Ecovacs recently introduced their flagship robotic vacuum, the Deebot R95, which comes in at a rather competitive price at $599, and has a ton of features to boot.
The Ecovacs Deebot R95 comes with a charging dock, a reservoir measuring cup, brush and brushless cleaning trays, replaceable filters, two side brushes and extra side brushes, mopping pads for alternating cleanings, and a cleaning tool for getting rid of hair from the rollers.
Deebot R95 Design
With a round 14″-diameter shape, the Deebot R95 weighs in at around 7 1/2 lbs. On top includes a square button for engaging the vacuum’s automatic clean cycle. Below that are status indicator lights for charging, spot mode, scheduled cleaning and WiFi connectivity. Towards the back you’ll find the laser distance sensor. Along the front is a series of anti-collision sensors.
The middle of the Deebot R95 houses the lift-up cover for the dustbin, and the dustbin itself features a plastic flap along the front to keep debris inside when the bin is removed. The filter setup is pretty creative. It has both a replaceable filter at the back, as well as a permanent washable pre-filter.
Underneath the unit, you’ll find the front dual brushes, which grab particles and move them in towards the suction motor in the center. A motorized, 360-degree rotating wheel sits in-between these brushes, and gives the Deebot R95 a tight turning radius. Four anti-drop sensors are scattered between the front wheel and the brushes, keeping the Deebot R95 from falling off stairs or ledges. Two charging contacts straddle the front wheel, and just below is the suction motor and rotors. These rotors are made of traditional vacuum bristles, and are easily removable.
One of the unique design elements of the Deebot R95 is that the entire suction piece and brush can be removed and replaced with a fully brushless design. This design is for with a lot of pet hair that would otherwise get tangled in the bristles. Towards the back of the unit are two mounting wholes for the wet/dry reservoir, which turns the Deebot R95 into a wet/dry sweeper as well as a vacuum. This reservoir holds 100ml, which will cover a few hundred square feet of light wet mopping. The pad is removable, washable and reusable, and can also be used as a dry pad for grabbing any fine dust particles the vacuum’s suction motor misses.
In Use
The Deebot R95 surveys each room using a laser distance sensor versus a camera lens like most other robotic vacuums. This laser immediately maps out walls and obstacles throughout the room. During our testing, we found the Deebot R95’s laser distance measuring system to be spot-on accurate, and it runs very smoothly, keeping a healthy distance from walls and anything else in the way. The Deebot R95 also seems to rely on its dual brushes out front to grab debris.
Another point about the navigation process of the R95 is the fact that it doesn’t work in straight lines, but rather, it moves in a more systematic and comprehensive way around rooms until everything is cleaned and no spaces, corners or crevices are missed. Of course you’ll need to remove any small particles and cords that you won’t want sucked up, considering the fact that while the Deebot R95 is smart, it’s not smart enough to distinguish a piece of debris from your son’s tiny action figure.
Additionally, because the R95 has such a low running profile, it may get hung up in doorway thresholds and other transitional room strips, but it can usually make its way over these after a few tries. The R95 is relentless at finding all unclean spots, it’s intelligent enough to work out various navigational solutions, and the map data of your rooms is stored in the vacuum, which you can access with the Ecovac app.
Performance
The Deebot R95 works very well on both carpet, including thick shag carpets, as well as hard floors, including tile and wood. Having two brushes is much more efficient than the single brush that most robot vacuums have. It just cleans more. These brushes are also nice and long, a great feature for pulling particles out of corners.
The vacuum also runs with hardly any noise. It’s whisper-quiet, which helps when it runs during the daytime and people are roaming the house. About the only time the vacuum isn’t quiet is when giving audible feedback, such as reporting that the wheels are stuck or the rollers are jammed. This is a great diagnostic feature.
Another great design element with the R95 is its ability to change out the roller brush underneath for a brushless suction instead. While this won’t help pull up particles from carpet like a roller would, the brushless design helps keep hair and strings from getting stuck inside the rollers themselves, which in turn will allow the Deebot to pick up more loose hair. This brushless suction option is designed for everyday light cleaning, and the roller can be inserted for a deeper clean.
So we talked about carpet cleaning and hard floor cleaning. Let’s talk about mopping, a feature you never see in robotic vacuums. The Mopping accessory, included with the Deebot R95, works as both a dry and a wet mop. This mop fits into two holes on the bottom of the Deebot, covering the back half of the bottom of the vacuum, keeping the mop functionality behind the robot, allowing it to both sweep and vacuum first, and then mop last.
As mentioned, the mopping reservoir holds 100ml of water, and slowly extracts this water into the attachable cloth via three small holes in the container. The cloth mopping pads included with the R95 feature two types of washable surfaces, coarse and not so coarse, for various cleaning applications. It’s a nice solution for gentle mopping.
Battery-wise, the Deebot R95 gives you about 90 minutes of run-time per charge using its 2850mAh battery, which equates to about 4,000 square feet of cleaning. When the R95 is low on battery, it will return to its charger automatically. It takes around 4-hours to recharge the unit fully.
The App
The Ecovac app is available for both iOS and Android, and works with all of Ecovacs connected products. Setup and wi-fi pairing are a breeze, thanks to the setup wizard. When you open up the app, you’ll see a list of all Ecovacs devices connected with your account. You can also pair the R95 to Alexa via the Alexa app, which enables voice commands for cleaning, pausing and returning the unit to the charger, among many other optional commands.
The interface shows you a map, the battery level and the R95’s operational status. The menu button on the top right brings up the settings menu, where you can enable or disable the voice diagnostic feature on the vacuum. There’s also a work log, which details the last few completed cleanings, and a Continued Cleaning Function, which will keep the vacuum from normally operating during certain hours of the day. You can also setup an automatic cleaning schedule.
On the main screen, you’ll see two bottom buttons, the Auto 
Cleaning and Return to Charger. Additional features can be found by expanding the map via the button located on the top right corner of the map. The phone will rotate into landscape mode, showing a 100% map view of your entire home. This map is created and saved after every cleaning, and it shows areas cleaned in white, and those areas that still need cleaning in gray.
With this map section, you can manually control the vacuum via a virtual joystick to clean difficult to reach areas, as well as tell the vacuum to automatically clean specific areas of the house. Spot cleaning is done by selecting an area in the home to target, in which the vacuum will clean a 25 square foot section, and then return to the charger.
During the mapping process, the Deebot R95 will mark rooms with different color coded sections denoted by letters. From here, you can have it clean a specific room or section of the room, and you can also edit the names of rooms as well.
Finally, there’s the “virtual walls” feature, which is only able to be assigned via the app. Selections can be made using the mapping feature, and drawing a box around an area that needs to be avoided for example, or drawing a straight line where the R95 can’t cross. Pretty nifty.
Bottom Line
The Ecovacs Deebot R95 is a very sophisticated piece of machinery, and dare we say, probably the most feature-rich and dynamic robotic vacuum we’ve reviewed. It’s also quiet, gentle, and the advanced mapping algorithms is pretty incredible.
Additionally, the dual brushes up front do a fabulous job of capturing small particles and pushing them into the suction motor, and there’s even a brushless suction piece that can be used for pet owners. The included wet/dry mopping attachment is nice for light jobs, battery life is stellar, and the price is the deal breaker here, much less expensive than competing robotic vacuums with less features. For more information on the Ecovacs Deebot R95 Robotic Vacuum, visit here.
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