8+, but as far as we can tell they seemed to be quite equal. We did like that the i7+ empties itself during its run if it gets too full. T8+ doesn't do that and a lot of hair got stuck in the bin that the tower wasn't able to suck out of it. There's no warning on the app that tells you whether the bot is full or not, which we thought was a huge oversight. We knew that going into this because we watched a YouTuber (Vacuum Wars) describe that the first few runs picked up too much hair and failed to empty into the bin. He found he needed to schedule extra runs throughout the week to make sure it doesn't get that full. Our dogs also like to rip apart their toys leaving pieces of rope and fabric around. The T8+ does get a lot wrapped around the roller, but it provides its own tool in the bot itself to cut anything out of the rollers (super convenient!). The same way that a normal vacuum gets things stuck around the rollers you have to cut occasionally, just on a smaller scale. The i7+ didn't seem to have as much of an issue but does still get hair around the ends of the roller you have to remove the rollers to get out.MOPPING:We were expecting the Braava to outperform the T8+ mopping and we were right. The Braava does a traditional back/forth movement with constant spraying while the T8+ is just a constantly wetted pad being wiped across the floor. While the T8+ can vacuum while mopping, it can only do it on areas that aren't carpeted. So, if the mop pad is attached, it cannot go onto the carpet to vacuum. The appeal to the Braava was we could have it ready to mop whenever we needed it and clean it when we had the time. The T8+ needed more acute handling when mopping was needed. I thought this would deter me from the T8+, but honestly setting it up for mopping isn't that bad. you can remove the water tank while it is docked. Then you can fill it with water, attach the mop pad to the water tank and insert it back into the bot. Easy peasy. I set the T8+ to vacuum in the early morning before I wake up, then set it up to mop while I make my coffee and run it while I start on my homework and clean it at some point later in the day. SO EASY. It's so quick too! I set it to mop my hardwood floors twice and it only took 30 mins. The Braava takes 40-45 mins just to do one run. Like I mentioned before, the i7+ doesn't share the map it created with the Braava so it has to create its own map of just the floors it can mop which is time-consuming and annoying. You can fill the tank with water and cleaner, insert a mopping head, and run it whenever you like. This seems great! Except it is constantly saying the tank is empty and won't run until it is refilled. The tank could have 1/3 fluid left and you still have to refill it. There is no alert you get saying that the mop isn't running unless you open the app. So annoying. Even though the T8+ requires a tad more effort and doesn't clean as effectively as the Braava, we still considered the mopping pretty equal considering the NAV/TECH as mentioned above.TL;DR:The i7+ is super loud, rams into our furniture, nav and app not that great, more thorough but takes forever to clean the entire floor, and doesn't pick up any more dirt off the carpet. Braava cleans better, but that's it.The T8+ is quiet, gracefully guides around the room, nav and app are baller, fun to watch, cleans quickly and efficiently. Mopping quality is ok, but not as difficult of a setup as anticipated.I'm super happy with the T8+ and is definitely life-changing so far. My house finally feels clean and I have more time to dedicate to other cleaning around.

Update #2: After more than a month at the repair center Evovacs finally sent a replacement robot. I have updated my rating up to a 2 because I now have a working system. Their customer support/service experience needs serious improvement.----------------------------------------------------------Update: Buyers Beware!I lowered my rating from 4 to 1 because my unit failed after 5-6 months and I am not able to get an update from the repair center. The unit has been at the repair center for warranty repair since May 20, 2021 where it seems to have disappeared into a black hole. I was supposed to get an update within 3 days, then 14 days while they are working to "to provide customers a better repair experience." It has now been more than 3 weeks and the customer support folks cannot tell me anything about the status other than they have requested status. I have written to the letting them know that I will happily accept a refurbished unit, a new unit or my money back; no response so far.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Original review:This is my third robot vacuum and the best one of the Eufy Robovac 11s, Roborock S4 and the Ecovacs Deebot T8 AIVI with Auto-empty station. Robot vacuums are game changers. While the T8 AIVI with Self-Empty Station is amazing, it is also frustrating!Note: I have not tried the mopping feature yet.Pros:- It has never hung up on any cords. Note: I had already cleaned up most of the cords in the house because of the first two robots but they still had occasional troubles with internet cables I cannot remove. I've only had to rescue the Deebot T8 AIVI one time in the month I've had it when it went under a bed and it could not get out because of the bed-skirt. This is much better than the other robots.- It seems very well built.- It climbs over thresholds very well (the Roborock S4 was terrible). I have 3 problematic thresholds in my house and it climbs over 2 of them 20mm and 25mm high (ramped) without issues. I had to build a ramp over the tallest threshold.- The application tells you the status of everything and what you need to service.- The T8's filters seem to last a long time if you clean them when prompted (about every 3rd day in my house with 2 people, three cats, a parrot and a small dog)).- Despite an issue with the Auto-empty station's ability to evacuate the T8's dust bin (see the Con's section), I love the Auto-empty feature.Cons:- Map management SW is weak and disrespects the customer. I've given up trying to merge or divide rooms ("areas") because the app will re-map the house without warning throwing your edits into the trash. After several uncontrolled re-mappings I've given up on merges and divides. If you use the map as is, setting up Virtual Boundaries work well and they have not been thrown in the trash. I have given input to Ecovacs that they need to update their SW to never throw out the customer's edits without giving the customer a choice.- Long hair accumulates on the brush roll, especially around the axles. Note that the T8 is actually pretty good but the Roborock S4 is better while the Eufy 11s is terrible. (Side Note: My spouse has 2 foot long hair and a Shark Apex Zero-M/Duo-clean upright has NEVER had to be cleaned of her hair.)- The Auto-empty station/T8 AIVI vacuum dust bin can struggle to evacuate long hair and cat hair. The Auto-empty dirt evacuation method does not work well when the T8 dust bin is pretty full (2 people, 3 cats, a parrot and a small dog in a good sized house). My work around has been to use the Area cleaning scheduling tool to divide the house into 2 sections, clean just one section, let the T8 dock with the Auto-Empty station, auto-empty the T8 dust bin, and then after a 30 minute charge to go clean the other section. Repeat daily.- The multi-floor/multi-map capability is awkward because the robot creates and uses each map based on the location of the base station/charging dock. Hauling the base station around seems like a workaround method to create a multi-floor feature. I chose not to use this feature after getting this explanation from Support.Conclusion: I gave it 4-Stars because the T8 AIVI is a cutting edge product that works well if you are willing to figure out its idiosyncrasies. Robot vacs will get better and better.