Kyvol Cybovac sweeps nicely into family life

First impressions

Opening the box, first impressions are perhaps slightly daunting. The unit looks big, complicated and (we thought) probably takes ages to set up. Still up for the challenge, we plugged it into its docking station and allowed it an overnight charge.

Then, the next morning with not much to do while on Covid-19 lockdown, we grabbed it, flipped it over to engage the ON-OFF switch and looked at the instruction manuals with trepidation.

“I don’t want to play with it if I have to ‘download an app’ just to make it work,” said my wife, who is not fond of smartphones in the first place.

Luckily for us, Kyvol has accommodated for my wife’s approach and mindset… and so has included a good old fashioned remote control. It’s a simple question of power on, click and the unit is ready.

Click and go?

But was it just click and go? Yes, almost. You have to fit a kind of external road sweeper disk to the undercarriage before you start. Our mistake was not clipping this in hard enough to start with, but once it was reattached we started to enjoy the Kyvol experience.

You can set the machine off just to focus on all a room’s edges, you can set it off to focus on one single spot (for a deep sweep clean) and you can set it off for a general spin around a whole room which it will do for 20-minutes at a time.

According to its makers, “The Cybovac E31 is equipped with a unique Gyroptic™ navigation system, which will enhance your overall cleaning experience. With its high-precision gyroscope, the E31 is able to move in a more accurate zig-zag route while cleaning, leaving no spot untouched. The state-of-the-art optic flow sensor helps calibrate the navigation of the E31 and increases its cleaning efficiency by nearly 30%

We have a one-foot high step in our lounge and the robot knew not to hurl itself lemming-like downwards. We have a mix of hardwood floors and carpet and the Kyvol unit is smart enough to increase its suction power to full when it moves onto the carpet.

It can negotiate its way over room joins, even when there’s a piece of protruding wood to hold a carpet down (there’s probably a technical name for that in carpetmaking land).

Is it effective? You only have to open up the dust compartment to see that this little guy (in the gender-neutral sense) does indeed sweep up a good amount of dust (is that mostly skin? eww, sorry!) and the quick release mechanism allows you to get rid of each ‘job’ pretty fast.

Part of the family?

So could the Kyvol Cybovac be part of our family?

Admittedly it’s probably only 66% as effective as putting a full Dyson suck job around your home, but you have to trade that off against the fact that it’s just 1% of the comparable effort i.e. you just plug it in and go. So overall, yes, we’d like to welcome one in.

There is a magnetic strip in the pack (which the unit will not cross over), but we found it easier to just shut the door on the machine and let it do its thing.

One extra point to mention is the bed i.e. how many of us vacuum under the bed? After all, there’s plenty of dust under there and many of us have ironing boards and shoeboxes stuffed under the bed, right?

Kyvol Cybovac positively excels at under-bed cleaning and you can remove a whole heap of dead skin cells that you didn’t know were cluttering up your carpet for the greater good of cleanliness.

We tested the Kyvol Cybovac E31which retails at $279.99 (approx £220 at the time of writing) and it’s features include the aforementioned Gyroptic™ smart navigation, 2200Pa suction power, battery life of 150 minutes, smart home mapping, virtual no-go lines, the Kyvol App, voice control and a 300ml water tank for mopping attachment jobs.

Approved image use: Kyvol

Approved image use: Kyvol

Approved image use: Kyvol