Among the best robot vacuums, Eufy may not have the marketing muscle of Roomba or Shark, but its line of robot vacuums have always been strong cleaners that perform almost as well as their higher-priced competitors. Eufy’s newest robot vacuum, the RoboVac G30 Edge, is another such product.
Priced at $349, the RoboVac G30 can map its surroundings and is paired with an updated app that’s both pleasant to use and more intuitive than previous iterations. But does the Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge have what it takes to be one of the best robot vacuums around?
Main Thing – Fast Review
- Silent
- Fits easily under furniture
- Many options and information in the application
- The average performance of carpets
Complete Review of the Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge robotic vacuum
Price and availability
The Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge went on sale on Amazon in July 2020 for $369. A very similar model, the RoboVac G30, went on sale at the same time for $319. The G30 Edge model includes support for magnetic boundary stripes, which help prevent robot vacuums from straying into unwanted areas, but they’re not particularly attractive. Two bands are included with the G30 Edge.
Design
Eufy’s robot hoovers have always had a distinct, mostly sophisticated look, and that hasn’t changed with the RoboVac G30 Edge: glossy black plastic around the edges, blue accents on the dustbin, and blue lights on top. The G30 Edge softens the Tron look of its predecessor, the RoboVac 30C, with subtle bronze concentric circles emanating from the center top of the vacuum. A Wi-Fi indicator sits above three physical buttons: a play/pause button resembling a CD player, a charge button for docking, and a spot-cleaning button.
The Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge is the same size as its siblings, the RoboVac 11s and RoboVac 30C. It has a diameter of just 12.8 cm and a height of 2.85 cm, making it an inch shorter than the Neato D4. It also slides under lower furniture than the 3.4-inch Shark Ion R85.
If you turn the vacuum cleaner over, you will find a small roller brush between two rubberized wheels. The combined rubber and brush roller of the RoboVac G30 Edge is identical to that of the RoboVac 30C and 11s. The bristles are thick; we had a lot more trouble removing dog hair than with the Neato D4’s thinner bristles. In the top left corner of the G30 Edge is a triple-rotating brush. There is a displacement sensor in the upper right corner.
Unfortunately, the dust bin on the Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge is identical to the bin on the RoboVac 30C and 11s. It’s far too easy to open, and on more than one occasion we’ve thrown dust particles around on the way to the bin.
Setup & App
One of the most advantages of the Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge is its app, EufyHome (Android and iOS). The app has been heavily updated compared to the RoboVac 30C we used and is impressive. First off, setting up the Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge was a breeze. We followed the instructions in the app and our iPhone 11 Pro connected to the robot quickly.
The EufyHome app has simple controls on the bottom third of the home screen. From here you can start cleaning, choose suction power, charge the bot, start a spot cleaning, create a schedule and view the cleaning history. There is an animation that plays when the bot is running, as well as a running timer, the area cleaned, and the battery level. The animation, while unnecessary, is cute and gives it personality. Hey, if I can name my bot Vicky McVacface, why not put a little whimsy in Eufy too?
Eufy has placed its newest feature, mapping, in the bottom right corner of the animation. When you tap the icon, the most recent map is displayed in a pop-up window. The map shows the location of the vacuum cleaner and jetty, and above that, the square footage, area cleaned, and uptime. You can enlarge the map… and that’s it. There are no virtual boundaries or spaces that you can set. The map just exists. So why the mapping feature? The idea is that once the robot creates a map, it will be able to do future cleanings faster and more thoroughly because it knows where it’s going.
While the G30 Edge is cleaning, a white dot representing the vacuum moves across the screen, creating a map as it goes. This can be useful when you are not at home and the vacuum cleaner gets stuck somewhere. Like the Neato D4, the Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge can only hold one map in its record at a time.
