Ecovacs Deebot 900 Smart Robotic Vacuum for Carpet, Bare Floors, Pet Hair, with Mapping Technology, Higher Suction Power, Wifi Connected and Compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant

****Updated 11/25/2018***I am upgrading my review to 5 stars after about five months of using the Deebot 900 on all hardwood (okay, laminate) floors with a few low-pile rugs. Through firmware and updates, ECOVACS has improved Deebot's navigation, map retention (i.e. not randomly dumping the map), and map restoration process.. For several months now, the only time I generally need to restore the map is after using Deebot on a different floor.I was hesitant to give Deebot 5 stars (4.5 was my instinct) but after thinking about it, I concluded that Deebot achieved what I look for in a smart home gadget: the time spent enjoying its vastly outweighs the time spent troubleshooting and maintaining it. (Keep in mind, though, that robot vacs require more attention than your typical smart home gadget since you have to empty the bin, clean/replace brushes, etc.)In addition to restoring the map now being a simple, reliable process, navigation has definitely improved, particularly the vacuum's ability to re-orient itself after getting disoriented. For example, I am convinced that my cats drag out their mice on a string which I put away prior to vacuuming for the explicit purpose of sabotaging the Deebot. The ever thorough, methodical Deebot inevitably runs over the mouse and gets the string wrapped around the main brush, stopping the vacuum. Originally, this usually meant having to take the Deebot back to its charger to restore the map and start its vacuuming job all over again. However, I've noticed now that I can pick up the Deebot, fix the malfunction, put it down in roughly the same spot and orientation where I found it, and then press the Auto button to have it resume cleaning. It will realize it is lost and start re-orienting itself (I think it gives an announcement to this effect) by driving around in circles, etc. It usually is able to successfully re-orient itself and pick up vacuuming where it left off.Scheduling. I would like to see some more powerful scheduling in the ECOVACS app or better yet, integration with IFTTT, Stringify, Smartthings, etc. I would like the ability to schedule different areas at different times. For example, I would like to schedule the laundry room where it lives twice a day to pickup the cat litter that our cats track out of their litterbox, the kitchen nightly, and the whole house several times per week. It would also be nice to use triggers to start the vacuum (e.g. my smart hub goes into away mode, etc.). These aren't deal-breakers but it would really polish the user experience for me.Also, cats. One of my cats loves to attack the Deebot: his preferred tactic is a frontal ambush where he lays in front of Deebot and chews on the side brushes. Well, he has figured out how to start the Deebot when it's on the charger, I think by bumping the sensor on the front of the Deebot which causes it to back off the charger and start driving around, looking for the charger again while the cat continues to attack it. I don't fault ECOVACS for my hostile cat's actions but it would be nice if whatever sensor(s) the cat is hitting were disabled while the the Deebot is on the charger.***Updated 07/15/18***Significant update on the multi-floor vacuuming front. As I mentioned in my original review, our Deebot 900 lives on the first of our house and I was frustrated by the Deebot forgetting the map of the first floor whenever I carried it upstairs to vacuum. Well, I figured out that it is possible to use the Deebot 900 in another unmapped area (e.g. another floor) and then have it restore the map afterward.1. Carry the vacuum to the new area and hit auto. Don't move the charger, obviously.2. The vacuum will forget the stored map and then proceed to map and clean the new area. Once the vacuum finishes cleaning, it will park itself wherever you started it.3. Lift the cover and turn the power switch off.4. Return it to the charger. Once it is seated on the charger properly, the vacuum will say "restoring map" and tell you to turn the power on.5. Turn on the power switch. You'll then see the original map restored on the app.I'm not totally sure if it's necessary to turn off the power switch but I didn't have very good luck before with just leaving the power on and carrying the Deebot back to its charger. This will also be the drill I use whenever I have to save the Deebot from a snag, stoppage, navigation issue, etc.Deebot should really add this to their FAQs on their website because I know this is an issue for many people.***Original Review***I'll front-load this review with how the Deebot 900/901 handles multi-level homes because I couldn't find much info about this topic before purchasing my Deebot.Our Deebot lives on the first floor of our two-story home so it has the first floor mapped out. If I take it upstairs (i.e. a new, unmapped area), drop it on the floor, and press "auto", it will wipe out the existing map of the first floor, map and systematically vacuum the second floor, and then return to the spot where it started when done (since the dock is still downstairs). So on the positive side, you can drop this thing anywhere and will automatically map and systematically clean the area until it's done. However, it forgets the all-important map which many of the bells and whistles of the Deebot 900/901 are based upon. I love that I can summon my Deebot to clean specific areas in the house. However, if I take the Deebot upstairs to vacuum, the map gets wiped and I can't use these features until I let it map the first floor again. This is definitely worth knowing if you intend to use it in a multi-level house.As for the rest of my review...Pros:- Cleaning: Most importantly, this thing cleans well. Our house is all laminate or tile flooring with a few low-pile area rugs. We do not have any carpet. We also have two short-haired cats. We love that this thing keeps our floors clean to the touch of our bare feet. We also love that it can constantly police the area around our cats' litter boxes where they track litter onto the floor.- Navigation: I will distinguish "navigation" from "mapping". Navigation, which I define as the ability of the Deebot to systematically clean your house without getting lost, is pretty good. I will discuss mapping in the "Cons" section. If your floorplan is large enough that you can't expect one of the cheaper robot vacs to cover it all in one cleaning with it's random cleaning pattern, navigation is essential. This thing reliably maps out where it needs to clean and then systematically vacuums the area until it's done. If a recharge is required, it will top itself off and then pick up where it left off. The Deebot has been pretty good about not getting lost. I've had a few occasions where it got disoriented when I summoned it from the dock to spot clean on the other side of the house and I had to carry it back to its dock. However, once it remapped the house again (because it forgot the map), it hasn't gotten lost. For a multi-room home, I would never consider buying a robot vac that lacks navigation. I think the "random" robot vacuums should be reserved for simpler floor-plans.