Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI robot vacuum cleaner review

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Ecovacs' latest smart robot vacuum cleaner, the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI promises a whole-of-house cleaning solution, given that it can intelligently vacuum carpets and mop floors, work with voice assistants and intelligently route its way around a multitude of obstacles. It'll even note what those obstacles are so it's easier for you to move them out of the way to ensure a more complete cleaning cycle.

The Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI mostly lives up to those promises, but like most robot vacuum cleaners, it's best suited for maintenance cleaning over a longer period of time rather than relying on it to clean up bigger carpet or floor issues. Its asking price is also on the higher side, although you do get a better class of cleaning than you'd see out of a budget range robot vacuum.

Design

Design

• Easy app set-up
• Manual could be a little easier to follow
• Google Assistant/Alexa integration

• Read more about the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI's design

  Before you even get started setting up the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI, you'll need to download the Ecovacs app for iOS or Android and set up an account. Ecovacs keeps this simple with a QR code printed on the handy set-up card that comes with the vacuum, so actually getting this working and registering the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI is quite painless.

  The model Ecovacs supplied to me for review had been reviewed elsewhere previously, so it's feasible that there were physical set-up steps I got to dodge, but checking through the manual the biggest bit of physical set-up you'll need to do is switching it between vacuuming and mopping modes anyway.

  For vacuuming, this is as simple as popping on the standard antenna like side brushes, but for mopping, you have to pop out the water tank and fill it and then fit either the washable mop head or a disposable mop head onto the base of the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI. It's smart enough to recognise when the mop head is fitted and won't perform regular vacuuming duties if it is.

  The one catch here is that the manual isn't terribly clear as to which parts fit where. This may have also been a problem specific to me because the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI was already set up when I got it in for review, but I did struggle a little working out which parts fit where for proper mopping action. To its credit, Ecovacs has some much easier to follow videos online that make this much more apparent.

  At 9.3cm high, the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI isn't quite as flat as some robot vacuums, but it's still very much designed to be able to slot under a lot of household furniture, which gives it plenty of scope to reach the areas that you might not otherwise hit easily with a handheld or rolling vacuum cleaner.

  You can just control the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI via the Ecovacs app, and for many functions that's what you'll need to do, but it's also assistant enabled for Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa integration if you fancy a little voice-activated vacuuming action.

  I added it to a Google Home installation, and the only real curve ball was working out that Google thinks of it as a "Deebot" device, not an "Ecovacs" one when searching for it within the Google Home application.

Performance

Performance

• App is nicely comprehensive
• Better as a vacuum than a mop
• Small dust bin fills quickly
• Great object avoidance
• Can still get stuck

• Read more about the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI's performance

  The Ecovacs app allows you to set the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI into action, primarily through its "Smart Cleaning function". This uses the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI's sensors, which include a camera sensor on the front that hooks into the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI's AI smarts for mapping and object avoidance as well as sensors on the sides to detect bumps from unexpected objects and on the base that work out if the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI is about to tumble down some stairs, or if you've just picked it up.

  You can hook directly into that front video sensor through what Ecovacs calls its "Smart Butler" mode, which lets you drive the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI around like a remote control car. There's small scope here for home security and monitoring, although the reality of its top speed and noise profile means that you're never going to creep up on a burglar with it this way.

  The Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI did a very good job of mapping out several areas in my test home environment, which included areas of hard floor and carpet, and over time it builds up an increasingly smart map of what it expects in each area. This does mean that when you're first starting out with it, some of its vacuuming decisions can seem a little odd.

  More than once I'd notice it head into one area for a single sweep of one line of floor then head out to another area and return back later. You can track its actual coverage map in the app to see where it's covered for vacuuming or mopping duties over time, and during my review period, it seemed to get better at making a more logical stab at the optimal way to cover larger areas when needed.

  Ecovacs pitches the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI as being especially good at object avoidance, and this is very much true for most types of objects. You can set virtual boundaries beyond which you don't want it to travel, and it respects those, but even for smaller objects, it was quite smart at avoidance in nearly every case. I say nearly because there were two distinct areas where the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI often struggled in my home environment.

