Latest news with #X9Pro
Forbes
13-05-2025
- Forbes
Ecovacs Deebot X9 Pro Omni Combines Its Best Mopping And Vacuuming In One Bot
With an under-the-hood redesign, the X9 Pro is an impressive robovac I know, I was just praising Ecovacs for delivering one of its more impressive mopping robovacs with the X8 Pro Omni, but the company just released a new version that combines the best parts of the X8 with the suction technology of their other high-end robovacs in one machine. Ecovacs doesn't guarantee performance when standing the bot on its edge Ecovac's latest and greatest flagship robovac (coming about a month after its other latest and greatest flagship bot…this company is prolific!) takes an upgraded Ozmo roller mop and adds a boosted vacuuming system to create an X-series robovac that's better than any other individual bot in the company's lineup. I'm a big fan of roller mop technology. I first saw the technology applied in a robovac last year the Eufy S1 and instantly recognized how the tech could finally address the "dirty mop pad" issue of mopping robovacs. The main issue at hand is simple—mops get dirty. Even if you have the bot go back and clean itself every 20 minutes or after each room, there's a non-zero amount of time when the robovac is mopping with dirty pads, essentially just redistributing dirt. Given, they are laying down fresh water as they go, so the bots are picking up some dirt as they move other dirt around but it's still problematic. The mop has been reworked slightly for better performance The Ozmo roller mop in the X9 is an evolution of the roller mop technology I saw last year. It's even an evolution over the X8 that I just saw last month. It applies considerably more downward pressure than your traditional mopping pads but it also cleans the roller as it rotates. The X9 has an improved roller comb that gathers debris as well. Here to decimate dirt lodged in corners The mop also has a neat trick where it extends out past the body of the X9, essentially squaring off the circle and reaching into edges where a roller mop that's stuck under the body of a circular robot couldn't reach. It does make the bot a bit whiny: that little motor extending and retracting isn't the quietest. Still, it's a small price to pay for every nook and cranny getting cleaned. One note: while the X9 does regularly do a deep clean at the Omni station of the roller mop, you'll still need to get your hands dirty on occasion—there's still the small tray in the mopping unit that gets filled with slimy dirt after about a week or so of daily cleaning. What's cool about the X9's upgraded wet mopping capabilities is that the bot can now raise the main brush and side brush when it detects a wet mess. So rather than driving into a spill and flinging it around or getting it sucked up into the vacuum portion of the bot, the X9 Pro Omni can clean it with just the roller mop. Lifting the wet mop so that you don't get carpets and rugs wet is practically standard at this point, but raising the dry cleaning components is rare. So rare that I've only seen it on one other bot—the Matic Robot (more on that in the coming days). If it was just the roller mop that had gotten upgrades, the X9 would still be an impressive bot but Ecovacs pulled out the stops and added in their BLAST (Boosted Large-Airflow Suction Technology) system to improve the overall performance of the vacuum as well. Possibly the first vacuum to be able to back up the claims made by its promo renders BLAST is a combination of a redesigned on-demand 100W high-torque motor and SuperBoost battery. The motor takes advantage of an optimized airflow path to boost suction when needed (like on carpets and rugs). The battery delivers 50% higher discharge current but is also larger so that it lasts 2.5 times longer, all without heating up. What's interesting is that the overall suction of the X9 is actually lower at 16,600 Pa to the X8's 18,000 Pa. I'm actually OK with this since you don't really need all that suction on a regular basis for hard floors. You just need to be able to deliver increased suction and agitation when on carpet. The end result is that the X9 performs better on soft surfaces without sounding like a leaf blower or needing to recharge more often. Other hardware has been improved as well, with third-generation ZeroTangle main and side brushes. Compared to the X8, you can see that the X9's brush is more robust. The side brush for the X9 is similar to designs I first saw on Roborock that uses two offset bristle arms instead of a multi-armed brush wheel. It's a small design shift but it means that the X9 is quieter and that there are little to no hair tangles. Speaking of tangles, the X9 employs onboard AI to detect and avoid problematic items like shoes and cords. It will also use its AI to intelligently clean each room based on floor type and usage (like choosing to clean bathrooms last so as not to cross-contaminate). It will even figure out optimal paths based on previous blockages its encountered. You can also (finally) add Ecovacs robots to your Apple Home using Matter. It's extremely helpful once you've set all the parameters you want in the Ecovacs app and you just want a single app to control things like scheduling. Understated but effective The X9 Pro is paired with Ecovac's Omni station—it's a great design that needs no upgrades. It washes and dries the mop with 145° hot air and needs little to no maintenance. Since roller mops use less water overall, you won't be filling up and emptying the reservoirs nearly as much as with a mop pad system. I'm sure that Ecovacs will make changes next calendar year but honestly, there's only so much more that can be done to improve the station at this point. While it can be somewhat tiresome (if not impossible) to try and stay ahead of innovations in robovacs, the tech in the Deebot X9 Pro Omni is at the absolute top of the charts right now. The Deebot X9 Pro Omni is on sale now on the Ecovacs site at a reduced introductory price of $1,299 ($1,599 MSRP).
