ILIFE becomes ZACO: Vacuum robots in Europe under new management

The ILIFE brand is a household word in China gadgets. Anyone who has been looking for a round household helper will sooner or later inevitably come across the models of the Chinese manufacturer ILIFE. Almost every three months, a new robot is launched on the market. From 1 July 2019, Robovox will be the sole distributor of the brand throughout Europe.

We were already allowed to visit Robovox Distributions GmbH in Essen, but the head office is in Gelsenkirchen. At this time (end of 2017) Robovox already existed, but the suction robots were still sold under the umbrella name “ILIFE Germany”. In the long term, the distributor would like to succeed in getting the models into the general specialist trade. This also works quite well, at least externally, as ILIFE is also available at MediaMarkt and Saturn in Europe.

Why ZACO?

Presumably in order to avoid possible infringements of name rights or to be able to better build up an own image, the brand name will in future amount to “ZACO” (pronounced Säko). Nothing will change in the existing models (not even the names), the newly appearing vacuum robots will be sold under the brand name “ZACO”. Thus the ZACO A9S will be introduced just in time for the name change at the beginning of July.

The agreements made regarding the transfer name include not only the complete distribution of all vacuum robot models, but also logistics, service and marketing. Anyone who already owns an ILIFE vacuum robot will continue to have Robovox as their contact for support questions.

Not for nothing many ILIFE prospective customers order their robot rather from Germany, finally one receives here up to two years warranty, multilingual support, dispatch within fewer days and repair locally. This way, if you have difficulties with the suction robots, you can save yourself the discussions and returns to China. Of course all these advantages cost a little more than the orders from China.

The ILIFE product range

LIFE is one of the most active producers of household robots worldwide: With the A9 and A9S, the manufacturer is following the new philosophy of bringing more powerful models onto the market at slightly higher prices. Here is the chronological order so that you can keep a reasonable overview between the A, V and X series:

• A-Series: A4, A4S, A6, A8, A9, A9S
• V-Series: V1, V5, V5S Pro, V7, V7S, V7S Pro, V80/V8S, V7S Plus, V4
• X-Series: X5, X800 (China only)

A clear technology/marketing pattern cannot be discerned here, neither from the letters nor from the numbers. Only the identifiers “S” and “Pro” can be found at the end of the product name when individual vacuums are extended.

We were able to test some ILIFE models so far and mostly came to the conclusion: Very good price-performance ratio. From a technological point of view, ILIFE has lost a little of its connection to Roborock and Ecovacs, so future models will have to be technically retrofitted. I can particularly recommend the ILIFE A7, which is really a real snapper in terms of value for money.

Do you have an ILIFE vacuum robot at home? If so, what do you think of the business move?