Eufy recently showed off their latest robot vacuum cleaner, the S1 Pro the first robot vacuum to launch under the brand’s flagship S-series of premium vacuums.
The Eufy S1 Pro is priced from $2,699 and includes top end features. There’s the advanced mapping and obstacle avoidance, Turbo Roller Mop and powerful suction motor with advanced brushes that significantly reduces hair entanglement.
The Uniclean Station charges and cleans the robot vacuum, automatically emptying and storing the dust, while cleaning and drying the roller mop.
All up, it seems to have almost everything you could want – so I thought I’d give our almost 2-year old robot a holiday and try it out. While “Bob” is having a well earned rest, and welcomed “Alfredo” – my son names them – to the house for the last couple of weeks and here’s how he went.
Design
The Eufy S1 Pro is a great looking vacuum cleaner with a sleek squared off body to make it easier to get into tight corners.
The Eufy S1 Pro does only have one colour option: Black, though it has a more grey panel on the top of the vacuum which is removable to expose the on/off switch and filter, as well as a similarly coloured panel wrapping around the UniClean Station hiding the dust bag which can hold up to 68 days of dust.
The Uniclean Station has transparent black clean and dirty water tanks at the top above the panel, with a place for the hard floor cleaning solution behind the clean water tank.
The Eufy S1 Pro comes with the cleaning solution and all you need to get going, including additional roller, filter and brushes.
There’s no bump on the top of the S1 Pro like other vacuum cleaners, with all the 3D MatrixEye sensor built into the front. The sensor includes a binocular RGB camera system with sensors including dToF LiDAR and 3D SLAM to create maps and for obstacle avoidance.
Underneath you find the dual brushes mounted at the front, with a roller vacuum centred underneath and the roller mop at the rear.
Setup
The box for the Eufy S1 Pro is a decent size, but it’s well laid out with everything you need packed into their own sections.
It’s easily unpacked and the quick-start guide will have you setup in no-time with the clean water tank filled, hard floor solution and dust bags installed and ready to rock.
On the smart home front for the S1 Pro, you’ll need the Eufy Clean app which is available for Android and iOS.
You will need a Eufy account for set up, and once you’ve entered your credentials or setup account, you simply follow the bouncing ball to find and set up your vacuum cleaner.
The Eufy Clean app will present prompts for any firmware updates when you first open the app – It’s easy to do and only takes a few minutes, but it’s worth it to be up to date.
Once updated the app will ask you to map your home, giving you hints to make it as easy as possible like picking up any loose items before starting. The S1 Pro has obstacle avoidance, but when creating a map it’s best to give it an easy time of it.
Using it
Mapping
The mapping as part of the setup is easy to do. We’ve had Bob roaming the rooms for a while now, so the house is mostly a pretty robot friendly place after a quick once over. Alfredo’s mapping routine was super fast, and in fact I forgot to open the door to the spare room and had to do it again – which was easy to do.
Once your house is mapped you can check the results and merge or divide the auto-defined rooms laid out on the map. You can also re-name the rooms for easy identification.
The mapped area does include areas the robot can see but can’t get to, this includes the outside area it can see through the glass doors, as well as raised areas.
For raised areas we have four: Bathroom, Laundry, Toilet and Ensuite. For the first three, they transition from hard floor to tile with a lip around 1” (2.5cm). The S1 Pro can easily get into the bathroom and Laundry, but not the toilet. The ensuite transitions from carpet to tile with a similar lip height and can’t quite get up in there either..
So, once your house is mapped you can just start cleaning.
Just Clean!
The app is the best for most cases – but you can also integrate the vacuum into Amazon Alexa/Google Assistant. Just add the Skill or Partner in your Google Home or Amazon Alexa app and you can simply ask the assistant to start it – “Hey Google, Start Alfredo”, as well as a bunch of other commands.
To start things in the app though with a large ‘Start’ icon in the front and centre, with Mode on the left, letting you select the specifics of the cleaning cycle you want. You can also select a single room rather than the whole map, or select Zone to select a small space for spot cleaning.
