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Cleaning performance
The Eufy may be well designed and affordable, but a vacuum cleaner is only as good as its cleaning performance. It could be the cheapest in the world, but still not worth it if it doesn't clean your house properly. Whether it does partly depends if you live in a house that suits having a robot vacuum cleaner.
You may think it’s stating the obvious, but it’s worth noting that if you live across more than one floor this will be a limited usage for you. The RoboVac 11 is capable of travailing over room dividers and small bumps in your flooring, but it won’t be able to climb your stairs and clean an entirely different floor.
We’re lucky enough to live across one floor and that means the RoboVac 11 was perfect for cleaning the entire flat.
The battery life on the RoboVac 11 is meant to last for 90 minutes, and we found that to be mostly accurate. If you’re using the 'maximum' setting – which is best for thicker carpeted areas – we found it would offer closer to an hour and fifteen minutes of continuous cleaning.
You'll likely be satisfied with the battery life on the cleaner, and considering it heads back to its charging dock without you having to do anything when it runs out, the RoboVac 11 needing a recharge isn't a painful process.
A full charge will take around two to three hours, and we found it would usually be able to clean at least three rooms from a single charge.
The battery life isn't as good as some of the major players in the robot vacuum cleaner market, but as long as you don’t own a huge flat you’ll be happy with what this is able to do for you.
There are five cleaning settings on the RoboVac 11 – auto cleaning, spot cleaning, max cleaning, edge cleaning and single-room cleaning. All of these are controlled via the remote control or you can set it up to go at a certain time of day.
Unlike a lot of the competition there’s no mobile app here so you can’t track where your robot vacuum cleaner is or tell it to start when away from the house. The trade-off is that the Eufy is significantly cheaper than its 'smarter' competitors, so it comes down to if you want to spend the money for this feature.
The auto cleaning mode will explore your home normally, but it doesn’t do it with much sense. Instead the cleaner will naturally explore the space and take an elongated route at cleaning up your whole floor.
We found it would always clean the full flat, but it took much longer than it would have for a cleaner like the Neato Botvac Connected that comes with tracking technology and maps out the space in your home.
The RoboVac 11 will explore the space and use its infrared sensors to make sure it doesn’t bump into anything, and if it does it’ll course correct.
This isn’t anywhere near as efficient at the main big names in the robot vacuum cleaners space, but as there's the option to plan the cleaning cycle for when you're out, it shouldn't prove a deal-breaker.
Spot cleaning will make the cleaner stay in one contained area and works to clean up specific mess. Edge cleaning will encourage the cleaner to move around the edges of the room.
This wasn’t as accurate as we hoped for, with the other modes working just as well at cleaning up the edges of the room.
Then there’s the single room cleaning, which puts all of its power into the one room it's in. We found the most useful mode to be max cleaning that comes with a better suction rate but drains the battery life more than the others.
We found the scheduling feature worked well, but it's limited as you can't change the time for different days of the week. Competing vacuums with a mobile app paired allow you to plan a weekly schedule, and even set off the cleaner from anywhere in the world, which unfortunately isn't an option on the budget RoboVac 11.
We liked
The Eufy RoboVac 11 was never going to be a gorgeous looking piece of tech at its price point, but the design is practical and it takes up a small amount of room in the home which means it's perfect for those with smaller abodes.
Cleaning performance won't be as impressive as some of the competition, but it worked well and the variety of clearing settings are useful for anyone looking for a basic experience.
The price is the true highlight of the RoboVac 11. It's much cheaper than a lot of the competition on the market right now and we're very impressed by what this product is able to do considering the price is only $259.99 / £209.99 (about AU$370).
We disliked
The lack of app support with the Eufy is a bit of a shame and it would have been good to be able to monitor the cleaning process from afar when you've scheduled the cleaner in for a session.
Mapping on the Eufy RoboVac would have been an appreciated feature as well. Although the vacuum cleaner will satisfy you with its final results after a clean, it's frustrating watching its roundabout route and spotting how it could be more efficient.
That said, you won't be watching the RoboVac all of the time, so it lacking a mapping feature won't frustrate for you for long.
Final verdict
It doesn't offer the most efficient or powerful cleaning for your home, but the price is less than a fourth of some of the other products we've tested and the RoboVac 11 is one of the first cleaners to make robot vacuums affordable.
If you want to save some money, the Eufy RoboVac 11 will treat you well and it'll be a great choice as the next gadget to clean up your home.
- Want to see some other great cleaners? Here's our best vacuum cleaners
