Eufy S1 Pro robot vacuum: two-minute review
The Eufy Omni S1 Pro (or just Eufy S1 Pro if you're not in the US) is a robotic vacuum cleaner and mop with a docking station that automatically empties the dust bin, replenishes the water tank with clean, ozonated water, dries the mop and charges the battery after each clean. It uses lidar to help with navigation around your home, creates accurate maps of every room (even across multiple floors) and employs the Eufy Clean smartphone app to let you set schedules and customize how you want the S1 to clean. I tested one out to see how it performs in practice, how it compares to the rest of today's best robot vacuums, and if it justifies its premium price tag.
On test, I found the S1 to mop hard floors incredibly well, thanks to its rotating mop that spins at high speed and pushes down onto the floor with 2.2lbs (1kg) of force. The S1 also does a good job of vacuuming, with four suction strengths available and two rotating brushes for getting into the corners of every room. The Eufy Clean app works very well, and so too does the docking station, which adds a cleaning solution to water before it’s pumped into the robot.
The S1 navigates effectively, driving close to walls without crashing into them and avoiding steps, while automatically raising its mop when driving over rugs and carpets. Its ability to clear raised room thresholds can be inconsistent, however, with the robot sometimes failing to enter rooms it has previously driven into without a problem. This can be fixed by turning off an anti-drop function. It also struggled a little when tasked with vacuuming up fine, engrained debris, and it sometimes failed to spot obvious, medium-sized debris.
The lower suction modes are quiet, the app is quick and responsive, and the battery life is excellent. Eufy insists that only its own cleaning solution is used with the mopping system, adding to the ongoing costs. It also sits in the premium price bracket –
Eufy Omni S1 Pro review: price & availability
- List price: $1,499 / £1,499
- Launch date: June 2024
- Availability: US, UK,
Eufy took the unusual move of launching this robotic vacuum and mop as a crowd-funded Kickstarter project. It raised a whopping $3.5m from almost 3,200 backers at the time of writing, with many backers paying $999 for their S1 Pro. The actual retail price is significantly higher, at $1,499 / £1,499 (it's not currently available in Australia, but that's equivalent to AU$2,699) from when the vacuum robot went on sale on 19 June 2024.
Being a vacuum cleaner and mopping system, there are several parts that can be replaced over time. Eufy includes several spares in the box – more on which later – but buyers should bear in mind that they’ll need to pay for replacement dust bags, filters, mops and brushes when the included ones wear out. Eufy also insists S1 Pro owners buy the company’s own hard floor cleaner, which comes in a $19.99 bottle specifically shaped to fit the S1 Pro. Other cleaners, Eufy says, may cause 'irreversible damage' to the machine.
The idea of a four-figure vacuum might be shocking to some readers (and it does sit in TechRadar's premium price bracket), but it's not so unusual these days, at least when looking at flagship models. The Roomba Combo j9+ by iRobot costs a similar amount, while the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra isn’t far off $2,000.
- Value for money score: 4 out of 5
Eufy Omni S1 Pro review: design
- Self-emptying charge dock handles dust and water
- Rotating mop applies pressure and self-cleans as it goes
- 3.78-inch / 9.6cm tall
With the S1 Pro, Eufy has gone against the trend for robotic vacuums with smaller, more compact docking stations. Instead, this is a robot with a large, imposing base station that houses the dust bin, as well as tanks for clean and dirty water, and a cleaning solution.
The base station is 67 cm tall and has a footprint of 38 x 47cm. I was able to tuck it into a corner of my small flat for a few weeks to conduct this review, but had to move a table to make sure the base station had the required 50cm of clear space either side. It’ll function without this clearance, but the robot won’t be able to clean between its charger and the nearby wall.
The robot itself is broadly similar to most other automated vacuums, albeit slightly taller than the Roomba Combo J9 Plus. The Eufy measures 9.6cm tall, 32cm wide and 34cm long. Turn it over and you’ll find a pair of heavy-duty wheels, a 290 mm rotating mop, a pair of spinning brushes for clearing dust and debris from the corners of your floor, and a rubber roller brush for scooping dust and debris into the suction system. This is all easily accessible without tools, by simply removing the top cover (which is held in place magnetically) then lifting out the robot’s dust bin.
Handily, the robot speaks aloud when items have been removed and installed. It’ll say things like 'dirty water tank removed' and 'dust bin installed' to help you quickly identify each component.
