Eureka reached out to me back in May asking if I was interested in testing their recently released J15 Pro Ultra robovac, and I have been using it for the last couple of months to test out its features. Eureka was originally founded in 1909 in Detroit, Michigan, but was taken over in 2016 by the Chinese company Midea Group. Eureka still manufactures aftermarket vacuum accessories, such as bags, belts and filters in the United States.
With that out of the way, first a disclaimer: Eureka provided a free sample without any editorial input or review pre-approval. Now, some specifications:
| J15 Max Ultra | J15 Pro Ultra | J15 Ultra | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Navigation | Lidar SLAM | Lidar SLAM | Lidar SLAM |
| Obstacle Avoidance | Line Laser + RGB Vision Sensor + LED Light + Infrared Vision Sensor + Infrared Array Emitter | Line Laser + RGB Vision Sensor + LED Light | Line Laser + RGB Vision Sensor + LED Light |
| IntelliView AI Version | 2.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Suction Power | 22,000 Pa | 16,200 Pa | 19,000 Pa |
| FlexiRazorB6 | Y | Y | Y |
| Roller Brush Lifting | Y | Y | * |
| Auto Mop Lifting | Y | Y | Y |
| SweepExtend | Y | * | * |
| ScrubExtend | Y | Y | Y |
| AI Carpet Detection | Y | Y | Y |
| Crossing Height | 3+1 cm / 1.18+0.39" | 2 cm / 0.78 inches | 2 cm / 0.78 inches |
| Battery Capacity | 6400 mAh | 5200 mAh | 5200 mAh |
| Station Dimensions Robot HWD (inches) | 18.4 x 15.5 x 18.0 4.6 x 13.9 × 13.9 | 18.4 x 15.5 x 18.0 4.6 x 13.9 × 13.9 | |
| J15 series warranty Battery warranty | 2 years 1 year | 2 years 1 year | 2 years 1 year |
| MSRP | Unknown | $999.99 | $699.99 |
The above-mentioned prices are the suggested retail pricing; however, the J15 Pro Ultra currently has discounts both on the official website and Amazon, as detailed at the conclusion of this review.
Warranty
I added a row with warranty support. Interestingly, Eureka provides two years of warranty for the robot vacuum and Base Station, but only one year for the battery inside the J15 Pro Ultra robovac (page 28). If I were to make a comparison, Samsung provides two years of warranty for their smartphones, which includes the battery. Make of that what you will.
First impressions
The company sent me the J15 Pro Ultra, which, by the way, is currently their flagship product, and also because the J15 Max Ultra is not available yet. It came in a big box, which included the Base Station, which is rather large in itself. The station is almost 45.8 cm (18.03") deep, 39.5 cm (15.55") wide, with a height of 46.8 cm (18.42"). It houses the trash bag, which was preinstalled, and two water tanks, one for clean water and the other for dirty water.
Unlike the Narwal Freo Z Ultra with which I am making a direct comparison, the J15 Pro Ultra does not have a top lid; the top is literally the two water tanks with a front bezel, it actually looks pretty tidy, and is extremely practical as well.
In the box:
-
J15 Pro Ultra Robovac x 1
-
Roller Brush x 1 (pre-installed)
-
Mop Pad x 2 (pre-installed)
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Base Station Dust Bag × 1 (pre-installed)
- Base Station × 1
- Mop Cleaning Tray × 1 (pre-installed)
- Clean Water Tank × 1
- Dirty Water Tank × 1
Included Accessories:
- Extension Ramp × 1
- Side Brush × 1
- Cleaning Brush
- User Manual
Manufacturer claims
It"s only fair to include the claims made by the manufacturer here too, as they are part and parcel of the selling points and highlights for this model, they are in no particular order and taken from the review brief sent to me by my contact.