I tend to stick to manual cleaning cycles, but you can also set a customised schedule for it to start cleaning either the whole map, or a single room. You can also set the cleaning cycle details, just as you can in the manual mode.
Cleaning
The cleaning is great with the Eufy S1 Pro. The vacuum gets right into our longer pile carpet, and the roller mop breezes over the hard floors and leaves them spotless.
Vacuum
The vacuum is quite impressive, with the squared off shape able to get into a few more corners than Bob, our Ecovacs Deebot Omni X1 Pro which has a circular shape.
There’s four modes for vacuum cleaning: Quiet, Standard, Turbo and Max – with the difference being the noise and quality of cleaning. When I set it off and not home, the Max setting got a great clean, but was quite noisy, while the quiet mode was great but did leave room for a re-clean on Max at a later time.
Obstacle avoidance is excellent, with the S1 Pro simply going around furniture, or any toys left around. I haven’t had the dog have any ‘accidents’ while reviewing the S1 Pro, so I can’t speak to that but it does seem to be looking.
The anti-tangle brush is good – and though we don’t have pet fur, we have a lot of charging cables that end up laying around on the floor, and I’m pleased to say we didn’t get a single tangle.
Mopping
The roller mop in the eufy S1 Pro is brilliant. We’ve been using Bob and his two rotating pads for a year and a half, and it does a good job, however we do also have a Tineco with roller mop for more intensive cleaning. With the eufy S1 Pro, I think we could almost forgo the Tineco, the mopping is just that good.
The roller mop did have one part of the house which left a diagonal line, but a remop over the area fixes it easily.
The roller mop doesn’t tend to touch the carpet at all which was a concern of mine with the longer pile.
I quite enjoyed the ability to spot clean and even set out a few tests like some sticky cordial, tomato sauce and spilt instant coffee. It cleaned it up on the first pass which was absolutely brilliant.
Uniclean Station
The Uniclean station design is more compact and a little more pleasing to look at than other models. It’s compact, though has enough room to carry 68 days of dust in the dust bag and the clean and dirty water tanks.
As well as holding the dirt, and the loud blast as the vacuum transfers the contents of its dust bag to the station, the Uniclean station is also where the mop is cleaned and dried.
The mop cleaning and drying process is easy, and happens without you doing anything – though you will hear the whirs and drying noises from the unit, though it’s fairly quiet for the most part. The station does have a small LCD between the tanks that shows you what’s happening.
Water Tanks
The clean and dirty water tanks are – well, they’re just there. The clean water tank lasted three full floor washes around the house before needing a refill.
The dirty water tank was barely half full at that stage, however I tend to empty the dirty water tank fairly regularly to avoid any smells. That said, while testing I did leave it and didn’t have, or hear any complaints.
The Eufy Cleaning Solution is still in there and from the weight of it, it doesn’t seem to be in any danger of running out. The replacement bottles are around $30 a pop from places like The Good Guys and Harvey Norman. It’s a little annoying that this proprietary fluid is required, but it is what it is.
Battery and Charging
The Eufy S1 Pro battery lasts for about ¾ of our house before needing a charge. It recharges fairly quickly and it finishes the whole house by the time we get home if we set it off in the morning.
The charging is fairly fast, though it’s not much of an issue as it’s constantly on the base station when not in use and it’s ready to go when asked.
Should you buy it?
The eufy S1 Pro robot vacuum cleaner is an absolute beast when it comes to keeping your home clean.
The minimalist design of the new Uniclean Station, and the compact S1 Pro vacuum itself with all the features on-board are a winner. The vacuum performs well, even on longer pile carpets and the roller mop has been brilliant on our hard floors.
At $2,699 it’s a pricey option, but the benefits in terms of cleaning are immense with it keeping the entire house clean without a fuss.
You can get your hands on the eufy S1 Pro from today through JB Hi Fi, The Good Guys and eufy.com/au.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
