How to choose a robot vacuum cleaner for your home and apartment in 2022 | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of smart tech­nol­o­gy is grow­ing every year. For exam­ple, sales of robot­ic vac­u­um clean­ers in 2022 increased by 20% com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year, accord­ing to retail­ers. Let’s fig­ure out how to choose a good vac­u­um clean­er in 2022 and what you should pay atten­tion to.

Smart assis­tants are get­ting cheap­er and more acces­si­ble to most peo­ple. Pho­to: furnitureworldindia.com

Clean­ing type
Suc­tion pow­er
Bat­tery capac­i­ty
Vol­ume of dust and water con­tain­ers
Sen­sors
Noise lev­el of the robot vac­u­um clean­er
Addi­tion­al points worth not­ing
Self clean­ing
Wash­ing nap­kins
Recog­ni­tion of pets and objects
Selec­tion of restrict­ed areas
Car­pet clean­ing
Con­trol
Arom­a­ti­za­tion
Results

Cleaning type

This is the first thing to pay atten­tion to. Clean­ing is dry and wet. There are mod­els that car­ry out only dry clean­ing (for exam­ple, Kit­fort KT-5112). With the help of brush­es and rollers, the device sweeps up the debris and sucks it up.

A few years ago, uni­ver­sal options were very expen­sive. But in 2022, you can buy a good vac­u­um clean­er for the home with wet and dry clean­ing in dif­fer­ent price cat­e­gories. Even up to 20,000 rubles, you can choose the right mod­el. For exam­ple, from Trou­ver or Xiao­mi.

Fea­tures of gad­gets with the func­tion of wet clean­ing:

• there are 2 con­tain­ers (one for garbage, the sec­ond for clean water);
• a spe­cial nap­kin is attached to the bot­tom of the robot. Water enters it. As a result, the robot wipes the sur­faces with a damp cloth.

Impor­tant: Not all robots can scrub stains. If the cloth is not mov­ing, it will sim­ply wipe the sur­face. For stub­born stains, it is bet­ter to choose a mod­el with a mov­ing cloth. For exam­ple, in Roborock S7 MaxV it moves 3000 times per minute.

If there is no vibrat­ing cloth, then the mod­el will not cope with per­sis­tent stains and will not rub the floor to a shine. For such work, there are spe­cial­ized floor pol­ish­ing robots. For exam­ple, the SWDK ZDG300S mod­el has two mops, which he quick­ly dri­ves over the sur­face, press­ing on it. Such a device will not get rid of debris, but will wash the floors and rub them after vac­u­um­ing.

A mod­el with a dry type of clean­ing is need­ed if:

• want to save a lot
• the house has a lot of car­pet­ing — wet clean­ing is sim­ply not need­ed.

A mod­el with two types of clean­ing is need­ed if:

• live next to a busy road, in a pol­lut­ed area. Because of this, there is a lot of dust in the house and you need to do wet clean­ing often;
• I don’t want to do the clean­ing myself.

Today, every­one can find a suit­able option in dif­fer­ent price cat­e­gories. Pho­to: robotic-vacuum-cleaners.com

Suction power

How to choose a good vac­u­um clean­er for your home? Pay atten­tion to pow­er. The larg­er it is, the faster and stronger the device will suck up garbage.

What should be the opti­mal suc­tion pow­er of a vac­u­um clean­er for the home? 2500–3000 Pa is enough to deal with dust, debris, wool.

It is also worth pay­ing atten­tion to the clean­ing modes of the robot vac­u­um clean­er. Usu­al­ly there are 2–4 of them. But there may be more. 2 — the min­i­mum num­ber of clean­ing modes. The first is stan­dard or spar­ing. Suc­tion pow­er is low to medi­um. The sec­ond is tur­bo, the suc­tion pow­er is max­i­mum. There are mod­els that can intel­li­gent­ly select the pow­er of work, depend­ing on the sur­face.

Also, the device can have dif­fer­ent types of move­ment: zigzag, spi­ral, along the walls. This is need­ed for var­i­ous pur­pos­es. For exam­ple:

• spi­ral move­ment is rel­e­vant for a round room;
• along the walls (around the car­pet) you can quick­ly col­lect garbage before the arrival of guests;
• zigzag move­ment will help to quick­ly car­ry out super­fi­cial clean­ing if there is no time for a full one.