The charge base has a control panel on the top, complete with buttons for operating the robot and a display that shows animations to help with maintenance, such as how to replace the water tanks. It also says when filters and other components need cleaning. This means you can use the robot without even touching the smartphone app (once it has been set up, anyway). Printed instructions make the setup process very simple, and you’ll be up and running in just a few minutes.
The S1 Pro's design means it empties its dust bin into a larger bag in the base station at the end of each cleaning session. It also fills its onboard tank with clean, ozonated water from the base station’s larger tank before each session, then empties itself into the base’s dirty water tank when finished. Eufy says the dust bag should only need replacing every couple of months, while the water tank managed half a dozen mopping sessions before running dry. Naturally, this will depend on your floor space and how much is mopped.
I was impressed with the quality of the Eufy’s hardware. It all feels very sturdy, but takes up plenty of space. I would have liked to see storage space in the dock for spare parts, as with the iRobot Roomba Combo J9 Plus, but that isn't the case here. To its credit, Eufy suggests the taller base station makes it easy to pick up and replace the water tanks, since smaller base stations mean stooping over.
Lastly, there's no option to plumb the base station into your home’s water supply, but Eufy says 'water accessories' for the S1 Pro are currently under development.
- Design score: 4.5 out of 5
Eufy Omni S1 Pro review: performance
- Superb mopping abilities
- Solid navigation capabilities, but could fail to spot even larger debris
- Vacuuming is good but not great
As with any robot vacuum, its first task was to map my apartment. Our property has a lounge, hallway, kitchen and bedroom, plus a bathroom with a step, so the robot has access to every corner of the property, except for part of the bathroom. If I wanted to map that small section, I could have, since the app lets you save maps of multiple floors.
The S1 Pro quickly plowed into a relatively thick rug and got stuck, before calling for help. My bad. I’d not reviewed a robotic vacuum in this property before and, while the style of rug isn’t uncommon, it’s a little higher than the 25mm maximum carpet height Eufy says the S1 Pro can cope with.
Lesson learnt, rug rolled up and robot restarted, it quickly mapped the entire flat and returned to base, having not slipped down the bathroom step.
The Eufy Clean app now shows a very accurate map of my home, and it takes just a few seconds to separate the rooms into different zones and give them each a name. That way, you can tell the robot to go clean one room, or vacuum all rooms but one.
Eufy claims 8,000 Pa of suction power, which is the same as some of the brand’s cheaper robotic vacuums, like the Eufy X10. There are four suction levels to pick from, called Quiet, Standard, Turbo and Max, plus mopping settings of Soft, Standard and Deep, and the option to clean an area once or twice in each session.
You can also tell the robot to vacuum and mop an area, or just vacuum – since you won’t want it to mop your carpets. And on that note, the robot automatically detects carpet, then lifts the mop to keep it clear of the floor. There’s no option to mop only, so it shouldn’t be used to clear up large liquid spills, since it’ll try to vacuum the floor first.
Before giving the S1 Pro a set of specific challenges, I used it for a week as a normal robotic vacuum and mop. I found it very easy to use and the mopping results were fantastic. It really does a great job of cleaning wooden floors, administering just the right amount of water to not leave puddles or streaks, and cleaning the mop as it goes. Eufy says the mopping roller spins at 170 rpm and pushes down onto the floor with a force of 2.2lbs.
My varnished floors shone clean and, if more proof were needed, the murky contents of the waste water tank looked like it had been scooped out of the River Thames.
After vacuuming and mopping, the S1 Pro returns to its charger and empties its dust bin and water tank, then dries the mop. The emptying takes just a few seconds (but is rather loud, peaking at 79dB, compared to just 62dB when vacuuming on the quietest mode and 76dB on max suction), then the mop is cleaned and dried over a period of about 4.5 hours. There’s a quiet humming during this time, but at just 50dB it isn’t really noticeable.
As for intelligence, the S1 Pro’s ability to drive around obstacles is good. It uses what Eufy calls its 3D MatrixEye Depth Perception System to understand its environment. This comprises a camera with a 120-degree lens and a lidar system. I found the Eufy does a great job of driving close to walls and furniture while very rarely crashing into anything. It even uses a set of icons on the map to indicate where it has avoided some common items, like shoes and cables.
