I’ve been testing a lot of multimodal cleaning bots lately. They’re very expensive and very imposing. They also tend to be very fast and accurate, with long battery life, great software, and huge docking stations, complete with clean and dirty water tanks to wash the mops.
I love mopping robots more than I believed possible. If you’re a parent with small children and pets, you need one. On a recent Thursday, I mopped my kitchen three times in as many hours: Once while everyone was out of the house, again after I unwisely declared that tonight was Breakfast for Dinner and my 6-year-old spilled syrup all over the kitchen floor, and again after my husband made us celebratory cocktails post–Breakfast for Dinner and spilled Campari all over the floor. (It’s hereditary, apparently.) If you don’t want mopping to rule your life, a robot is life-saving.
This one, however, has two Achilles’ heels: The giant docking station has no self-emptying bin, and you can’t use it on medium- or high-pile carpeting. If you have carpet that’s not just short, heavy, dense, office-building material, the robot just can’t lift the mop high enough to get over it properly. If your floor isn’t mostly hard, I would recommend a different bot, like the Shark AI Ultra (8/10, WIRED Recommends) or TP-Link Tapo RV 10 Plus, where you switch the mopping base on and off.
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Photograph: Eufy
The X9 Pro (I named it Bun Bun in the app) has a docking station that’s about 17 inches high and 16 inches wide. Bun Bun is 4.5 inches high, which isn’t slim, but it’s short enough to fit under our couches. The docking station doesn’t have a self-emptying bin, but it does have two enormous water tanks inside, one for clean water, and one for dirty.
I have to warn you: You will forget that you have a dirty water tank in there. You need to take it out and rinse it and let it dry every other day or so. Otherwise, it will smell. The smell will be awful.
OK, carrying on. I ran quick mapping in the app, and Bun Bun used a combination of laser navigation and an AI camera to create a map of my house, with obstacle avoidance, within a few minutes. Like the Deebot X1 Omni, it meets the TÜV Rheinland privacy and security certification; TÜV certifies devices to meet the specifications of ETSI TS 303 645, which is a prominent internet-of-things security standard.
I’m less concerned about the X9 Pro than I was about the Deebot, because the X9 doesn’t have an upward-facing camera. Eufy also assures customers that the images aren’t saved or uploaded anywhere, but the company’s track record is a bit spotty, and Eufy doesn’t offer basic protections like two-factor authentication—just another thing to consider when purchasing cameras that live in your house.