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Yahoo
The best portable SSDs for 2025
Whether you want to back up the data on your PC, transfer videos from your Mac or offload a few games from your PlayStation 5, a portable SSD is a quick and easy way to expand your storage. These little bricks may cost more than traditional hard drives, but they're significantly faster, lighter and more reliable. Figuring out the best portable SSD for you, though, isn't as simple as just picking the one with the lowest price or the most space. (Well, it can be, but that wouldn't be very efficient.) To help, we've weeded through the portable SSD market, tested a bunch of contenders and sorted out which ones offer the most value. You can find our top picks below, plus an overview of what to know before you buy. Best external SSDs for 2025 Other external SSDs we tested What to consider before buying an external SSD How we test external SSDs Recent updates The pre-built OWC Express 1M2 is a premium-feeling USB4 SSD that's roughly as fast as the ADATA SE920, but it's larger and significantly more expensive as of this writing. If you're in the relatively small group with a PC that supports USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 but not Thunderbolt or USB4, the Crucial X10 Pro is essentially a faster version of our top pick. The Lexar SL600 is a larger but slightly quicker option, while the Lexar SL500, Kingston XS2000 or Samsung T9 could also work if you see them on discount. As a reminder, though, drives like these are aimed primarily at content creators and other professionals, and you have to make sure you won't upgrade to a device with a faster USB interface anytime soon. The Samsung T7 Shield has a conveniently rugged design with a rubberized, IP65-rated shell. It also comes with both USB-C and USB-A cables. But it was consistently slower than the X9 Pro and XS1000 in our benchmark tests, plus it has a shorter three-year warranty. The Silicon Power PX10 is an especially affordable USB 3.2 Gen 2 model. Its peak speeds weren't too far off the X9 Pro or XS1000 in synthetic benchmarks, but it can get distractingly hot and its sustained writes are markedly worse. It took 50 seconds longer to move our 70GB custom test folder to this drive compared to the X9 Pro, for example. The Crucial X6 is another low-cost option that's a good bit slower than our top picks. It's limited to a three-year warranty and lacks an IP rating as well. It's not a terrible option for the basics, but there's little reason to get it over the XS1000 when their prices are similar. The OWC Envoy Pro FX is well-built and supports Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2, but it's a smidge slower than the SE920 and Express 1M2, and it's much pricier than the former. The first thing to figure out before buying a portable SSD is just how much storage space you need. Most of the drives we considered for this guide are available in capacities ranging from one to four terabytes, though plenty of smaller and larger options exist. There's no hard-and-fast rule for which size is 'best' — that'll ultimately depend on your budget and what exactly you're looking to stash. But in general, it's better to overcompensate than underdo it. Nobody wants to be forced into buying a second drive because they filled the first one up too quickly. If you're backing up a PC, a good rule of thumb is to buy an external SSD with twice as much space as your computer's internal storage. This way, you can save at least one full backup while also having room for additional data. If you want to store a bunch of PlayStation or Xbox games with huge install sizes, you may need more space. If you just want to back up a small collection of files, you may be better off saving your cash and just getting a smaller USB flash drive instead, which aren't quite the same as the external SSDs we tested for this guide. In general, you get a better price-per-gigabyte ratio the further you go up the capacity ladder. As of this writing, the 1TB Samsung T9 is priced at $130, or $0.13 per gigabyte (GB), while the 4TB version is available for $297 or $0.07 per GB. That technically makes the larger model a better 'value,' but not everyone needs to pay that much more upfront. SSDs in the same speed class tend to not vary too wildly in terms of performance, so part of our decision-making for this guide came down to which ones are often the cheapest. But prices can fluctuate over time; if you see that one of our top picks is priced way higher than a comparable honorable mention, feel free to get the latter. At this point in time, costs are broadly trending upwards. Just about all external