Cleaning up? Not this robot

Ecovacs Deebot 710

£435.72, ecovacs.com/uk 

It’s a sobering moment when you realise that every single one of the millions of people in the world who happily use robot vacuums must have a house far less dirty than yours.

I need to conduct a deep clean before I can even test one, otherwise they get snagged on stray socks, members of the Paw Patrol and horrendous objects related to the cat.

So I was pretty impressed that the Ecovacs Deebot 710 ventured into the dusty, unseen realm beneath my sofa and emerged intact.

The price of robot vacuums has remained eye-wateringly high (you could have a city break for the price of a Dyson Eye).

The Deebot 710 offers ‘proper’ cleaning (ie, it actually knows where it is, rather than just wandering about at random) on a slightly more reasonable budget.

It’s armed with proximity sensors to detect objects, and can even waltz casually past the edge of stairs, which can be a death trap to lesser robo-vacs (just like their distant cousins, the Daleks). An app lets you check in on what it’s up to (and send it back to its charging pad on demand).

It is armed with proximity sensors to detect objects, and can even waltz casually past the edge of stairs, which can be a death trap to lesser robo-vacs

I always want to love robot vacuums. The way the Deebot 710 complains ‘I am suspended’ if you lift it up is hilarious.

But it’s still not perfect: on one run, it ended up rocking back and forth against a metal chair in a faintly amorous fashion. But if you have no children, no cats, no unorthodox chairs and no stray socks, you may have more luck.