- Elegant and Functional Design
- Powerful Suction of 16,200 Pa
- Cut Through Hair Wrap with FlexiRazor™
- Clean Edges Like Never Before with ScrubExtend
- Intelligent Strategizing with IntelliView™ Al
- IntelliView™ Al-Powered Obstacle Avoidance
- Self-Cleaning Base Station
With that out of the way, let"s continue with my findings.
Design
The J15 Pro Ultra itself follows a traditional design that you will find on many robovacs; however, this model is not a complete circle, it"s more of a squircle (which you may remember from the Galaxy Watch8 announcement) with a raised central "tower" that houses the LIDAR SLAM system. The robot itself is 35.4 cm (13.9") wide, 35.5 cm (13.97") deep, with a height of 11 cm (4.33"). The station looks quite nice and does not look out of place in my (mostly) white kitchen with a brown tiled floor, and a good amount of wood color finish. All in all, it looks great, doesn"t look out of place. The finish is a glossy gray, with a single light indicator on the top.
On the bottom is where you will start to see the difference, and what makes it a bit more unique. Rather than a cloth attachment, which is what you will find on most robovacs that mop, the J15 Pro Ultra has two full spinning mop attachments and one sweeper.
Size comparison
Side by side with the Narwal Freo Z Ultra, you can see that although the J15 Pro Ultra"s base station is taller, it is not as wide, thanks to the robot not completely entering the base station like with the Narwal; this results in a larger footprint on the wall. The J15 Pro Ultra robot itself is also slightly smaller in height, which you can see where I have placed a spirit level, which is a bit odd because Narwal claims it has the same 11cm height, obviously not!
Getting started
First of all, you will have to download the Eureka app, which you can look for on the Apple App Store or Google Play, or scan the QR code on the Quick Start card that is included in the box. The Eureka turns on if you dock it to the charge port or by holding down the standby button for three seconds. Once you have the app installed on your phone, you can add the J15 Pro Ultra robovac by scanning the QR code located on the robot itself under the top lid (or by manually choosing it in the app). The app will guide you through connecting it to your Wi-Fi.
Preparing the Base Station took the most work, as you have to remove some protective transport tape, fill and reinsert the clean and dirty water tanks, install the base ramp, and plug it in. I only had to remove the plastic covering, the rubber inserts for the bumper and install the mops and side brush on the robot; the dustbin inside the robot is also preinstalled and can be accessed by opening the top "lid" of the robot, this also lets you access QR code for scanning, and the WiFi reset button.
Once you are paired up and you have enough charge, you are guided through the app to add the model, and I was immediately prompted to install a firmware update.
After running the update, which rebooted the robovac, you can then link it with your chosen voice assistant, which is pretty effortless (1) (2) (3) (4) and then appears in devices on the Alexa app. According to the official product page, the J15 Pro Ultra also supports Google Home, and Siri support is "coming later".
As you can see with the above images, you are first asked to "Create a new map" for the environment that the J15 Pro Ultra operates in, it took the J15 Pro Ultra two and a half minutes to "Quick Map" the 32 square meters the robot has access to on the ground floor of my house, which is far quicker than the Narwal"s 31 minutes (without cleaning). Moving back to the app, you can then split the areas into rooms or zones.
| Cleaning wizard | ||
|---|---|---|
At a certain moment when first setting up the J15 Pro Ultra, a wizard will pop up asking if you want to enable or disable some optional settings, like Do Not Disturb Mode, Enhanced edge and corner cleaning, and Stain Recognition Mode. I left the DND mode off because my schedule runs at 4 am, and I will not hear the voice prompts and dustbin emptying when it is cleaning downstairs from upstairs anyway.
Aside from that, there are additional granular settings worth checking out. The IntelliView™ Al-Powered Obstacle Avoidance system can be enabled or disabled; this lets the robot determine avoidance for objects in the room using a combination of Lidar, lasers, and the onboard camera. In addition, you can choose whether to Smart Clean, Vacuum & Mop, Vacuum then mop, Vacuum, Mop, or Custom (which allows you to set the parameters of cleaning for each room).
