Any parent and pet owners who are living in a house with multiple kids and cats, I’m sure you folks would understand how messy life could get at some point.
Some day you woke up at 730AM feeling like a crazy rich Asian’s friend, who might be totally not rich enough but at least it is your own little place to call home. Then the moment you set foot downstairs you’d find the cats just completely destroyed 90% of your carpet along with all the window blinds. Then you realized the amount of clean up has to be done after the kids drew on every wall, left random piles of breadcrumbs, Lego pieces, candy wrappers, dirt from the yard and tiny sharp things on every floor the night before. Now instead of having a happy pancake like Major Lavon Hayes would make, you gotta take care of everything right at this moment or stumble upon a deadly foot chakra every step of the morning.
You’d think after all this time I’d be ready for something like that if it ever happened. But look at me. Stretching one moment out into a thousand… just so that I could reminisce the peace. I wish there was a picture that could immensely show how my wife and I felt when the chaos unveiled itself that day.
image courtesy of imdb.com
Fortunately, that was a few months ago.
Time has changed and been manipulated for the better good. In other words I finally decided to buy a couple of these so-called smart robotic vacuum cleaners to put them on perpetual, time-loop labor works. And of course, the purchase was absolutely on an impulse to stay true to the spirit of these Tiny Reviews.
Anyway, I didn’t believe very much in these auto vacuum machines at first because –they were overpriced, seriously $499? Ok cuz, I’ll just dust off this floor with a $1 broom really quick for now –second they do the same thing that I can do and –third I didn’t trust they could do a better, more reliable, more diligent job than me, the mighty procrastinator.
Glad I was precisely 92.7% wrong. The tech has gone a long way for the better.
However I figured I didn’t need a $800 Neato D7 early in this game just yet. Hence I ordered two entry-level yet features-packed robotic vacuum cleaners sorted by the highest rating and best-bang for the bucks on Amazon; hoping they could fight each other like how I saw them Battlebots do on Youtube, besides just cleaning the house.
And if one dies, I’m only out $200 instead of $800!
Unfortunately, the most evil thing these things could do was scare the cats. At least that’d put the kitties into place and teach them to know what is best. What is best is they comply. Compliance will be rewarded.
The Eufy 11S (Anker) and Ecovacs N79S are very similar in many ways, since they all come from the same supplier before the re-branding process (probably via the Faustus program).
The main difference between them, excluding the cosmetic changes, is Ecovacs N79S supports smartphone-control as well as voice control via Alexa/Google Home. Functionality-wise, based on my own experiment, the Eufy 11S seems to get stuck less often than the N79S on high rug or tight space. They are both able to find a ton of dust that I didn’t realize I had. I wish they could do the same for $100 bills.
Robotic Vacuums Comparison Chart
*Technical differences between the eufy 11S Slim, eufy Robovac 30, Ecovacs Deebot N79/N79s and Deebot 601. Slide left and right to scroll through products.
Eufy RoboVac 11S
The Eufy 11S Slim has very nice packaging, but not as secured as the Ecovacs N79S. Though a few stuffs were out of place but there was no damage to any parts.
The Eufy RoboVac 11S wears a glossy, shiny anti-scratch tempered glass-top and that definitely makes it appears as a more expensive, more high-end device than its price tag.
It comes with 2 sets of side brushes…Well, that is two times more generous than the Ecovacs Deebot N79S.
What left in the photo below are the remote control, cleaning tool, charging station and its AC adapter.
There is a hollow design in the back of the charging station where you can tuck the extra power cable behind, keeping everything nice and tidy around it. Very thoughtful approach!
Meanwhile, you can use the remote control to set up a daily cleaning schedule for the Eufy 11S to follow –only once a day though, while the N79S can do as many as you can brutally force it to. #HailHydra
On a side note, these naughty boys don’t know what’s coming to them yet. p.s Don’t let their innocent and carefree afternoon nap fools you.
The assembly is simple. Plug the pair of side brushes into the front slots and you are ready for business.
After an hour of mingling around the house, here we have the result.
I thought I didn’t clean the floors well enough the other day because the Eufy 11S dust bin was packed to the to rim. However, I soon learn that this becomes the norm every. single. day. It’s just ridiculous. Keeps asking myself HOW.
Look at the amount of dust, hairballs and diamonds it picked up!
The Eufy 11S Slim is an eye-opener for me. I never would expect my floors were this dirty.
I used to vacuum twice a week and now be greeted with the amount of junk the bots pull out from the floor daily, I kinda understand why we used to sneeze all the times and I always felt like I stepped on a bug or something.
Here we have the roll brush cleaned. Big difference.
