When you live in a nearly 100 year old house with hardwood floors and 2 dogs that are over-achievers when it comes to shedding, you learn to live with pet hair. Seriously, Steve – our older dog – sheds enough each week to create a 1/3 size replica of himself. There are many automated solutions out there for vacuuming up the excess pet hair, but many of those devices have interesting definitions of how much is “excess”. How well does the Eufy RoboVac 11 stack up against the competition? Let’s find out!
The RoboVac 11
Eufy is about 13 inches across, 4 inches tall and weighs in at around 3 and a half pounds. Pretty average, size-wise. As you can see from the picture below, Eufy has 2 side brushes on the underside that spin as the vacuum moves to help dislodge dirt and debris. The vacuum sits just ever so much higher off the floor than other robo-vacuums, and there is a pretty good reason for this. More on that shortly. Setup is easy – snap on the 2 side brushes, peel off the plastic cover that protects the body in shipping, place the unit on the charger and you are ready to go.
The manual tells you to place the base unit/charger in a place where you can have approximately 3 feet on both the right and left sides, and 6 feet behind – assuming you place the base against a wall. Problem is, our house is 1200 square feet split among 2 humans and dogs, so finding anywhere with that much open space is as statistically close to impossible as you can get. I am happy to say that is merely a guideline – I was able to get this in our dining room with about 2 feet on either side and maybe 3 feet behind, and Eufy seems to like that arrangement just fine. After an initial charge of about 6 hours (unusual to say the least, and no subsequent charge has taken that long), Eufy was ready for action.
A remote control is supplied in order to program Eufy. You’ll need 2-AAA batteries as they are not included in the package. Once the batteries are in, you can set the time. A word of caution here: whenever you use the remote, you should have it pointed at Eufy. The remote does not operate on radio frequencies but rather on infrared, so if the command from remote does not reach Eufy directly, you may end up wondering why things don’t work as expected. My example: I did not aim the remote at Eufy when setting the time, so I can only assume that Eufy’s internal clock started ticking at midnight. That assumption was proven when Eufy started working on its schedule – which was off by as exactly the difference between midnight and the time when I set the remote. Lesson learned.
But does it vacuum?
Like other robotic vacuums, Eufy has a bumper guard on the front and sensors elsewhere to help guide it through what it calls “obstacles” and you call “furniture”. The RoboVac 11 does not come with any sort of electronic fence but it does appear to have a cliff sensor because not once has Eufy ever tried to fall down the basement stairs. There are a few operating modes: spot (moving in ever-widening circles), edge (find the edges of the space and clean along them), single room (good if you don’t have an open floor plan) and manual (you guide with the directional keys on the remote). There are also a couple of automatic modes including a max clean which amps up the suction for carpeting but drains the battery faster. You can also program Eufy to clean at a specific time of day and when the time comes, it will clean using a variety of the modes to cover the most space.
The front of Eufy showing off the bumper:
And the back where the collection drawer and HEPA-filter is located:
This has to be one of the quietest vacuums I have ever seen. I mean, this guy is astonishingly silent and yet effective. Every time I empty the container I am surprised by how much dirt has been collected. And the house shows it – in the couple of weeks Eufy has been on the job, there is a marked reduction in the dog hair hanging around. The house just looks good.
The quirks
And you knew there had to be some, right?
The first one really isn’t a quirk, but more of a wish for different behavior. Eufy does not have an app to control it as some others do. It would definitely add to the price (which is tantalizingly low), but having the option would be nice, especially if it could tell me things via the Internet – like that it is stuck somewhere, the battery is low, it missed a cleaning cycle. Just a bunch of different “smart-home” type data that is becoming common with automated appliances.
On the getting stuck thing: I suppose Eufy does not get stuck any more or less than any other vacuum, but there are a couple of places in my living room where Eufy just doesn’t seem to learn to avoid. One is a cold air return grate of the floor, another is under an ottoman in the living room, and another behind the TV where the dangerous octopus collection of power cords live. Eufy will wander into these traps a couple of times a week, and when Eufy becomes trapped, he beeps a few times and shuts down. The first obstacle is easy, but if Eufy runs while you are gone, you may play an elaborate game of hide and seek when you see he isn’t on the charge base. And the remote does not help.
Another quirk: carpeting. Most of our house is hardwood flooring, but we have an area rug in the living room that Eufy navigates just fine. Weirdly, though, we have a thinner runner rug by the front door, and about half the time Eufy gets on that carpet and then can’t keep going. It must be something to do with the way the wheels interact with the carpet, but often I have to rescue Eufy from the rug.