There are four manual settings for vacuuming: Quiet, Standard, Turbo, and Max. For mopping, you can set from Low: 1, to High: 30. There is no detergent module, which is a shame, but my contact told me it is possible to add detergent directly to the clean water tank, which is what I do.
In addition, as you can see from the second image above, you can even decide how often the robot returns to rinse and clean the mops. I left it on the default setting of 15 square meters. This means that the robovac has to return at least twice during a cleaning session to rinse and clean the mops, as the given area for mopping is 32m2. This also means the robovac is not spreading around dirty water; for a more intensive clean, you could set it to return after every ten square meters.
As you may see in the above second picture, and after a full clean the Lidar SLAM mapping starts to detect furniture on its own, you can further edit this in Map Control, for example it detects a desk, but it is placed wrong (too far from the wall) a couch and coffee table is also detected in the correct spots along with indicators for the rugs I have as well. The four legs of my island are also detected in the kitchen.
Usage
For the past three years, I have had my robovac scheduled to clean every night at 4 am. As suggested by my contact, I have set the Humid level for water to "30" (which is the highest setting) and enabled Stain Recognition mode" which is disabled by default, with the schedule set to "Vacuum then mop" I do this because in my experience with the Freo Z Ultra, Vacuum and mop tends to drag around gunk on the mop pads.
As already mentioned, the J15 Pro Ultra is said to have AI obstacle avoidance through its own IntelliVision system. The tech exists in almost all mid to high-range robovacs, but each has its own name; it is not new in itself, and I observed it working as intended. Rather than just bashing into table legs and chairs, it stops short of these obstacles and carefully moves forward or around them. Eureka has some examples of use on its YouTube channel that you can check out. Although it"s a cool feature, I generally don"t leave such items on the ground when I know a scheduled cleaning is going to take place, but I can rest easy knowing that it won"t just try to drive over cables or stuff left on the ground by accident.
I am pleased to report that the J15 Pro Ultra does not get stuck like my Neabot Q11 did at my screen door.
As you would expect, the J15 Pro Ultra detects what type of floor it is on and lifts the mop for carpets. It also has no issue navigating around the black patterns of my rug, which sometimes resulted in a "cliff detection" on the Neabot Q11.
Ramp climbing
I am pleased to say that this is the first robot vacuum that I have been sent that has managed to succesfully navigate up a 19.5 degree angled slope into my bathroom. As you will see in the video below, it took a few tries, but persists. I built this makeshift ramp a few years ago to aid my Proscenic M7 Pro that is also able to climb it.
This means I could replace my older M7 Pro with the J15 Pro Ultra, since it will be able to navigate into all of the upstairs rooms. Great stuff!
Quirks
No robot vacuum that I have tested is perfect, and I would be remiss not to share my findings with you. The water tank lasts for five full cleans. During the sixth clean, it will vacuum and then, when the schedule calls for mopping, depending on the water level, it will start but then end midway through the schedule, with the app giving an alert to fill the water tank and "install it properly." This also pauses the schedule.
Flashing red light, every five days!
The light on the base station will also pulse red to indicate that there is an issue worth looking at in the app; in this case, the clean water tank was empty, and the dirty water tank was full. The quirk is that when you have sorted out the water tanks, the robot wants to continue with where it left off in the schedule, sometimes hours later, of course. I have reported this to my contact and was told I can simply "Stop" the task. I"d prefer the behavior to be a choice in the app if I want to continue the schedule; if I don"t do anything, then the app should assume I don"t want the schedule to continue.
More quirks
| Water droplets | Mat dragging | Scuffs |
|---|---|---|
A few smaller quirks that I ran across include the robot leaving water droplets around for some odd reason. I reported this to my contact, and as it affects both the Pro and Max models I am testing, it is likely something that can"t be fixed with a software update. It"s not a huge deal, because overall, it is not a lot of water either.