  Weather at the time of reviewing meant I had a few indoor clothes hangers with tube bases in my home, and the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI would attempt to drive over them rather noisily. Its success rate in not beaching itself was about 50% in those cases, although it's kind of impressive that it would even try. I also had one area downstairs with a partially raised floor, and there it managed the ascent around 90% of the time. The app certainly isn't shy in letting you know if the poor Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI has gotten itself stuck or if it's got too much hair stuck in its rollers or any other problem. If you want a robot vacuum to do your cleaning work while you're out at the office, you're not going to be able to help too much with a stuck brush or trapped robot, though.

  

  When it comes to the quality of the actual cleaning, the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI works rather better as a vacuum than as a mop. It will intelligently adjust its suction depending on whether it picks up that it's working over a hard floor or a carpet area, which does give it more power when it's working through thicker carpet areas.

  Like most robot vacuum cleaners, the result that you get is better suited for maintenance cleaning on surfaces that aren't too heavily soiled. You can again set the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI to more diligently work over an area, but the reality of its suction capabilities means that it doesn't quite compare to a good handheld or rolling vacuum clean that you do yourself. It's also very much limited by the size of its dust bin, which, like most robot vacuums isn't immense. It's easy enough to empty the bin after each cleaning cycle, although you do need to be careful about the angle you pick it up from because the inlet hinge flaps open pretty easily. The first few times I cleared it, I forgot this and left a small trail of dust and particles near the robot that I then had to tell it to clean up afterwards.

  The other trick in the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI's arsenal is its mopping ability. You have to change the operation mode of the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI to get this to work, clicking on a mop head – either the washable one that comes with the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI or a disposable one – and filling the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI's water tank with fresh clean water.

  I was genuinely curious to see how well the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI managed a mop of my hardwood floors and how well it would manage to avoid getting my carpets wet. On the latter front, it did excellently, avoiding every bit of carpet I had downstairs without fail.

  On the former front, it does a fair but light job of mopping overall. That's absolutely a function of the fact that it's only using basic cold water for mopping purposes. The odds are good that when you do mop your floors, you probably don't do so with just cold water. You can set the level of water the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI uses in mopping mode, but it never left much more than a very thin film of water behind it once done. Again, it's a maintenance tool for mostly-clean floors, not something that's going to clear up whatever the baby has spilled over the side of its high chair.

  Small children aside, the other challenge that the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI had to face in my situation were my cats. I honestly wasn't sure if they'd run scared from it or attack it as an interloper, but instead they generally saw it as a plaything.

  Not quite to memetic YouTube video standards, but they were certainly keen to follow it around the house as it cleaned every time I set it off. If you have housebound pets that are left at home when you go to work every day, you could definitely use the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI's video mode to keep them entertained.

  

  In case you're curious, in a staring contest between a cat and the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI, the cat wins, but only because the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI views it as another obstacle – typically marking it as a shoe or foot – and works its way around it if the cat doesn't in fact move at all.

Battery life

Battery life

• Long recharge times
• Good endurance

• View test results and read our full review of the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI's battery life

  Ecovacs rates the Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI as being capable of running for up to three hours on a single charge. You'd need a truly immense home for it to take that long to cover your entire home, and mine certainly didn't qualify that way. Instead, I tested this out by running it over multiple floors in quick succession, racking up pretty much exactly 180 minutes of cleaning time before it protested that it was running out of power.

  That's an impressive figure for a robot vacuum cleaner, although it does come with the caveat that actual full recharging takes more than six hours to complete. In most cases, you'd just let that happen overnight anyway, but if you do run it quite low during the day, you'd have a fair old wait before you could get it back up and running.

Should you buy the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI?

At $1,299, the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI could never be described as inexpensive. It sits very much at the premium end of the robot vacuum cleaner scale, and while it delivers a lot of smarts for that money, the end result is still very much a maintenance-style clean.

Do you absolutely need a robot vacuum cleaner? Excluding those with genuine mobility issues, probably not.

They're a luxury buy item that can make basic household chores a lot easier and even a little fun. If you can meet the asking price without blushing and want a robot vacuum with really good battery life, the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 AIVI is a solid choice.

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