Eufy Clean X8 Pro with Self-Empty Station review: Is it good at finding its way around?
The navigation skills of the Eufy Clean X8 Pro are, on the whole, exceptional. The initial mapping run the robot needs to perform is fast and efficient, with the X8 managing to scan my entire 64m2 ground floor plan in four minutes. It doesn’t need to go into every corner for this, but because it scans the rooms with LiDAR as it passes through, you can configure no-go areas before the robot reaches them.
After that, you can break the floor plan down into rooms as you wish and the first proper cleaning run can commence. This is performed at a very reasonable pace of around 55 seconds per square metre.
I found the robot to be very respectful of furniture, largely approaching obstacles such as chair and table legs gently and working around them without too much impact. It even avoided hanging curtains, without needing to push into them. It also found its way around a complicated floor plan without any difficulties.
Getting over obstacles isn’t a problem either, with it climbing thicker mats and raised room thresholds without any difficulty. The one thing it can’t do is recognise and avoid dropped obstacles – I placed a charging cable, a sock and a joke shop pet poo in its path, and it didn’t attempt to avoid any of them.
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Eufy Clean X8 Pro with Self-Empty Station review: How well does it clean?
When it comes to vacuuming, the Eufy Clean X8 Pro shows itself to be perfectly capable. Rice collection was its best trick, managing to gather 99% of my measured spill on hard floor and 96% on carpet, which is above average in both tests.
It was also above average in collecting flour from carpet, managing to pick up 57% of this problematic powder. It scooped 81% from the hard floor, which sounds better, but the average across other robot vacuums is very slightly higher.
The X8 stumbled when picking up pet hair, though. On hard floor it gathered about 70% of the dog hair clippings we put down, with the remainder getting pushed aside or caught on the wrong bits of the robot. It found carpet even harder, where it managed to collect only 59%. Both these results are below average across all the robot vacuums we’ve tested to date.
When it comes to mopping, I didn’t have high hopes because of the robot’s simple wiping method. In previous tests, I haven’t found this to be as effective as the rotary pads you’ll find on more expensive robots.
However, I was very pleasantly surprised. I deposited spillages of tomato ketchup, blackcurrant squash and garden mud onto my floor and let them dry. I then used the area wash setting on the app to send the robot off to where the messes were located.
The mud and the squash were wiped away in a single clean. That’s not unusual for a little mud but usually there’s some dried squash left around the edges that aren’t normally removed in one go, even with rotary mop pads. It removed the ketchup in three visits. Again, that’s unusual, matching the performance of the more expensive Eufy Clean X9 Pro.