Moving to more specific tests, and the results were mixed. First up, I tested the S1 Pro on a mix of biscuit crumbs and flour. It had no trouble picking this up from a hard floor, even with the lowest and quietest suction mode, but had a habit of flicking debris into the corners of the room with its spinning brushes, which it then failed to collect. It also struggled to clear a floor threshold strip that had previously caused it no problems; I noticed how the robot tried a few times to drive over it, then drove more quickly and succeeded.
I repeated this test on carpet but the higher Turbo and Max suction settings were needed, and even then some of the flour and crumb mix was left behind.
During these tests the robot sometimes failed to enter one room. There’s a small, ~2cm threshold to clear between the wooden hallway and carpeted bedroom, and the Eufy managed this just fine on numerous previous cleans, but failed on this occasion, before succeeding on a subsequent clean.
I later learnt this hesitancy is solved by digging into the settings pages of the Eufy Clean app and disabling a function called Visual Anti-Drop. After that, the robot drove over thresholds with more confidence.Pictured below, this must be right on the threshold, so to speak, of what it’s capable of clearing.
I expected a little more from its vacuuming abilities during this test, and was left with the impression that, while good at performing a daily clean of an otherwise tidy home, the S1 Pro can’t be relied upon to clean a specific area of dirt, or a recent spill of food or other debris. I instead reached for my Dyson V10 and had the carpet spotless in just a few seconds.
Next up, I tasked the Eufy with clearing larger dry debris from the same wooden floor and carpet as the previous test. For this I used oats, and thankfully the Standard mode was enough to pick up almost every single piece from a wooden floor. The rotary brushes still flung some dirt into the corners, but it was mostly a success.
It performed similarly well on carpet, with most of the oats picked up and just a few left behind. Frustratingly, the robot declared the clean complete and shut down the vacuum with a bunch of oats right in front of it.
The large oats also highlighted a problem with the S1 Pro’s self-emptying system. It appeared to have done everything correctly, but when I picked it up a couple of hours later a load of oats, dust and fluff fell out from under the robot. I couldn’t see an obvious blockage and the dust bag in the base station was only around 20 percent full, but contained only half the oats it should have. The rest were caught up in the rotor, having not made it to the bin, and fell out.
I’ve now realized you need to set the robot to empty its dustbin every time it returns to the charger (an option in the app), instead of less frequently. Otherwise, debris will spill out when you pick it up, for example to move it to a different floor.
All that said, I need to reiterate just how good the mop function is, and how thoroughly it cleans both the floor and itself. I hope a future software update will suggest owners turn off the Visual Anti-Drop function if the robot struggles with thresholds.
Finally, the battery life seems very good indeed. On one particular clean, the charge level fell from 100 percent to 94 percent after 22 minutes of vacuuming an area of 140 square feet. Eufy says the robot can run for 3.6 hours and cover a space of up to 1,976 square feet on one charge.
- Performance score: 4 out of 5
Eufy Omni S1 Pro review: app
- Easy to set up and use
- Can schedule cleans and target individual rooms
- Offers lots of configurability
The Eufy Clean app is impressive and makes it easy to control the vacuum, create schedules and split your home into zones. The latter works especially well, with the robot quickly mapping our flat and correctly splitting up the rooms and hallway. Once that’s done, it’s easy to tell the robot to clean an individual room, or draw a box over a specific area that needs vacuuming or mopping.
The app gives access to all four suction modes, both mopping modes, and lets you tell the robot how you’d like each room cleaning. For example, you could ask it to do an extra thorough job of the kitchen and hallway, while going easy on the spare bedroom. There are lots of settings to fiddle with, but it’s all intuitively laid out and neatly explained. The app is also used to create virtual walls and set up no-go zones to stop the robot entering certain areas of your home.
- App score: 5 out of 5
Should you buy the Eufy Omni S1 Pro?
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
How I tested the Eufy S1 Pro
I lived with the S1 Pro for a few weeks before writing this review. I let it map my home, then used it to keep on top of the vacuuming and mopping, leaving to clean every room on the standard setting every few days. After this, I carried out several specific tests to see how well it picks up different types of dry debris from both hard floors and carpet.
I observed how the robot navigated, how it avoided objects and steps, and how it managed with raised thresholds. I also kept tabs on battery usage and used an app to test how loud it is in all of its various cleaning modes.
- First reviewed: June 2024
