How to choose a robot vacuum cleaner | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

Pho­to: rtings.com

If you don’t have the time, ener­gy and desire to clean, but you want to live clean, a robot vac­u­um clean­er will come to the res­cue. But how to choose the right mod­el when there are so many offers on the mar­ket? In today’s arti­cle, we tell you what robot vac­u­um clean­ers are and what to look for when choos­ing them.

What are robot vacuum cleaners

Xiao­mi Roborock S7 can per­form dry and wet clean­ing. Pho­to: bgr.com

Dry cleaning robots

Designed to col­lect small debris, dust, ani­mal hair. Pow­er­ful devices are able to clean the car­pet (but they will not cope with a long pile). Such mod­els are suit­able for peo­ple with pets, because they per­fect­ly pick up spilled food, scat­tered filler from the tray and wool.

Robot vacuum cleaners with wet cleaning function

These mod­els are addi­tion­al­ly equipped with a water tank and a mod­ule with a rag, in addi­tion to col­lect­ing dust, they wipe the floor. But before clean­ing car­pets in such mod­els, you will have to remove the water con­tain­er.

To solve this prob­lem, Xiao­mi has released a Roborock S7 robot vac­u­um clean­er with VibraRise tech­nol­o­gy — before enter­ing the car­pet, the plat­form with a wet wipe ris­es by 5 mm. This mod­el is equipped with an advanced sil­i­cone brush that cleans even dried-on stains and winds hair less. Pre­vi­ous mod­els used ordi­nary fleece, which was dif­fi­cult to clean.

Robot vac­u­um clean­ers with wet clean­ing are suit­able for aller­gy suf­fer­ers, the elder­ly and inac­tive peo­ple, fam­i­lies with chil­dren and those who work hard and want to keep the house clean.

How­ev­er, in terms of the qual­i­ty of wet clean­ing, these vac­u­um clean­ers are infe­ri­or to mops or robot­ic pol­ish­ers.

Floor polishing robots

These devices belong to a dif­fer­ent cat­e­go­ry of home appli­ances. They have a dif­fer­ent design, thanks to which the load on the rag is dis­trib­uted even­ly.

What to Consider When Choosing a Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Cleaning area

The area a robot vac­u­um clean­er can clean is affect­ed not only by the bat­tery capac­i­ty, but also by the nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem. The pho­to shows a 360 S7 robot vac­u­um clean­er with a laser rangefind­er for accu­rate build­ing a map of the room. Pho­to: smartrobotreviews.com

Before buy­ing a robot vac­u­um, make sure it can clean your apart­ment with­out recharg­ing. Typ­i­cal­ly, the man­u­fac­tur­er indi­cates this infor­ma­tion in the char­ac­ter­is­tics or descrip­tion of the prod­uct. If it is not there, pay atten­tion to the capac­i­ty of the bat­tery. A 2500 mAh bat­tery is enough to clean a 70-meter apart­ment. So, the ILIFE ROBOT A9S robot vac­u­um clean­er with a 2600 mAh bat­tery is designed to clean rooms with an area of ​​80 m².

How­ev­er, the clean­ing area depends not only on the bat­tery capac­i­ty, the nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem also affects this indi­ca­tor. Advanced mod­els are equipped with a lidar (laser range find­er) and/or a cam­era. Thanks to them, the vac­u­um clean­er builds a more accu­rate map, does not make unnec­es­sary move­ments, cleans up faster, which means it will last foraboutmore area.

For exam­ple, Xiao­mi Roborock S6 MaxV with lidar, cam­era and 5200 mAh bat­tery is designed to clean rooms up to 250 m².

Power

For robot vac­u­um clean­ers, suc­tion pow­er is not as impor­tant as for clas­sic mod­els. Many man­u­fac­tur­ers do not even indi­cate it in the spec­i­fi­ca­tions.

Robot­ic devices have low­er suc­tion pow­er than con­ven­tion­al vac­u­um clean­ers. You should not expect that the robot will per­fect­ly clean the car­pet (it is not designed at all for clean­ing prod­ucts with a long pile). To main­tain clean­li­ness in the house, mod­els with a capac­i­ty of up to 1500 Pa are suit­able — they will care­ful­ly col­lect fine dirt on the floor. And more pow­er­ful options will clean a car­pet with a low pile well and cope with strong pol­lu­tion (for exam­ple, Xiao­mi Dreame Bot D9 Max with adjustable suc­tion pow­er up to 4000 Pa).

Noise level

The vol­ume of the robot clean­er depends on the select­ed mode. At max­i­mum pow­er (for exam­ple, when clean­ing a heav­i­ly pol­lut­ed area), it will work quite loud­ly. The aver­age lev­el is in the range of 54–74 dB. In com­par­i­son, a sub­way train emits 64 dB of noise.

When start­ing the robot vac­u­um clean­er at night, con­sid­er the San­PiN stan­dards — the noise should not exceed 45 dB. For exam­ple, Xiao­mi Roborock S6 Pure can­not be turned on from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., since the noise dur­ing clean­ing is approx­i­mate­ly 60 dB (com­pa­ra­ble to the atmos­phere in an office where office equip­ment is work­ing and col­leagues are talk­ing to each oth­er).