SSDs are significantly faster than mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs), so you'll save time waiting for files to transfer and games to load no matter what. Within the market, however, there are distinct performance tiers. These are defined in large part by the USB interface a drive supports. While all of the SSDs we considered for this guide can connect over USB-C, some USB-C connections can supply faster transfer speeds than others. Sorting through this can get real confusing real fast, so we'll try to put it in simple terms. You can essentially divide today's crop of portable SSDs into different segments. At the very top are drives that utilize the (relatively) new Thunderbolt 5 standard, which has a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 80 gigabits per second (Gbps). (You may see it advertise speeds up to 120 Gbps, but that boost doesn't apply to storage devices.) But portable SSDs that support this tech only just started to trickle out toward the end of 2024, and the market for devices with Thunderbolt 5 ports is still fairly limited, with the most notable exceptions being Apple's top-end Macs with a M4 Pro or M4 Max chip. Thunderbolt 5 is built on a spec called USB4, which can technically reach up to 80 Gbps as well but is more typically available in a flavor that tops out at 40 Gbps. Portable SSDs based on that standard started to roll out toward the end of 2023 but are still relatively infrequent. The older Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4, which other high-end external SSDs continue to use, support the same 40 Gbps maximum. A third version of USB4, meanwhile, maxes at 20 Gbps, as does an older yet more frequently used standard called USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. Below that is USB 3.2 Gen 2, which maxes at 10 Gbps. Then there's USB 3.2 Gen 1, which is capped at 5 Gbps. Lastly, we'll bundle together SSDs that use older standards and aren't worth considering here. To make this easy: For everyday folks, a good USB 3.2 Gen 2 drive is the sweet spot between fast-enough performance, wide-enough compatibility and cheap-enough price, so those make up our primary recommendations above. If you work in a creative field or don't mind paying extra to shave seconds off your large file transfers, though, a 'higher-tier' model would make sense. However, note that actual computers that utilize USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 aren't super common — no Mac supports it, for one — and the interface is effectively being replaced by USB4. In general, your chain is only as strong as its weakest link: If your computer only has USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, for example, you could still use a Thunderbolt SSD, but you won't get beyond Gen 2 speeds. Make sure you know what you're working with before you buy. As a refresher, storage devices are broadly measured in terms of read and write speeds. The former refers to how long it takes to access something from the drive; the latter, how long it takes to save something to it. From there, you can break these metrics into sequential and random performance. Sequential speeds tend to matter more with portable SSDs, since most people use them to save or access long, constant streams of data such as a bunch of high-res photos. Random speeds would be important if you want to run video games off the drive, since that'd involve reading and writing smaller, more scattered files. Either way, how well an SSD can sustain its performance with extended use is also critical. A modern portable SSD's speeds aren't just about its USB interface, though. Its performance can also depend on how advanced its controller is, whether it has a native USB flash controller or a separate bridge chip to communicate with a host device, the kind and quality of NAND flash memory it uses, whether it has a DRAM cache or it's DRAM-less, and more. We're simplifying things, but here are some quick tips: Drives with triple-level cell (TLC) memory aren't as cheap as quad-level cell (QLC) SSDs, but they're generally more reliable and they offer better write performance. Having a dedicated DRAM cache helps if you plan to hit your drive with more intense, sustained workloads, but may not be worth the extra cost for most people. Some models with native flash controllers may not perform as well as those with a bridging chip, depending on the SSD inside, but they typically draw less heat and are physically smaller. All of this is to say that an external SSD's speeds aren't quite as straightforward as what the manufacturer chooses to advertise on the box. It's also worth remembering that you can turn an