Ecovacs Deebot N79S
N79S has a matte-ish top, so I’d assume it can take a beating more graceful than the glossy finish of the Eufy 11S. Though it doesn’t look as sleek as its opponent.
Accessories are similar to the Eufy 11S but Ecovacs only gives you a pair of side brushes. I guess that’s the trade-off for smart phone/voice control feature just to keep the price competitive.
I rarely use the remote control once the Ecovacs N79S had established a connection to the wifi network. All commands can be conveniently managed via my smartphone along with battery status, filter change and dust bin capacity reports.
However, it’s good to know that we have an alternative, direct control to the device in case the router is down during the walking dead outbreak. Somebody still gotta keep the house clean.
Conclusion
As a tiny review, I didn’t want to dive into the technical aspects of these devices like PC Hardware reviews –but you could jump back to the small comparison section at the beginning of this article for more details, if you missed it.
On other hand, let’s take a look at the good and the bad of these robotic vacuum cleaners before we finish up today article.
Eufy RoboVac 11S
- Does a good job extracting dirt and debris
- Seamlessly maneuvers over floor transitions and door ledges
- Sleek, modern looking
- Does not get stuck too often
- Low profile, means it can reach most places under the furnitures
- Plenty of accessories
- Strong suction with 3 power modes (1300pa)
- Can be scheduled for auto cleaning once a day
- Thoughtful base station design for efficient power cable management
- Can prevent itself from falling off the stairs
- Supports different cleaning modes; such as Edge and Spot patterns
- Returns to station automatically and correctly every time.
- Default random cleaning pattern, may miss a spot or two
- Loose packaging
- Glossy surface, though it’s scratch-resistant tempered glass, will eventually get more visibly scratches if not handled carefully.
- Only supports scheduling auto clean once per day
- No Wifi, smartphone or voice control
- Does not work on high pile rug
- Can only be scheduled to run once a day
- No magnetic boundary strips to prevent access to undesired area.
- Can’t participate in Battlebot tourney.
Update: On December 2018 eufy released the 15C model for $279.99. This is the alexa voice-control version with all hardware platform based off the 11S model we just reviewed here. Therefore it has all the Pro’s and Con’s of the 11S, but now with wifi and voice control upgrades.
Ecovacs Deebot N79S
- Does a good job extracting dirt and debris
- Seamlessly maneuvers over floor transitions and door ledges
- Sophisticated looking
- Matte surface hides scratches nicely
- Low profile, means it can reach most places under the furnitures
- Strong suction with 2x boost mode. I once found a full size pencil in the dust bin.
- Has schedule for auto cleaning with no limit interval per day
- Supports Wifi, smartphone and voice control with Alexa, Google Home.
- Can prevent itself from falling off the stairs
- Supports different cleaning modes; such as Edge, Spot and Single-room patterns
- There is AC plugin port on the machine itself, that means you can directly charge the vacuum on-the-go without the need of base station.
- Not a deception.
- Default random cleaning pattern, may miss a spot or two
- Cut down on accessories, only comes with one pair of side brushes
- Does not work on high-pile rug
- Get stuck often between tight space (pic below).
- Returns to station automatically, but sometimes it wanders around for a while.
- No magnetic boundary strips to prevent access to undesired area.
Tesvor X500 —(Update 10/2019)
Hence I reached out to a few manufacturers who have been flying under the radar all these times –but you know, not the familiar Roomba, eufy, iRobot or Ecovacs and they need to have a decent line up of products.
The reason is those who have only one or two items to offer, usually tend to be pop-up companies that are rebranding some cheap-made product in China to make a quick buck, and regretfully they often don’t stay around for long.
Fortunately, I found and received many responses from our readers and the first one that stood out is the $160 Tesvor X500 1400pa smart robot vac ($200-$40 OFF on Amazon while it lasts) with advanced mapping system and voice response. There is also an upgrade version with 1500pa suction power which runs for $210. However, that little difference in pa is just going to reduce your cleaning time due to higher battery consumption without making any major differences on the long run.
We often look for a strong suction in a typical handheld vacuum because we want to finish the job quickly, it’s labor works. However, these robot vacuums are meant to perform daily schedules once or twice a day everyday, for hour on their own, hence they eventually pick up everything on the floor –that means longer runtime for them is better than higher pa rating in most case.
Alright, now let’s see if the X500 lives up to $200 standards set by the best-seller RoboVac 11S and Deebot N79S.
On the fist look the unit arrived very well-packaged. It’s actually a box-ception consists of a box, inside a box, inside a shipping box. With the first layer out, this is what we have.
