Eufy L60 robot vacuum review: Efficient navigation and reliable cleaning performance at a value price

The Eufy L60 is an affordable, feature-packed robot vacuum that reliably cleans everything from pet hair to small debris. Here's how it performs.

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When robot vacuums first hit the home cleaning scene, they had so many issues that they were more of a novelty than an actual cleaning tool. They couldn't steer around big spills or pet waste, and they'd get lodged under furniture, fall down stairs, miss entire sections of your home, and eat stray cords and cables. Sometimes, this smart home aid felt more like a point of anxiety than a helpful home cleaner.

Fortunately, those days are well behind us. After evaluating and testing many of the best robot vacuums over the past few years, I've noticed some serious leaps and bounds in the evolution of these unique cleaning gadgets. It can be a tough decision to decide between robot vacuums if you've never had one or if you've had a bad experience with one in the past. Luckily, most of the aforementioned problems of yesterday have been engineered away, never to return. Still, with a million models on the market — half of which come from new or relatively unknown brands — it can be a chore to find the right one for you. In this article, we'll look in-depth at the Eufy L60 robot vacuum, a midrange cleaning device that will keep your floors clean and presentable at a price point that won't make you cringe. It comes with handy features like room mapping, powerful suction, and a generously sized dustbin that you'll be covered if you don't want to shell out for a more expensive model.

Design

At first glance, the Eufy L60 looks like most other robot vacuums on the market. Its black plastic chassis has just two buttons on top: one for power and one for returning to its home base. On the bottom, the cleaner features two wheels, one side brush, and one 360-degree wheel for precise navigation alongside a single main brush assembly.

For navigation, The Eufy L60 has a circular lidar sensor on the top of its chassis, enabling the unit to gauge distance and map your living space using laser light. Until recently, advanced mapping features like this were exclusive to higher-end models, but they're becoming more common to find at an affordable price.

Our review of the Eufy L60 vacuum

Setup 

In the box, you'll get the Eufy L60 robot vacuum, a wall-powered charging dock, and a cleaning brush. Other standalone robot vacuums I've tested also include a thin plastic base for the robot vacuum to drive up onto when it docks, but the L60 simply pulls up to the charging dock and positions itself against the retractable metal connectors on the charger.

An included quick start guide offers an easy-to-follow overview of the Eufy L60's onboard controls, features, and layout. Setting up the robot vacuum for initial use is relatively simple — remove the plastic stickers and foam and place the unit onto the charging station. Next, use the QR code to install the Eufy Clean app on your smartphone, set up an account, and follow a series of steps to personalize the L60 to your space and connect the vacuum to WiFi. Before first use, you may also have to upgrade the vacuum to the latest firmware version. This took me less than two minutes. During this update, you can also opt-in for automatic updates in the future.

Once the app setup is complete, you'll position your charging base with at least 1.5 feet of free space on both sides and five feet in front. The app also advises removing any wires or loose items from the floor.

The final step involves a quick mapping of the whole space. This takes a couple of minutes. I watched the L60 navigate my space and map out my room in real time via the app. I first chose to map my downstairs recording studio, which is full of obstacles like mic stands, dog beds, chairs, and exercise gear. It was able to capture a decent picture of my room, and it returned to certain areas multiple times to adjust the boundaries. (That large spot in the middle is my human-sized dog bed).

Once you have a floor map, you can use the Eufy cleaning app to define exactly how you want your space cleaned, designate off-limits areas, schedule cleaning times for specific rooms, and even switch up the level of suction power depending on the room being cleaned.

Cleaning Performance

After letting the Eufy L60 map the room —it vacuums while it makes its first journey around your space — I opened the dustbin and found it mostly full, as pictured above. I chose this area first because I don't vacuum often, and there are multiple floor types. I also wanted to see how much dirt it picked up on a seemingly clean floor. I ran it again immediately after to see how it performed on a second run.

Overall, that initial first run of my 400-square-foot space took about an hour. The Eufy L60 uses its laser navigation to create efficient paths back and forth across your room in neat rows. It does one pass over each area unless you instruct it to make a second pass (this can be done in the app). I never experienced any clogging, and even after multiple consecutive cleans, the vacuum still picked up more dirt. In general, robot vacuums should be used to maintain your floors frequently, which is made easier by using their scheduling functionality.

Performance between floor types varied. My main floor material is smooth cement and the easiest to visually detect dirt on. The L60 easily cleared this surface of small debris — such as dust, coffee grounds, and flour — pet hair, and most of the driveway gravel that I'd accidentally tracked in. The textured wood and carpet areas aren't as easy to see dirt, but I still noticed a huge visual difference in these surfaces after cleaning — particularly in areas where my dog hangs out, where I enter and exit the room, and underneath the countertop where I make coffee. Most of the visual coffee grounds and flour I placed on the floor were picked up by the robot vacuum. I was able to quickly wet a paper towel and clean the rest in seconds without needing to re-run the robot vacuum's cleaning cycle. 

I then did another pass on each individual surface type. The cement floor barely rendered any extra dirt, while the carpet still retained some dirt and hair, and the wood floor presented a tiny amount of additional dirt. This last test showed that the L60 handles smooth surfaces and wood floors better than carpet during the first and second cleaning passes. 

When it comes to cleaning corners, the L60 struggles like most vacuums on the market. Its side brush does help sweep up some of the dirt, but it will leave some behind. The dirt left behind is often pushed into the corner, so it does give you an easy area to clean up yourself once it has finished cleaning and returned to its dock. 

