There’s no doubt in our books that technology is getting cheaper and cheaper. These days, if you’ve got $300, you can get a robotic vacuum cleaner that would have cost thousands just about ten years ago. But just because everyone and their mother is making a cleaning robot doesn’t mean they’re worth the money it takes to buy them. If you’re like us and not making 9 billion dollars a year like Mark Zuckerberg (seriously), you still want reliability and performance for your money.
We’ve been reviewing a lot of the $300 and under robo-vacs lately, and have seen the good, the bad, and a little bit of ugly. Examples of the good include the Roomba 690, 652, and 650, as well as the Shark Robot 750 and 720 and the Deebot N79. Two examples of the not-as-good include the Deebot N78 and the Dibea D960. Today we’re going to look at an upgraded version of the Deebot N79 called the ECOVACS Deebot M80 Pro Robot. If you’d like a ten second summary, it’s basically the N79 with a mop and a bit more battery life. Our full review is below, and you can buy it here.
Pros, Cons, and Key Features of the Ecovacs Deebot M80 Pro Robotic Vacuum
The Deebot M80 Pro is, for all intents and purposes, an upgraded version of the N79 the way the N78 is a downgraded version of it. The M80 Pro’s key features include the ability to program it and set schedules, whether from the included remote or via a Wi-Fi device like a smart phone, tablet, or Alexa-like voice-activated system. It has a 110 minute battery runtime from its Ni-MH battery, a 500 mL dustbin capacity, and, perhaps most significantly, a mopping feature in addition to its ability to vacuum hardwood floors and low-pile carpets and rugs. The M80 Pro is 3.3 inches tall, weighs 9.7 pounds on our scale, and has a 14 inch cleaning radius.
Inside the box, you’ll find the M80 Pro itself, a charging dock that the Pro automatically returns to when low on charge or after finishing a cleaning job, a remote that you can use if you don’t want to connect it to your smart phone, and a range of accessories including 2 wet and dry cleaning cloths for the mop, 4 side brushes, a reservoir, sponge filter, high efficiency filter, measuring cup, instruction manual, and the same crummy one year warranty common to nearly every robot vacuum manufacturer on the market these days. Yes, this is a con with pretty much every robotic vacuum, but we’re going to keep pointing it out in the hope that it’ll someday change.
How do you set up Wi-Fi, Alexa, and smart phone controls for the Deebot M80 Pro?
Setting up Wi-Fi and a smart phone with the M80 Pro is straightforward and highly recommended. While you can control the M80 Pro from the included remote or directly from the vacuum itself, a smart phone with Android or Apple compatibility will give you additional functionality through the downloadable app, including the ability to schedule your cleaning sessions, track how the Pro is progressing through your home, monitor battery life, and receive error alerts. To set it up, download the app with your phone, place the Pro on its base, turn everything on, and follow the instructions. Syncing should occur automatically once you’ve done it the first time. You’ll need to be on 2.4 GHz bands, as the M80 Pro, like most robotic vacuums, isn’t 5 GHz compatible.
What’s the difference between the Deebot M80 Pro and the N79 and N78?
There’s much more of a difference between the M80 Pro and N79 than there is between the Pro and the N78. The main difference between the Pro and the N79 is the mopping feature included in the Pro. If you don’t need it, you can save a bit of money and choose the N79, which will also fit under slightly lower furniture due to its lower profile (3.1 inches vs 3.3 inches). The N79 is also a bit quieter than the Pro. However, the Pro has a significantly larger dust bin (500 mL vs 300 mL) than the N79, which allows you to go a bit longer between emptying it out. The Pro also has a slightly longer battery life (110 minutes vs 100 minutes) than the N79, which again allows you to get a bit more cleaning done in comparison.
Between the Pro and the N78, the Pro is smarter, far more capable with carpeting and rugs, and is Wi-Fi and smart phone compatible. To be honest, we wouldn’t consider the N78 in a world where the N79 exists; it’s really a question of whether or not you want the mopping feature and slightly greater battery life in the Pro. If you do, then get the Pro. If you don’t, get the N79.
How well does the Deebot M80 Pro clean carpets and hardwood floors – and what about the mop function?
In terms of cleaning prowess, the M80 Pro performs as expected for a vacuum of its price range. Its navigational system, while nowhere near as accurate as that on vacuums like the Roomba 980 and 960, is still effective enough to get it around a room (and around your house if you leave your doors open) without bumping into many things, getting stuck repeatedly, or covering the same ground over and over again.
Regarding its cleaning abilities, the Pro was comfortable on low-pile carpets and rugs as well as hardwood floors; it performed much like the N79, on which it’s based, and we suspect they share almost all of the same internal parts. When it came to battery life, we were pleased to note that we could easily get an hour on carpeting and significantly more (about 90-130 minutes) on hardwood, tile, laminate, and concrete flooring, which was also as expected–every robotic vacuum cleaner does better on bare flooring than on carpeting. We weren’t able to use it successfully on medium or high-pile carpeting, which was also expected; save your pennies for an Electro+ or Soft Carpet if you have high piles (or even frieze carpets) that you want to clean effectively.
Finally, we found the mop function to be a nifty add-on, but we wouldn’t recommend buying it specifically for the mop if you were hoping it would replace an actual mop. While it worked to some degree, it felt more like a mop for damping and dusting areas than for performing any deep cleaning. It also turned the M80 Pro into a rather fussy machine, as we needed to keep the reservoir filled and deal with the aforementioned cloths that needed to be connected and disconnected in rather specific ways.
To be honest, we felt that the time necessary to set up and tear down the mop system could have been more effectively used to mop the same room by hand. That said, it does a perfectly fine light-grade job and it saves you from having to get on your hands and knees to scrub up light messes on your bare floors. Keep in mind that you’ll either need to disable the mop mode to keep it from cleaning carpets or put up barriers around your carpets to keep it away from them, because the M80 Pro will happily move its microfiber rag over whatever is in its path when the mop mode is enabled.
Why buy the Deebot M80 Pro?
In conclusion, if you’re going to spend $300 on a robotic vacuum, you can’t expect perfection, but you should expect a machine that can find its way around rooms without too much drama while being capable of cleaning low-pile carpets and hardwood floors reasonably effectively. It’s also nice if it comes with Wi-Fi and can be steered and programmed from your smart phone. The M80 Pro checks all of these boxes and throws in a good amount of battery life and a somewhat useful mop function. Our recommendation would be to buy it unless you explicitly don’t want the mop system and extra battery life, at which point we’d recommend the N79 to save a bit of money and perhaps gain a bit of reliability.
You can buy the Deebot M80 Pro here on Amazon or buy the Deebot N79 here.
Canadians can buy the Deebot M80 Pro here or buy the Deebot N79 here.
If you find our research on PMC helpful, you can follow our efforts to keep maniacally reviewing home cleaning tools by shopping through our links above. We promise to keep fighting the good fight against every horror children, animals, and grown, yet messy humans can inflict upon a clean home.