Fast-forward to the end of the unboxing story, you’ll find two pairs of side brushes, a cleaning brush, manual book, AC adapter and charging base, then a remote control plus one set of air filter. That puts the Tesvor X500 into the second most generous brand when it comes to the freebie department. Deebot N79S didn’t even give me an extra set of air filters, while eufy 11s/15C is Santa Claus.
I’m also highly impressed by the proper English in the manual as well as detail cleaning instructions for the dust bin.
The X500 charging base station does not have an empty back pocket to hide electrical wire as the thoughtful eufy 11s, but the grid-indented rubber feet are much better at keeping the base from moving around when the vacuum comes home to recharge.
This small approach makes a huge difference, because I often have to adjust the base station of the Ecovacs N79S slightly back to its original location every once in a while.
When placed side by side, the X500 is slightly larger in diameter..
..with longer brushes..
..and bigger dust bin.
It’s interesting that both the N79S and X500’s dust bins have the same 0.6L in capacity on paper but apparently, someone is lying here. As the matter of fact, I actually empty the X500 less often than N79S. Is litre measurement unit the same everywhere in the multiverses?
Now from the bottom view, the resemblance is uncanny. It’s a common design for pretty much all current entry-level and mid-range robot vacuums in the market.
However, that means they typically run into the same issue where the laser tracking lens get clogged up by dust from being too close to the side brushes. It’s best to use a damped Q-tip to service these three locations to prevent the vacuum from thinking it’s a bumpy car everywhere it goes.
From the top view, the X500 definitely looks a lot sleeker and more high-end –thanks to the glossy tempered glass finish and its overall larger size.
But hey, it’s like comparing a new pencil and an used one –easier to look sharp when it hasn’t done any work. The Deebot N79S has been running around my little 2500-sqft home every single day for the last 2.5 years without a hiccup (except when it got stuck a few times). So the X500 certainly got its work cut out for in order to meet the expectations set by the Deebot.
Now let’s look at the notable upgrades between the Tesvor X500 and Deebot N79S/eufy 11s
Connecting the X500 to your home wifi is much more easier than the eufy 11s. The steps, similar to the updated version of Ecovacs N79S app, simply involves scanning the QR barcode and input your 2.4GHz wireless network (be sure having your phone on the 2.4GHz wifi during installation).
Once done, you can even control the vacuum from the supermarket.
Voice response –whether it gets stuck or needs to recharge or there’s something wrong, the X500 will yell at you like an Asian tiger mom. Hahah jk, but that’d be cool. Any how, it will announce the error, instead of just beeping like the other two models. Now for guys with overly attached girlfriend, the X500 has a female voice just so you know. Don’t go around call her “Jennifer” or “Jessica”.
Mapping system –it is a valuable feature found in mid-range/high-end robot vacuums a couple years ago, not a gimmick. The X500 keeps track of the path it has traveled to avoid going back to the same place too many times. This greatly improves cleaning efficiency and allows the vacuum to covers more areas out of its 100-min runtime.
Although, I ran to an issue with this mapping system. When the X500 got stuck and even after my immediate rescue, it simply forgets all recorded cleaning paths upon resuming the job. I’m waiting for a response from Tesvor to make sure I didn’t do anything wrong during my heroic moment.
A press of a button –I know these vacuums are smart and we can tell them to start cleaning via Alexa, or remote control or even from the phone app. But sometimes I like a quick press of a button on the Deebot N79S, right at the tip of my toe and it jumps to work right away.
That doesn’t happen on Tesvor X500. Sometimes, one press and nothing happens. Two presses and maybe it will start cleaning, but if you did it too fast, it starts then stops and goes back to charging. In short, it’s confusing to manually tell the X500 to get to work due to the slow response.
The Good and The Bad –The Tesvor X500 definitely can be as hardworking as the Deebot N79S or eufy 11s. However due to its larger size there is a slightly shorter runtime, especially on carpeted floors. On the other hand, all three unit perform very well on wood floors with low rugs. It also comes to light that the difference between 1300pa, 1400pa and 1500pa suction is almost unnoticeable. These robot vacuums have no trouble of keep your floor spotless, and if they missed something the first time chance is they are coming back to that again pretty soon.
Now in the case of the X500, it also very quickly marks the territory upon the first start up and kicks my old Deebot out of the room. That may call for war when the Deebot returns.
Speaking of which, the mapping system is very useful. As I used the map to backtrack where it has been, I found the Tesvor X500 did a decent job of picking up all small debris and my pentalobe screwdriver. Nothing left behind.
But I also caught a couple of problems. First, it often gets stuck at this location (photo below) all the times, just like the Deebot N79S. I guess air vent, rug and spring doorstop won the war.