Care and maintenance

It is impor­tant to reg­u­lar­ly clean the ele­ments of the vac­u­um clean­er from hair, wool and dust. Pho­to: the-ambient.com

Dur­ing clean­ing, the robot wraps hair and ani­mal hair on the brush and wheels, dust set­tles on the sen­sors, which makes them less respon­sive to obsta­cles. There­fore, it is impor­tant to reg­u­lar­ly clean the mov­able and swiv­el wheels, wipe the sen­sors, emp­ty the dust con­tain­er, wash the fil­ter, and so on. When choos­ing a robot vac­u­um, make sure that all of these items are easy to reach and put back in.

In addi­tion, the floor cloth, cen­tral brush and fil­ter must be changed peri­od­i­cal­ly. Make sure the con­sum­ables are on sale and afford­able.

In many Xiao­mi mod­els, the pack­age includes a spe­cial knife with a brush for clean­ing the cen­tral brush and dust box, the fil­ter sta­tus can be tracked in the appli­ca­tion, and con­sum­ables are sold in sets. For exam­ple, a set of 12 pieces (5‑arm side brush x 2, 3‑arm side brush x 3, fil­ter x 3, brush roller x 2, cloth x 2) for Xiao­mi Roborock vac­u­um clean­er S6 / S5, E35 / E2 costs 2,110 rubles (at the time of writ­ing).

Height

The height of the robot is a key para­me­ter if you want the robot vac­u­um clean­er to clean under the bat­ter­ies, bed, wardrobe and oth­er fur­ni­ture. Before buy­ing, mea­sure the height of the nich­es where it should go.

Mod­els with­out lidars are usu­al­ly low­er (for exam­ple, the height of KITFORT KT-518 is 8 cm).

Cleaning modes

Some mod­els in the max­i­mum pow­er mode can clean a car­pet with a small nap. Pho­to: rtings.com

Typ­i­cal­ly, robot vac­u­um clean­ers have sev­er­al modes of oper­a­tion depend­ing on the suc­tion pow­er (for exam­ple, qui­et, bal­anced, tur­bo, Xiao­mi Roborock S5 MAX max­i­mum). In addi­tion, mod­ern mod­els are equipped with fea­tures that sim­pli­fy the clean­ing process for the user, make it more con­ve­nient. Many have a com­pan­ion smart­phone app (like Mi Home or Roborock for Xiao­mi devices) where you can:

— start the robot remote­ly (you must agree, it’s nice to come to an already cleaned apart­ment);
— cre­ate a clean­ing sched­ule (set the days of the week, time, some mod­els even allow you to select rooms, pow­er mode and the degree of wet­ting of the rag);
— turn on zone clean­ing (for exam­ple, to remove dirt at the entrance to the hall­way);
— estab­lish restrict­ed areas (for exam­ple, in the nurs­ery, where the LEGO con­struc­tor crum­bled). This func­tion has an ana­logue — a spe­cial mag­net­ic tape that is glued to the floor, but it requires addi­tion­al expens­es and efforts.

Overcoming obstacles

Before buy­ing a robot vac­u­um clean­er, check how high obsta­cles it can over­come (often this infor­ma­tion is not indi­cat­ed in the spec­i­fi­ca­tions). It is incon­ve­nient if you have to car­ry the gad­get from room to room every time because it can­not dri­ve on the thresh­old or free the stuck robot from the paws of the clothes dry­er.

In addi­tion, mod­els with lidar and / or a cam­era build a map of the apart­ment more accu­rate­ly and bet­ter avoid obsta­cles that they can­not pass.

For exam­ple, 360 Robot Vac­u­um Clean­er S7 remem­bers areas that are dif­fi­cult to over­come and if it gets stuck in the same place 2 or more times, it prompts the user to set a “for­bid­den sec­tor” there in the mobile appli­ca­tion.

Additional Criteria

Advanced mod­els have a self-clean­ing sta­tion. In the pho­to Vio­mi S9. Pho­to: smartme.pl

When choos­ing a robot vac­u­um clean­er for your home, pay atten­tion to the fol­low­ing points:

— Con­trol — push-but­ton, using a remote con­trol, through an appli­ca­tion, voice (most often sev­er­al options are avail­able at once, choose the most con­ve­nient for you). For exam­ple, Xiao­mi Dreame F9 can be turned on man­u­al­ly by press­ing a but­ton on the device itself, launched through the Mi Home appli­ca­tion, in addi­tion, it inter­acts with the voice assis­tant Alice.

— The vol­ume of the dust col­lec­tor — this para­me­ter deter­mines how often you have to free the gad­get from debris dur­ing clean­ing. If you have a large apart­ment and have pets, it is bet­ter to choose a mod­el with a con­tain­er of more than 0.3 liters. For exam­ple, Kit­fort KT-589 has 0.6 liters.

— Price — it will nar­row the cir­cle of search. There are robot vac­u­um clean­ers on sale up to 10,000 rubles (for exam­ple, Kyvol D2), but they are infe­ri­or to more expen­sive devices in terms of clean­ing qual­i­ty and func­tions, they often run out faster and work loud­er. Medi­um mod­els with smart func­tions and var­i­ous sen­sors for pre­cise move­ment cost in the range of 17,000–30,000 rubles. The cost of the most advanced mod­els is from 35,000 rubles. For exam­ple, Xiao­mi Vio­mi S9 has a self-clean­ing base. In every price seg­ment you can find a decent option.