I'm developing a love-hate relationship with the M80. I so love Ross' review that I'll quote from it here: "If left unattended, he will get lost and not find his way home and/or will get stuck on the most random objects that I didn't know were possible to get stuck on. Ironically, this morning, Ol Robo-vac was stuck on the bristles of the broom that he somehow knocked down from a corner of the living room and tried to fight. "Even weirder, we have named our robo-vac "Drunky McDrunkBot" because he always decides to go out on a bender every single night and ends up passed out drunk in a random spot of the house. Drunky McDrunkBot has not been programmed for cleaning schedules in the middle of the night and has even had all scheduled tasks deleted." The videos showing you how to use the Deebot depict it roaming around a house devoid of any objects on the floor and certainly no clutter. The polite statement about our house is it is NOT uncluttered and doesn't look like the videos. We have a lot of little pockets of places surrounded by things: Books. Bags of this and that. Cords, LOTS of cords, for all of our electronic objects. Much as with Ross' broom, the M80 will find and ensnare itself on the most unlikely objects. I could go on, but the point is I renamed Drunky McDrunkBot to Snaggle McTangleBot. We had an old phone cord in the master bedroom that I identified as a possible object of M80's affection. No problem: I lifted it up and out of the way. OMG, the Deebot not only found the cord but dragged it across the room, snagged itself, and shut down. Okay, okay, so move the cord FURTHER out of the way. Deebot found it AGAIN, carried it across the room, and shut down. Moved it even more out of the way, same outcome. (I know, since we now we only use cordless phones, I later removed the cord and put it away.) There's a lot to like about the M80. It's quiet. It picks up AMAZING amounts of dirt and dust. Its random movements around the room are entertaining in their awkwardness, but mostly it eventually gets the room clean. I found it useful to turn it on, leave the room, and come back 15-20 minutes later to disentangle it from its latest illicit love affair. At least when it snares something, it stops and waits quietly to be restarted, so you can just let it sit there until you get around to freeing and restarting it. I tried it in a bathroom that contains a bathmat/throw rug. It didn't climb over the rug but turned over the edge, climbed over the edge, got tangled, and stopped. I know: I removed the rug, shook it out, and ran the M80 without the offending object. But still. You need a physical barrier to limit where it cleans. It can trap itself in narrow areas and have no way to escape. It has no knowledge or memory for where it is or how the room is laid out; that feature costs a lot more money, like the M88 at $400. But even the $550 R95 gets tangled on cords. It needs a direct line of sight to the charger to find it and recharge itself, an impossibility in our house. I tried the wet mop option with mixed results. Tough test: let's just say our kitchen floor was overdue for a mopping. It didn't get it clean but did pick up a decent amount of stuff, making it easier for the real mop an hour later. But the tank holds only 80 mL of water (2-2/3 fluid ounces), and it ran dry in less than half an hour. The only way to tell when it runs out of water is to stop it and turn it over. I emailed Ecovacs and asked if you could add a little Windex to the water, and they said no, just water. Not clear why, since the only place the water goes is on the mopping pad. After each use you have to wash and dry the mopping pad that comes with the M80. It's a different shape but the same size as the Swiffer WetJet pads, so maybe Ecovacs should reengineer their robots to use those pads, which are cheap and DISPOSABLE. In short, the mopping option is meh at best: it doesn't clean that much, it doesn't hold much water, and you have to manually wash out the pad after every use. I tried the free Ecovacs app on my iPhone. Pretty useless. True, if you have a simple Wi-Fi layout in your home it should work okay. But we're spread out enough so that I need a W-Fi repeater in the back bedroom, with a different ID and password. So if I take the iPhone to the back, the app loses its connection with the host Wi-Fi and requires you to register everything all over again. Move back to the front and it's lost any knowledge of the original router. Registration requires pushing buttons on the app, the M80, and the enclosed remote. By the way, you need the instructions that show you how to use the remote, because the icons on the remote are inscrutable. So I like that it's quiet (except for occasional banging noises when it hits an object), picks up a lot of dirt, and you can start it up and come back later. And its random movement patterns and creativity in entangling itself in the most amazing ways are endlessly entertaining. It does NOT do deep mopping or vacuuming, so occasionally you need to use a real vacuum cleaner to remove the deep grit that can damage your rug. But it's great for touch-ups and frequent light maintenance. Overall a keeper despite its many limitations. UPDATE 9/3/2017: The M80 is growing on me! We've had this now for about two weeks. I've been in email correspondence with the mothership in China. They clarified a couple of things but mostly reiterated what I already knew. To reiterate: you do need to deep vacuum every month or so to get out imbedded grit. But I've found the Deebot does a TERRIFIC job of picking up surface dust and dirt, and the modest-sized dirt container collects an amazing amount of stuff. And I no longer find crumbs sticking to my feet when I walk around barefoot. It's easy to use once you Deebot--proof the area you're cleaning, like baby-proofing your home when a small child is coming over. It still gets stuck and shuts down every half hour or so. Not a problem: I turn it on and check on it occasionally. It does find weird things to suck into its maw, but I imagine this will happen less often as it repeatedly goes over the same area. I'm still trying to decide if the damp mopping function is worthwhile. Deebot insists you cannot add any ammonia or other cleaning fluid to the water without clogging up the tank, and the tank's tiny capacity limits how big an area it can mop. Having to manually clean the mopping pad is a drag. In retrospect I'd probably have bought the less expensive M79, identical except for the damp mopping. But for me the pros clearly outweigh the cons: quiet, efficient, picks up a lot of stuff. And you can just set it and forget it so long as you check on it periodically.