So, how does the Eufy L60 handle obstacles? Larger items like furniture weren't a problem. Unlike other robot vacuums I've tested, this one didn't get caught under couches or stop at door thresholds — the L60 can climb up to 20 millimeters. Smaller obstacles, however, were more challenging for this vacuum, with thin charging cords being the biggest problem. I've never had this ruin either the cable or the robot vacuum, but it gets in the way of your cleaning cycle. The L60 sends an alert if it gets caught on anything. Just pull the cable out, and continue the cleaning cycle. For what it's worth, more expensive robot vacuums also have this problem, but it's still a bit disappointing.

To test the Eufy L60's ability to pick up larger debris, I brought in some additional driveway gravel and spread it around my shoes. The vacuum was able to suck these up just fine, but a few pieces ended up getting pushed away by the brush. These were ultimately picked up later during the next cleaning cycle. 

Lastly, let's talk about noise. Traditional vacuums are loud, and while robot vacuums are still quite noisy, I found the L60's noise levels to be minimal. You'll definitely notice the L60 operating when you're in the same room, but it isn't particularly disruptive. In fact, the loudest noise you'll hear from the vacuum is the voice announcement when the battery is low or cleaning begins.

App design

Overall, the app design is straightforward enough for anyone to use. There are modes for auto clean, single room clean, and zone clean if you designate multiple rooms or areas as a zone. While the vacuum is operating, you can see how long it has been running and the square footage it's covered.

Setting up the "no-go" zones was a breeze. Simply tap on the map of your choice, click the edit icon, and select "No-Go Zone." You'll be able to set up boundary lines of any length in any direction, as well as block off entire areas for the vacuum to avoid. Without these boundaries, the Eufy L60 will try to continuously discover new areas. For instance, if a bathroom door was closed when the Eufy first mapped your home, the Eufy will notice a new open area to clean the second time if the door is open. Using these no-go indicators keeps you from having to place makeshift barriers in its way.

You can also modulate the suction power between four levels, toggle BoostIQ mode, which will adjust the suction power based on the type of floor it's working on (carpet vs. wood), and instruct the vacuum to clean specific rooms multiple times if they're dirtier than the rest of your space.

If you have different floors in your home (it can't climb stairs), the L60 can create separate maps to clean them all. You can also set a cleaning schedule down to the start time, cleaning cadence, cleaning mode, and cleaning area. 

Lastly, the app also allows you to manually control the robot vacuum with three directional buttons. Controlling robot vacuums with these controls is always clunky, and it's no different with the L60, but it is helpful if you notice that it's missed a spot and you want it to take another pass. 

Cleaning and maintenance

Maintenance and cleaning on the Eufy L60 is straightforward: you just need to empty the dustbin every couple of uses, depending on how dirty your space gets. It will alert you once the dustbin is full. After the first 2-3 uses, I had to empty it each time, but I noticed a significant decrease in debris after these initial runs. To clean, pop the dustbin out of the robot vacuum using the two side buttons, and then flip up the lid (there are illustrated instructions). From there, turn it over and simply let the debris fall into a garbage can. Depending on how dusty your room is, you can also use this opportunity to remove the filter and clean that off. 

I never had anything get caught in the roller, so cleaning or maintaining that part hasn't been an issue.

Impact on daily life

The Eufy L60 has become a helpful cleaning tool for the downstairs area of my house. The top and bottom floors aren't connected by a stairway making for a long, cold walk during the winter, so I never brought my upstairs vacuum down to the basement. While the L60 doesn't have as many features as my main robot vacuum, it's nice having a reliable secondary option that just works and helps me maintain an area that isn't top of mind. 

Cons to consider

You'll mostly be dealing with some obstacle avoidance issues for small to medium-sized objects and occasional wire entanglement. Also, while the vacuum's suction was powerful enough to pick up most debris, the brush can scatter smaller and smoother items. It will eventually pick these pieces up, but it might take a couple of cleaning sessions. 

What are your alternatives?

In the sub-$250 price range, you'll encounter three situations: discounted older models, companies you've never heard of and can't pronounce, or other robot vacuums with similar features and specs. As you've just read, Eufy's L60 model provides solid suction power and room mapping performance for the price. The L60 is also available with a Self Empty Station and there is also a Hybrid L60 model that mops.

Another Eufy budget-friendly model, the 11S Max is slimmer — no raised lidar scanner — has a 100-minute battery runtime and a slightly larger 0.6-liter dustbin. However, it doesn't support WiFi or virtual assistant functionality and won't map your home, but it will sense drops if it encounters stairs. The robot vacuum only has 2000 Pa suction power, so you are downgrading if you choose the 11S over the L60, but if do prefer a model without wifi capabilities, the 11S is a worthy consideration

If you can find models in this price range from companies like iRobot, Ecovacs, Roborock, or Shark, you'll get similar features, but Eufy holds its own and surely deserves to be part of the conversation. In general, prices are starting to drop for models that include auto-empty stations. If you can shell out the extra $20-$100, I'd highly recommend making the upgrade. Shark makes highly capable and affordable robot vacuums with auto-empty stations which can frequently be found on sale, like the Shark Detect Pro Self Empty Robot, or you can look at upgrading with the iRobot Roomba j9+. These both features automatic dirt disposal, solid suction performance, and requires little maintenance after use. 

The bottom line

The Eufy L60 is a solid choice for those who don't want to sink too much into their savings but still want a reliable robot vacuum that will tackle pet hair and provide accurate room mapping. It retails for $270, but can frequently be found on sale for under $200.