Finally, getting back to home base can sometimes be a challenge. There does not appear to be any sort of system that would allow Eufy to home in on the charge base, or if there is it is somewhat ineffective. At least once a week I have to pick Eufy up and put him back on life support because he died in the field. One afternoon just for laughs (thanks to the cold medication I was taking) I put Eufy on auto and let him clean a while, then hit the home button. What ensued was a weird dance around the charge base even though he was only about six feet from it when he received the recall order. All told, from the time I told him to go home until he finally parked on the base it took nearly 10 minutes. And he was not vacuuming during that time.
One thing that isn’t a quirk, however, is the dog reaction. The first couple of days Eufy was in the house, the dogs ran up to him and barked, and when he turned they ran away. Steve spit tennis balls at him those first few days, but Eufy took it like a champ and kept on going. Now Eufy is just another thing in the house and the dogs are OK with him as long as he doesn’t run into them while they sleep on the living room carpet.
Maybe the last quirk is that after having him around long enough, you too might anthropomorphize the device and start thinking of it as a “him” with the name “Eufy”.
The verdict
The Eufy RoboVac-11 is a great automated solution. It works as well as any of the other big names but does so at a fraction of the cost. It is very well made and appears that it can stand a very long life running into the sofa legs. The house regularly looks cleaner than it has for some time, and in the end that is the reason you buy something like this. Replacement supplies like the HEPA-filter and side brushes are available on Amazon, so you should have no trouble keeping your Eufy running smoothly for a very long time to come.
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Eufy. For more info visit their site or check Amazon for pricing.
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are better off with. 5 year old Roomba. These off brand robots will normally last a few months longer than their warranty.
That may be. Eufy has been on the job only a few weeks. I guess time will tell. In the meantime I am very happy with the job it is doing and can completely live with the quirks. There is a 12 month warranty on Eufy, so I will check back in next year.
Eufy is a sister brand of Anker created specifically for their home automation solutions. It’s not a shady unknown brand. Anker has been around forever and have always made quality products.
Correction, Anker has not been around ”forever”, but long enough to trust their product, personal opinion though.
I agree about Anker – I’ve had many of their products over the years and they all were well-made, lasted forever (relativistically speaking) and were worth the money I paid for them.
I bought a Eufy after reading the many reviews on various online stores. Looking forward to it when it arrives!
I’ve just bought my Eufy – when you set it to come on how long does it clean for????
Until it is done one way or another. Either it runs out of charge, gets trapped somewhere (and Eufy “screams” for help for a minute or so when that happens) or roughly about 2 hours. It has been my experience in a small-ish house that Eufy almost never makes it back to home base on his own. Granted, we have a lot of traps set for the little bugger (things like large open cold air returns or light carpets on top of hardwood floors), but even when he manages to elude the traps he almost never makes it back to the base, so we have a daily fun exercise of seeing where Eufy died, and generally it is someplace inconvenient like under the middle of the sofa. We put him back on his base to charge and then, much like the movie “Edge of Tomorrow” it is charge and repeat.
A few months on, though, and we still love Eufy. We are going to buy a twin brother for our upstairs once the remodeling work is done.
How about an update after nearly a year? We’ve just had ours for a few days now and am still experimenting but so far, so good. In our situation, returning to the base hasn’t been a problem, but slow and painful to watch at times.
Still loving Eufy, so much so that we bought another about 2 months ago to handle our rooms upstairs. Battery has held out well, we still get about 90 minutes or so of cleaning before he dies.
The only complaint I have, and it is a minor one, is that the sweeper brushes only last a month and a half. It may be because we have mostly hardwood floors and where there is an area rug Eufy has to climb up on it to clean. I think that splays out the sweeper brushes which leads to their being pretty much useless within 5-6 weeks.
Also our dogs have taken up defensive shedding to show their displeasure with Eufy, so the container fills with hair pretty quickly. If we are at home during his run, we stop him after about 30 minutes to empty the container. That way we end up with a cleaner house.
Eufy is still a must-buy in my book.
We do like Eufy except that once we programmed a cleaning time, there is no way to program it back to NO cleaning time. We seem to be forever stuck in a vacuum that decides to clean when it wants to. Tried to remove the batteries for a day . Unplug it as well. Now we just turn the off switch- on Eufy if we want a good nights sleep without jumping out of bed thinking we have a prowler in the house.
I have had to turn off Eufy’s scheduled clean, and it is a pain. The remote is not the problem, Eufy himself is. There is a battery cover near the charging plates on the bottom. You have to remove his battery for about 24 hours and then Eufy forgets everything.