It"s a drag
My black doormat seems to be the nemesis for all Robovacs, either it doesn"t get cleaned properly and I wake to find all sorts of white speck dust still there, or it gets dragged out of position, despite having a rubber lining. Really odd, I know robovacs tend not to agree with black carpeting, but it has gotten better over the years.
Curtains for you, mister!
In addition, this, like all other robovacs I"ve tested, also avoids curtains as if they were solid objects. It"s really annoying. There"s a bloody camera on the front of it, why can"t we use some of that AI intelligence to determine that it can bump into curtains in order to sweep under them? I have reported this to my contact.
You may have noticed from a few of the photos that the J15 Pro Ultra has scuffs on the side; after only two months, and the despite me carefully creating a robovac friendly environment most nights, I sometimes forget to stow the sofa side table, or put the Ikea Island chairs up on it, and it is exactly those objects that have sharp edged metal bars that the robovac might be bumping into in the middle of the night. However, what is the point of AI and camera guidance if it can"t intelligently navigate around these things without scuffing itself?
Beware of the gunk
There is one small plastic thing that can really ruin your day with this though, in the third image up above, this is a plastic filter turned upside down, and it has been designed in such a way that it can become clogged with gunk (after around three to four weeks in my case) when the Base Station does its mop washing thing and can no longer pump away the water. This results in the mop tray getting flooded with water, and while this can be detached and emptied, a good amount of water stays in the Base Station too, resulting in you having to lift it and tip the water out. This brings me to my final quirk, which is the power cord; it cannot be disconnected from the Base Station, so while you are tipping it to get the water out, be sure not to make the power cord wet!
I have reported all this to my contact and was assured that my advice to provide a detachable cord in a future model would be passed on to the technical team. I also know that they fixed the plastic filter in the J15 Max Ultra, as it has an updated design that I am currently testing.
Weak mopping
In my opinion, the mop pads do not get wet enough, even on the most intensive "30" setting. I filmed the entire process of mopping my kitchen, which took 13m53s, which you can view here, and compared it to the Narwal Freo Z Ultra cleaning the same area in just 8m53s. The Narwal, with the most intense mopping setting, shows a clear difference in floor wetness.
Conclusion
Again, this definitely feels and looks like a premium product, even the few quirks that I came across are not really deal breakers, for the right price. Here we have a brand that is still manufacturing in the United States, despite being owned by a Chinese parent company. I am hopeful they will take on board my feedback, but only time will tell.
I really wish it had a detergent module, but I add robovac detergent directly into the clean water tank, which results in my floors really shining. Thanks to the mops not pressing really hard while cleaning, stubborn and already dried stains will most likely get left behind; my contact told me that the Stain Recognition Mode works best with colored wet stains, and with a stain height of at least 1.5mm, it does not recognize transparent liquids. I don"t know about you, but I immediately clean up spills. I suppose I could manually tell the robovac to do this instead when they happen!
Also, for some reason, Eureka has released this "Pro Ultra" model based on the original J15, and then decided to weaken the suction of the vacuum from 19,000 Pa on the "standard" model, to 16,200 Pa on the Pro Ultra model, weird? I reckon it redeems itself with the ramp climbing though.
As I have said in previous robovac reviews, they all need a little help too. As you can see in the above image, I make the kitchen robovac-friendly before I go to bed. It"s up to you, of course, but I like having the entire space under my kitchen island cleaned, not just parts of it.
Would I recommend the J15 Pro Ultra? Let"s be real, this costs half the $1,499 asking price of the Narwal Freo Z Ultra and is just as good. I also think some of the problems I pointed out are fixable with a firmware update. In addition, you really need to check the mop tray and plastic filter at least once a month to avoid blockage and the tray filling up with water, and then you"re good.
All in all, I do think it"s a great product with a few quirks that can be fixed.
- Eureka J15 Pro Ultra at Amazon for $779.99 (currently 22% off)
As of writing, the official website is offering $370 off with an auto-applied coupon code, bringing the total price down to $629.99, so that softens the blow a bit with regard to the cost.
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