internal SSD into a portable solution with a good enclosure. If you have a spare drive and don't mind going the DIY route, this can be a cheaper and more flexible solution, though we've stuck to pre-built models for this guide for the sake of simplicity. Most portable SSDs are impressively small and light, so they won't be difficult to tuck in a bag (or even a pocket) and take on the go. We note above if any drive is bulkier than usual. Nothing we're talking about matters if your drive can't last in the long term. It's hard to definitively say which external SSDs are the most reliable, but we scoured through user reviews and feedback while researching this guide to ensure none of our picks show a pattern of catastrophic errors. If there was too much smoke around a particular model, we steered clear. We ruled out certain drives from SanDisk and Western Digital, for instance, after reports from Ars Technica and The Verge noted an issue that led to data loss (and lawsuits) in 2023. That said, one of the big reasons you'd buy an SSD in general is its superior durability. Because it has no moving mechanical parts inside, an SSD has far fewer avenues to failure than an external hard drive. You still don't want to be careless with them, but an accidental drop shouldn't be the end of the world. Some portable SSDs build on this inherent ruggedness with plastic or rubberized casings and more robust waterproofing. These aren't necessary for everyone, but if you're a frequent traveler or someone who often works outdoors, there are options for you. Still, all drives can fail. If you have any sort of data you'd be distraught to lose, you should back it up regularly, then make a second backup, ideally with a cloud service. Along those protective lines, we also took note of the warranty policy for each drive we tested. Just about all of them are backed for either three or five years; of course, longer is better. It's not uncommon to store sensitive data on a portable SSD, so some models offer extra security features like hardware-based encryption — i.e., direct scrambling of data stored on the drive itself — built-in keypads and fingerprint readers to protect against unauthorized access if the drive is lost or stolen. While not top requirements, perks like these are certainly good to have. Some SSDs also come with companion software to further manage the drive. The best of those can be handy to have around, but we wouldn't call them essential. Unfortunately, we did not have access to a device that can make full use of USB 3.2 Gen 2, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 and Thunderbolt/USB4 speeds interchangeably, so we had to split our testing across multiple devices, including an M1 Pro MacBook Pro and an Alienware gaming PC running Windows 11. Because of this, we primarily compared the portable SSDs within each 'class' against one another. Before switching OSes, we reformatted each drive to each platform's standard file system format: APFS for macOS and NTFS for Windows. After researching which SSDs had enough positive feedback to be worth testing in the first place, we put 13 drives through a range of synthetic and 'real-world' benchmark tests. On Windows, these included CrystalDiskMark, PCMark 10's Data Drive Benchmark and 3DMark's gaming-focused Storage Benchmark. On macOS, we used AmorphousDiskMark (effectively a Mac version of CrystalDiskMark), BlackMagic Disk Speed Test and ATTO Disk Benchmark. We also timed how long it took for each drive to read and write a custom 70GB folder filled with roughly 11,500 different files, including photos, videos, music files, PDFs and other large and small data types scattered across numerous subfolders. We performed multiple passes for each test to avoid irregularities, and we kept track of each SSD's heat levels over the course of the whole suite. Our process wasn't a perfect science, but it gave us a general sense of how each drive compares to other models in its price and performance range. February 2025: We've checked to ensure the pricing info and links in this guide are still accurate. We've also added details on the (relatively) new Thunderbolt 5 interface, which has been implemented in a couple recent portable SSDs like the OWC Envoy Ultra and LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5. We'll look to include testing notes for those for our next update, as they should be faster than the ADATA SE920, our current premium pick, albeit for a much higher price. For now, though, our top picks remain the same. October 2024: We've taken a sweep through this guide to ensure all pricing and availability info is still correct. Our recommendations are unchanged.