We have had our T2104 for about 2 months and love it. The Scheduled cleaning was factory set for 12:00 and Eufy turned on in the middle of the night. Because Eufy gets stuck in a couple of places (sometimes) we clean in the evenings when we can keep tabs on Eufy. We set “NO cleaning time” by pressing the number 4 (center bottom) button for 3 seconds. The schedule start time will disappear. Now no midnight intruders !
Press and hold the schedule button and the programmed time will disappear.
Hi all, bought Eufy about 10 months ago and have been pretty happy. She seems to get caught up in my dining area [with all the chairs] sort of regularly but otherwise does a fine job of cleaning. We have hardwood floors and she easily goes over the two 10×12 area carpets we have as well. I do notice she is not great with any area that has a lot of turns – like my kitchen with the island in the center. That said, if I use the edging function it seems to work better. My question for the other owners: Does anyone know how to address the fact that Eufy seems to not want to easily go back to base? I hit the home button but she seems confused about getting into the proper direction. This was not an issue when we first got her, just started happening about a month ago.
Thanks in advance!
I’ve never been able to get Eufy to go back to home base, even if he just rolled off it and I hit the home button. It is a fact of our (first world) life that we either come home and find him dead somewhere in the house, or if we are home we hear him either screaming because he is trapped somewhere or he just runs out of steam and stops. It’s always been this way for our Eufy, and I would bet it is because it lacks both the algorithms and memory to retain navigation information. And I don’t think the base has any sort of signal that Eufy could lock on to, which seems like an oversight but understandable at this price point.
Small price to pay, and it reminds me to daily empty his canister so he can clean well the next day (post resurrection).
We’ve had an 11s for about 2 weeks and it’s cleaning about 1200 square feet of hardwood floor. So far, not any issue with it getting back to the base. This being our first robovac, we didn’t want to spend 500+ for one that mapped the house etc. I’m really surprised at how much it picks up and collects in the bin. For the money ($219) it’s a great little worker.
My “Miss Eufy” is working as we speak. I was really skeptical, because we, too, have several dogs. They all pretty much ignore her, though. I also have to go search for her occasionally, but she’s not difficult to find, since we know her hiding spots and hang-ups now. We’ve had her for about 2 weeks and are delighted with her. My only gripe, if you can call it that, is that her dust/dirt bin gets so full so quickly. I turn her on every day now, and after an hour or so I have to empty her tummy. But she’s an incredible addition to our home and the dirt is our fault. SO glad we took a chance. I’ve been telling all my friends about her and suggesting they take her to their home for a week or so to see what a pleasurable addition to the family she would be. I was also wondering how long she lasts on on recharge, but see that others have answered my question 1 – 1 1/2 hours. One of my friends has an older Roombha, and she says it lasts only about 1/2 hour. And yes, eventually Miss Eufy returns to her home base for lunch. She does take the long way back, but she eventually finds her way.
Is there ANY way to disable the speaker on this thing? The beeps sound way too much like the severe weather warnings we get and my dogs are terrified of that sound.
Hi all, just got my Eufy today and I’m pleased on how well it picked up the dog/cats hair and our fine desert dust. Just did the ‘single room cleaning’ cycle and we are impressed. I then did a one trip around in the ‘edge cycle’.
One question, after the 30 min. run in the single room, the eufy just shut down, I thought it would return to base. It did return when I used the remote though.
Yeah, that happened all the time. Now that I think about it, Eufy almost never went back to the dock. Every day we had to find which “hill” he chose to die on and then manually take him back. When something becomes a habit, you forget that it happens.
The new, upgraded Eufy we have does not have this issue. Plus it has the magnetic boundary tape, so I guess we went from semi-spoiled to mostly spoiled. If it had an app to control it, we’d be full-on in the dark side. 🙂
We have a German Shepherd who sheds so much that it is quite unbelievable. I love the Eufy because I don’t have the time to vacuum enough to deal with her shedding. Her hair is everywhere!
We bought a second Eufy to help and while I find that neither of them run for as long as these posts say (90 min.) one of them runs out much sooner than the other. Any ideas why? Thanks!
Could be a defective battery. I’d contact Eufy if the vacuum is still under warranty. Our first Eufy ran for about 90 minutes up until he met with a tragic demise. Eufy the Second runs for almost 2 hours. So your mileage does vary, but the question is by how much. If it is significantly less than 90 minutes, maybe get a warranty replacement.
Could also be how much and how thick carpeting in your house is. If Eufy has to drive over thick pile carpet it may be taking more out of him and hence the shorter run time.
check out this video, which explains how to fix the stuck brush error: https://youtu.be/JJ-AOQTIxjE