- Noise: Quieter than I expected.- Value: With an Amazon coupon, I got this thing for around $325 but even at MSRP, the Deebot 900/901 seems to be loaded with features usually found on much more expensive robot vacuums.Cons:- Setup: Unboxing the Deebot and getting it physically setup was easy. However, connecting it to my WiFi was clunky even though my router and its setup complied with the Deebot's requirements (e.g. 2.4 GHz et al). After messing with changing my router's 2.4 GHz channel from auto to specifically 802.11g or 802.11b, it finally connected after a 20-minute delay. Once I finally got it connected to my WiFi, I switched my router back to auto and it hasn't had any further connection issues.- Mapping: The Deebot's mapping is noteworthy because it doesn't simply give you a map to demonstrate where it has cleaned; it also retains that map and allows you to use it to control the Deebot by specifying where or where not to clean. It's great when it works but unfortunately it's easy for this thing to dump the map. If that happens, you'll lose the ability to direct it to a certain area, setup geofences, etc. until you let it map the entire area again. In addition to dumping the map after taking it to a different floor (discussed at the beginning of this review), I've also had it forget the map after it encountered a problem I had to save it from, e.g. vacuuming up a cat toy, getting snagged on a cord, etc. Sometimes I've been lucky and it retained the map after being rescued; other times, not so much. Deebot needs to work on this. In my opinion, the Deebot should ask before dumping an established map that includes it's docking station. Also, I should know that should the Deebot encounter a navigation issue, I can always resort to carrying it back the docking station (which hasn't moved) knowing that it will recognize it is home again and reload the existing map.- Making Your First Map: Deebot has an article on their website titled "Making your first map with DEEBOT 900 / 901" which says it will take 5 to 20 minutes to map my home. Yeah, right. The app and the Deebot's firmware is up-to-date and I haven't seen this behavior that suggests the Deebot will breeze through your house first to establish a map. No, mine does a detailed cleaning to establish the map. Therefore, if it loses the map, it's a half-day process to restore it because my Deebot requires 120+ minutes of vacuuming with a recharge in between.- Scheduling: It's too simplistic. It's easy to tell it to clean your whole house on certain days at certain times which is helpful. However, you can't do more detailed scheduling. For example, I would like to have my Deebot clean the area around my cats' litter boxes twice a day and then have it clean the whole house several times per week. It won't support that sort of detailed schedule.- No IFTTT or Stringify support. This would open up a lot of scheduling and automation options.- Small dustbin.- No dust bin full sensor.- The "eye" on the top of the Deebot provides an opportunity to snag on things. The Deebot can hook a cord, etc., between the top of the "eye" and the top of the Deebot. It's mainly just something to keep in mind when you're prepping your house to run the Deebot but I think this snag hazard could have been avoided in the first place.Despite my ample criticism above, I am still very happy with my purchase. While the Deebot 900/901 has various bugs and annoyances with its bells and whistles, it does a good job at its core function: reliably cleaning my house in a systematic and thorough manner. The more advanced, networked, app-based features are great when they work but like most smart home devices, they can be buggy. My general outlook on the current state of smart home devices is that genuinely polished, worry-free user experiences are rare. If you want to enjoy the conveniences of smart devices, you have to have the patience to deal with bugs and other shortfalls as the technology progresses. The Deebot 900/901 is no exception.

edited to add: I've attempted to map at least 20 times now. Ecovacs keeps emailing me generic, auto-sent "hope you are happy with your robot and please contact us for support" type emails but I've emailed them at multiple addresses and they're not responding to me.I want this to work. I think I might have a defective unit. It will NOT save the map, not even once. A few times it has completely cleaned the entire house that it has access to (bedroom doors shut, and a recharge, so HOURS invested into each attempt). As soon as it looks like its all done, it says "locating" and erases the map... I did a screenshot and added it to this review, of the app JUST as it was starting to erase the map.. then the map is gone, and it just starts randomly cleaning and remapping again, doesn't even try to go back to the charger. It went through the update, and its still doing the same thing.I wish the company would actually communicate with me in my emails. I want this to work. Now i see that its on sale and it makes me even more frustrated that i paid more for it and its not even working right. Unfortunately I will have to return and if the company's customer service was better than I would exchange for a new one to see if the issue persists.LESS THAN ONE STAR.this is not a wifi issue, the floorplan is large, but we have wifi repeaters that give us excellent network coverage.original post:I’m struggling with this. I want to love it. I have spent hours, and countless tries attempting to get it to complete mapping my house and save the map. I have a large home all on one story, and even with closing off the bedrooms it has to stop and recharge and then continue mapping. I put up all my chairs and anything that it could possibly get stuck on, and it will get 95% of the way done and then get caught on the edge of the rug to hardwood transition and then flip a room at a 45* angle from the rest of the house. Then it gets all confused and can’t find the way back to the charger, and it erases the map progress. Each attempt takes like 4 hours, because of the recharge in the middle, and it’s so frustrating when really I just want to be able to Set it up to clean the most frequently used rooms. Yet over and over it’s having to relearn the entire part of the house that is open floor plan, only for it to then something happens and it doesn’t save the map. They need to make a mapping-only setting, so that it’s not wasting so much battery and time cleaning and mapping the entire house. I emailed them, they said they know about this issue and are working on a solution. But I will have to return this if I can’t get the house map. It’s frustrating and I don’t need my entire house vacuumed every day. I just want this for my kitchen but there are no doors to keep it in there.