Then one day out of the blue, I found the X500 came back with a missing side brush. I still cannot find that side brush til this day, no joke. There is something really going on between these battle bots behind my back, I swear to the Old Gods and the New.
But in all seriousness, could it be a design flaw that the brush came off by accident? The Deebot N79S never once lost its arm. So fortunately and unfortunately, I had to use the second free side brush so quickly. I will update this post the day I find that lost piece.
One last thing I most dislike about the Tesvor X500 is its phone app. This may not applies to those of us who utilize the remote control so it might not be a downside for you at all.
The Tesvor X500 connects to its app called WeBack. First of all, that name does not make sense and does not seem to relate to a robot vacuum by any means –why not “Tesvor”? Second, it seems to be ported from a Chinese app and the language is 30% Engrish, as strongly opposed to the more proper English manual that we found earlier. Although through the app, you can grant others access to control the device as well as create daily cleaning schedules and request different cleaning modes.
However, things get a little annoying when it keeps having to login every time I fire it up –that could take a while. Both apps from Ecovacs and eufy do not do this. On top of that, the next screen will be asking your permission to access GPS location over and over again if you did not allow it before. There is no way to stop it. That’s a no-no bruh.
Now I kind of understand why it needs location service –the app in its original form is an all-in-one central access point used for home automation which includes other devices such as smart switches, lighting, security sensors etc…so it should need GPS for geo-fencing functionality. But those devices are disabled in WeBack, so it shouldn’t need geo-fencing for a robot vacuum. They wouldn’t go to war against each other when I’m away, would they?
Then also there’s an option to “find the vacuum” which I believe needs GPS info (?) to locate the device, but wouldn’t all the GPS data it gets is just the location of the phone itself? Then the last thing one may guess is, the “mapping system”. But even with GPS permission currently revoked, the mapping system records its own travel path just fine. So I wonder why it needs GPS data.
In my own opinion, Tesvor has a really great vacuum under their wings. The X500 looks decent, works extremely efficient with great battery life. In fact, due to its large size it gets stuck less often than other two robot vacuums. Everything was looking like rainbow all around, but they fall short in the app department in comparison to Ecovacs and eufy. It might be cheaper to buy a ready-made app than developing a new one with just similar functions, but Tesvor is selling a “smart” device, the smart app should need a little more attention and polishing than its current state.
Despite some minor setbacks, I gradually love these machines more and more each day.
They are not as expensive as they were a few years ago. For just a little under $200 it’s definitely a decent buy –especially with with Amazon $30 off coupon, if it’s still available. No regret.
You can absolutely spend more for high-end units such as Neato D5 or D7 but it’s like buy a top of the line refrigerator –too much digital, “smart” tech can be a hassle when things start acting up. It’s just a secondary vacuum cleaner in the house and if it does a job well for less than $200, that certainly will be a long while before I want to upgrade my robot again.
However if your budget allows, the more fancy models are usually equipped with laser-guided cleaning pattern for a more throughout cleaning. Some allows you to map the house to make this task even more efficient like the Tesvor X500 here. But I also like seeing my bots having fun going around randomly though, rather than a repetitive boring labor work –but that’s just me.
And this is the part I admit where I was wrong about robotic vacuum cleaners.
These machines actually work a lot harder and more diligently than I do. I schedule my N79S to run twice a day, 7 days a week and I have never seen either one of the two stops working under an hour. I wouldn’t have time to vacuum the house for almost three hours every day. They have been surprisingly great helpers. I feel like Santa Claus with a bunch of dedicated elves.
I greatly appreciate a clean home now thanks to this technology. On top of that, it’s fun to call up “Alexa, tell Deebot to start cleaning!” and the N79S goes to work right away.
Speaking of minor setbacks, it could be a little annoyance when they get stuck every now and then, but that might not be a big deal for some of us who are less lazy than me.
Know what a big deal is? It’s when you have a naughty pet and one good day it just feels like dumping a gigantic poopocalypse on the hallway for shitty reason. So, as Negan always said, excuse the shit out of my goddamn French, but please listen –if you have a bad doggo like that, avoid these vacuum cleaners at all cost, you’ve been warned!
Bonus videos
Our first run of the Eufy 11S versus Cats.
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Battery-powered Snow Blowers Comparison from Greenworks, Snow Joe and EGO Power+
--...people couldn’t dig their way our to go to work and the maintenance team consisted of 2 old guys, couldn’t get their gas snowblowers to start even if their 401k entirely depends on it...
Affordable Robotic Vacuums Comparison : Eufy RoboVac 11S vs. Ecovacs Deebot N79S.
...hence I ordered two entry-level yet features-packed robotic vaccuum cleaners, hoping they could fight each other like what I saw them Battlebots do on Youtube...
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