If you tap on the Settings menu in the eufyHome app, you will see several additional features. First of all, you can share control of the robot with friends or family who have the EufyHome app installed. Another feature, “Find My Robot,” makes the robot play a loud tune until it is located, which is useful if it gets stuck under a sofa. There are also manual controls, which give the user full control over the G30 Edge’s movements forward, left, and right. You have to hold down the virtual buttons on your phone to get the vacuum to move, but it’s a fun way to chase the dog.
In Settings, you will also find the automatic return cleaning. If the G30 Edge runs out of power before finishing its job, it will recharge in the cradle, then head off to finish the job. The G30 Edge has a battery life of 110 minutes, which we found to be enough to clean the first floor of our house, but it’s a good feature for larger homes.
Performance
Is this thing on? That was our first mark of the Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge. I dropped a peanut in front of the robot to see if its suction was active. Indeed it was; it is an exceptionally quiet cleaner. I was able to carry on a conversation at a normal volume the entire time the G30 Edge was running. It was a very nice change from the Neato D4 and the painfully loud iRobot Roomba s9.
Seeing how the RoboVac G30 Edge cleans, it’s clear that Eufy has done its homework. The scattered cleaning patterns of the RoboVac 11s and 30C have given way to an orderly back-and-forth pattern. It’s more reminiscent of the Neato D4 and higher-end robots like the iRobot Roomba s9. While we appreciated his methodical approach to cleaning, we did notice that he still seemed to clean some areas more happily than others. For example, you spent a lot of time vacuuming around a chair in the living room but only gave the kitchen table area one go over before calling it done.
While we really liked the quiet behavior of the Eufy G30 Edge, we wish it performed better in our lab tests. The G30 Edge was a mediocre cleaner, averaging 88.94% pick-up, which was lower than the Shark Ion R85 and the budget iLife V3s Pro. However, it slightly outperformed its sibling the RoboVac 30C and the Neato D4.
Note that the G30 and D4 were tested in a different space than the R85 and 30C; we will update these figures once we have had a chance to test the R85 again.
If your home has mostly hardwood floors and no cats, the Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge maybe the robot vacuum you’ve been waiting for. The robot picked up 97.4% of the Cheerios spilled in our test area – normally an excellent result – but just below the perfect scores achieved by the Shark Ion R85 and the Eufy RoboVac 11s and 30C. But what impressed us most is how the G30 Edge didn’t crush or pulverize the grain while vacuuming it. Most of the Cheerios were undamaged when we opened the garbage can.
We were also impressed with the G30 Edge’s performance with pet hair on bare floors. The vacuum picked up 96.5% of the dog hair on the hardwood, although a fair amount of hair did get caught on the brush roller. Still, it picked up more than the Neato D4 (93%) and the Shark Ion R85 (77.5%).
Like many of the robot vacuums we’ve tested, the Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge picked up 100% of the Cheerios we dropped on the carpet. Unfortunately, the cleaning of the smaller particles was not so good. Kitten droppings were especially difficult for the vacuum, as it only picked up 72.6% of the carpet, trailing the RoboVac 11s (85%) and 30C (82.6%). It was almost 20 percentage points below our current favorite, the Shark Ion R85.
The RoboVac G30 Edge’s performance on pet hair on the carpet also elicited a “wow.” It picked up 78% of the Golden Retriever’s fur scattered on the soft surface, 6 points less than the Neato D4 and 20 points less than the Shark Ion R85.
Final Thought
The Eufy RoboVac G30 Edge has a lot to like. It’s quiet, it’s compact, and the accompanying app is easy to use and packed with options. At under $300, the G30 Edge is cheaper, quieter, and more attractive than the $429 Neato D4, but it lacks the latter’s ability to create virtual no-go zones and excellent edge cleanup. The G30 Edge also adds basic mapping and a bunch of other “nice to have, but not critical” features that are superior to the $349 Shark Ion R85, making it one of the best cheap robot vacuums around. The G30 Edge is a bit more fun to use, something that can’t often be said for the task of vacuuming.
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