Sophisticated robot floor cleaner best used on regular basis

Ecovacs’ newest entrant, The Deebot Ozmo 950, has dual pretensions of vacuuming your carpet as well as mopping your lino and floor boards.

Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo 950 robot vacuum cleaner

Robot vacuum cleaners seemed a gimmick when they first came to market. They gyrated around rooms, knocking into furniture and getting tangled up with power cords. Lacking sophisticated guidance systems, they would rebound off walls at random angles.

In 2019, robot vacuum cleaners are more sophisticated.

I have been trying Ecovacs’ newest entrant, The Deebot Ozmo 950, which is its second cleaner with dual pretensions of vacuuming your carpet as well as mopping your lino and floor boards.

The first time you use it, Ozmo 950 uses a laser to create a map of your home or apartment, which you can access from the Ecovacs app for iOS and Android. The little robot does get tangled in power cords and can get stuck between furniture legs on this first run, so I used brooms and mops as physical boundaries to prevent it coming to grief.

After this first mapping run, you can go into the app and draw virtual boundaries around areas you want it to avoid. Once the Ozmo 950 knew these boundaries, I could put those brooms and mops away.

Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo 950 robot vacuum cleaner.

This cleaner can store two floors of maps, which makes it suitable for two-storey homes. You have to carry the Deebot between floors and take the charger with you. I had my review Deebot map my deck separately to the rest of our apartment. That way, the apartment map is not overwritten when I take it to the deck.

There’s a much-needed improvement in map retention. Previous Deebots would erase their map if you picked the unit up and shifted it; this Deebot restores the map after being manually moved, so you can avoid remapping.

The suction on this model also is improved. There are now three levels. The trade-off is battery life, which Ecovacs says is normally up to three hours, covering up to 200sq m on one charge. I used the maximum level of suction in our apartment and had plenty of battery to spare.

The Ozmo 950 will return to the charger and recharge if the battery level gets low, but you will need patience with a recharge time of up to five hours. The battery is 5200 milliampere hours.

The good news is that I don’t need a regular vacuum. This model picked up a mountain of stuff from my carpet the first time I used it — a fortnight after my last use of a regular vacuum. On the second run it picked up less, and by the fourth run, a relatively small amount.

Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo 950 robot vacuum cleaner.

The key to making this vacuum a success is to use it regularly. You may not need your old vacuum if you schedule the Deebot to run two or three times a week. The app lets you start a session even when you’re away from home.

The vacuum’s dust bin has a handle and comes out easily. You can empty it without fluff and dirt touching your hands. It isn’t large, so you might have to empty it mid-run the first couple of cleans. I didn’t need to after that. The rollers do attract hair, so Ecovacs includes a cutter for getting rid of it. The box includes an attachment for direct suction without the rollers if that works for you.

While the Ozmo 950 is a great robot vacuum cleaner, its mopping capability is at P-plate stage. After all, there’s a limit to the force and elbow grease that a lightweight vacuum can exert.

You use the app to define areas where you need to mop, and when the Ozmo arrives there, you add water to a 240ml container beneath the device and clip on a supplied mopping cloth. The Ozmo then mops the designated areas.

I found that robot mopping only gets rid of relatively easy-to-dislodge grime, but you do get much better results if you program it to mop a couple more times with maximum water use selected.

Overall, I was extremely impressed with the Deebot Ozmo 950’s capability as a vacuum with much improved suction, but remain uncertain about whether it should attempt mopping. Price: $999 RRP.