360 S9 vacuum hands-on: A powerful two-in-one robot, but the app has flaws Review

The 360 S9 is a trendy seeking robot vacuum with a entire host of added characteristics. More and more two-in-one sweeping and mopping robot vacuums are showing up in the market and it is usually difficult for distributors to find that differentiating feature. The 360 has some awesome structure extras.

Like several best-close robot vacuums, the 360 S9 makes use of LIDAR to give a 360-diploma perspective of the space so that it can mop or sweep most proficiently. The robot will save up to ten-ground programs, so if you have various flooring in the dwelling, it will use its saved map to clean up in the most effective way.

The robot will sweep, mop, or do each at the same time for up to three several hours. You can specify no-go regions or no-mop regions, and you can configure specific regions to be cleaned at distinctive instances. For case in point, you could clean up one space in the early morning, and a further space a number of several hours later on.

You can put boundaries in the app wherever the robot will not go — even although it can see them by means of the LIDAR sweep.

The S9 is the first robot I have viewed that has its h2o reservoir inside of the housing — not underneath. Lift the lid, and each the 420ml dust bin and 200ml h2o flow tank are next to every other underneath the raise-up lid.

You do not have to have to swap containers close to or fit added containers to the device. It is really an effective way to dwelling each containers. Of course, this signifies that you do have to have to empty the dust bin more usually — specifically if you have animals and carpeted regions wherever pet hairs gather.

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If you want to use the sweeping and mopping operate alongside one another, you do have to have to clip the mopping bracket on to the bottom of the S9. To get the ideal effects, pre-damp the mopping cloth before clipping to the device to get an even mopping stripe when the robot is in motion.

This is a mopping feature for flippantly soiled flooring that have to have a superficial clean up — not a scrub. If your flooring are greatly soiled, you might have to have to scrub them first before using the robot’s mopping operation.

The charging dock is a further awesome innovation. Most robots I try out have ‘L’ shaped docking stations, with a base-plate that contains the terminals that sit on the ground.

The 360 robot docking station has the again device only, which sits snugly from the wall. There are two metallic bumpers (electrode strips) on the entrance wall of the device. The 360 robot also has bumpers on the entrance of the robot which, as soon as linked, start charging. This is trendy and performs effectively.

One more innovation is the underneath-system roller. If it runs above a ability cable or other trailing direct, the rollers will reverse to dis-entangle alone. Makers of similarly priced robot vacuums, this kind of as the Ecovacs Deebot OZMO and Roborock S6 MaxV really should take observe. This innovation is specifically useful if you have a large amount of tech cables close to.

Now on to the app. The 360 S9 is the 20th robot vacuum I have reviewed for ZDNet, and most of these vacuums occur with apps. Some apps — like the Cybovac E31 — join immediately and conveniently.

Hands on with the 360 S9 robot vacuum a powerful two-in-one robot - but the app has flaws zdnet

Eileen Brown

It took me two several hours and three distinctive mobile phone styles before I could productively join to the 360 app. As most of the other robot vacuums have linked productively, and I have two other vacuums on demo at the minute, I  know that the problem is not with my router — or my cellular mobile phone.

When I first registered the app with my .co.british isles email deal with, the link unsuccessful, citing network link faults. As I have had this problem in the earlier with a distinctive vacuum, I uninstalled the app, mounted yet again, and registered with my outlook.com email deal with to get a successful link.

Then, each and every time I started off the app and started off the S9 on its path, my mobile phone stopped connecting to my just lately mounted Wi-Fi mesh procedure. On top of that, the mesh procedure position indicated that it was disabled — even although it was readily available on my other mobile phone. The only way I could proceed to use my mobile phone for knowledge was by turning the Wi-Fi off and on to get ‘proper’ connectivity.

Hands on with the 360 S9 robot vacuum a powerful two-in-one robot - but the app has flaws zdnet

Eileen Brown

It looks like the first Wi-Fi link to the robot had priority above access to any other Wi-Fi points I linked to, and hogged the link any time it could.

Luckily, as soon as I had configured the no-go and no-mop zones and screen-grabbed the cleansing path for this article, I did not have to have to join to the app yet again — and my Wi-Fi link to my cellular unit worked just fine.

I am bothered about the Wi-Fi hogging by the app. With any luck ,, 360 app updates will deal with this problem.

Aside from my app troubles, I genuinely appreciated the 360 S9.

The sweeping and mopping are great, the robot is not fazed by higher space thresholds, and it under no circumstances obtained stuck — compared with some other robots I have reviewed.

The app — as soon as linked — has several characteristics and is quick to use.

All-in-all, for $600 (with a $140-off coupon which is great by means of Aug. 21), the 360 S9 delivers almost everything that other best of the range robot vacuums really should do — and delivers a genuinely great sweeping and mopping experience for its proprietor.