Before starting, I must say that this is the first robot vacuum I own, so my closest references are battery powered hand vacuums.
That said, the experience has been mostly great, with a couple of doubts and small issues:
Package and unboxing 4.5/5
The robot and the accessories come in very organized different boxes, plenty of foam to assure that nothing moves and breaks, and great attention on the design of boxes.
Other than the robot, you will get 2 pairs of brushes, 2 mopping cloths, 2 EPA filters and if you got the plus model also 2 dust bags to insert in the self-emptying base.
Apart from the brushes, all of the other accessories has 1 already installed and one spare in a box, but don’t worry about brushes, because the installation is very lego-like.
Design and build quality ⅘
Both the robot and and the base have a reassuring weight (buts still light enough if you have to carry it up the stairs), and both of them have well refined finishes, and all the buttons and switches have a nice feedback.
App and setup ⅘
Setting all up is pretty easy and it’s probably doable by almost everyone, thanks to a simple start guide and clear instructions.
I must say I’m impressed by how good looking the app is, it’s also very intuitive and once you set all, the shortcuts found on the main interface are the ones you will use the most.
Here you can start/stop the cleaning and choose if you want the robot to vacuum only or mop too, and there’s different levels of power and amount of water, but I suggest the “standard” level for both to get the best compromise on performance/noise.
The first time in a room he will map it, and after that some zones can be selected to be avoided or not cleaned with water, or you can also directly select a zone and only clean that.
You can map up to tree floors, but after it ends the cleaning on a floor that is not the same as the base you’ll have to bring it back and change the map, or else it will start looking for it in vain.
There are also secondary menus where you can see how worn out are the brushes and manually control the movements.
My only complain is about it the programming function, that works as if I am in another time zone, even if the selected one is right, but i think it will be fixed in the future.
Vacuum 4.5/5
I’m genuinely surprised by the power of something this small and silent, considering it has a 5200mAh battery (just a bit bigger than a smartphone) and it lasts about 3 hours in standard mode, while a battery powered hand vacuum lasts between 20 and 50 minutes and a bulky classic vacuum usually consumes between 1800 and 2300 watts.
That said it is obviously less powerful, but it still catches all the dirty and if you really need it can be put in a boosted mode that is way more powerful but as noisy as a classic vacuum and battery drains faster.
The dust tank is more than enough for a cleaning cycle, but you can program it to return to the base more than one time in one cycle if needed, and the dust bag should be big enough to last a month
Mopping ⅘
To use this feature you need to fill a small tank in the back with pure water, and choose the amount of water you want to use, and from my experience standard or max are the ones to use, especially if you have a porous pavement.
It works well, but if you need to remove fluid that fell like oil, beer, or else on the ground you definitely need to manually do the mopping.
Obstacles avoiding ⅘
The LiDAR sensors do a very good job mapping very fast and precisely, the only thing that confuses them are mirrors, but only if very low on the ground.
It tries to go as close as possible to any object and under or around chairs or furnitures high enough from the ground.
It doesn’t bump too much on obstacles, but when it does it’s pretty gentle and the front part of the robot it’s a big pressure sensitive bumper, which makes it stop and go around.
It also has a couple of proximity sensors on the lower side that it uses in order not to fall along the stairs.
the only little drawback is that the bumper will rapidly get some light scuffs, which seem to go away after passing a microfiber cloth
Charging and emptying base ⅗
Despite being well built, charging well (in about 3.5h) and having a good capacity while being slim, it gave me some headaches.
The problem is the dust bag recognition, because even if put correctly the base would still say that it was missing, and the emptying function obviously could not work.
After many tries and even plugging and unplugging I contacted the assistance from the app, and after just 3 hours they responded giving me useful advice and a video of how to install the dustbag that, I must say, was COMPLETELY wrong as you can se in the following pic.
I even tried to do as suggested in the video, and to my surprised it worked, but not properly.
In fact the bag was put upside down and the dust would not end up in the bag, but in the rest of the tank.
In the end I just paired the robot and the base again. This solved the problem and works fine, but I can see a lot of people sending it back in warranty while it’s just a simple bug that I hope will be fixed soon.
Obode A8+ self emptying feature
Conclusion ⅘
The robot itself it’s amazing and well over my expectations, but the initial issue with the base was discomforting.
Also I am worried about the dustbags, as the product has been launched but not even on their site I can find spare dust bags, and in less than a couple of months from now I will have to buy them somehow, or the base will become useless.
I still give it an high score because the general quality and is high and the fast response from the assistance gave me hope for future fixes and support.