Use­ful advice — make sure that the gad­get can dri­ve under the fur­ni­ture. Oth­er­wise, you will have to sweep the garbage from under low cab­i­nets, sofas and cab­i­nets on your own. Pho­to: blog.marweningenieria.com

Battery capacity

Bat­tery size affects the dura­tion of work on a sin­gle charge and the clean­ing area. If the device has a small bat­tery and the room is large, it will run out of pow­er and inter­rupt clean­ing. After that, the robot will go to the sta­tion, restore the charge and con­tin­ue clean­ing. This will take extra time.

There­fore, when choos­ing, you should pay atten­tion to the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe room:

- up to 60 sq.m — a mod­el with a 2600–3000 mAh bat­tery is suit­able. Such a bat­tery is a com­mon inex­pen­sive mod­el from Kit­fort, Eufy, TCL;

- more than 60 sq.m — you need a device with a bat­tery of 3500 mAh. Dreame, Yee­di, Xiao­mi have such mod­els.

Volume of dust and water containers

Which robot vac­u­um clean­er to choose for your home? It is impor­tant to pay atten­tion to the con­tain­ers inside it. A small vol­ume for a spa­cious apart­ment is not suit­able. As soon as it is full, the robot will stop. It will have to be cleaned and only then it will con­tin­ue clean­ing. So you lose time and once again inter­act with the device, which should be as autonomous as pos­si­ble.

It is bet­ter to choose the size of the con­tain­er accord­ing to the area of ​​​​the apart­ment. Pho­to: tr.freechevalmirrorplans.com

one. For 1–2‑room apart­ment with­out ani­mals enough vol­ume up to 300 ml. For exam­ple, the Star­Wind SRV3730 has a small 200 ml dust con­tain­er, which is enough for a one-room apart­ment.

2. 1–2‑room apart­ment with ani­mals - 300–500 ml.

3. From 400 ml The vol­ume of the dust col­lec­tor is suit­able for a three-room apart­ment. If there are ani­mals, it is bet­ter to take 600 ml. For exam­ple, Xiao­mi has a mod­el with a large dust con­tain­er — Robot Vac­u­um Mop Essen­tial.

The size of the water tank is not crit­i­cal. It is usu­al­ly 200–350 ml. The vol­ume in a par­tic­u­lar mod­el is usu­al­ly enough until the bat­tery is com­plete­ly dis­charged.

Sensors

An ade­quate response to obsta­cles is an impor­tant para­me­ter when choos­ing a mod­el. The robot should not crash into obsta­cles in a big way, chew wires. Oth­er­wise, the point in buy­ing it is lost. After all, this device should clean the area itself and not cre­ate a mess.

Many mod­els are equipped with an elas­tic bumper around the perime­ter. He touch­es the object, sig­nals that it is impos­si­ble to go fur­ther, and the vac­u­um clean­er changes direc­tion. Also, robot­ic vac­u­um clean­ers can have dif­fer­ent col­li­sion sen­sors:

- laser and opti­cal — are need­ed so that the device can deter­mine the dis­tance to objects and even their type;

- ultra­son­ic — allow you to dri­ve under objects and dri­ve back;

- infrared - they help deter­mine the height of the thresh­old / steps (in order not to fall, dri­ve onto the car­pet).

The more sen­sors a device has, the eas­i­er it is to nav­i­gate in space. Pho­to: puxiang.com

Noise level of the robot vacuum cleaner

This para­me­ter is sub­jec­tive. Gad­gets usu­al­ly have 2–4 modes of oper­a­tion. The noise lev­el is dif­fer­ent for every­one. The qui­etest mode (for hard sur­faces) usu­al­ly does not exceed 40 dB. This is equiv­a­lent to a calm con­ver­sa­tion. Pow­er­ful tur­bo modes (for car­pets) are usu­al­ly loud — from 60 dB (like the Kyvol D3).

If it is impor­tant that the robot vac­u­um clean­er be qui­et, it is bet­ter to choose with the low­est pos­si­ble noise lev­el — up to 55 dB. For exam­ple, Eufy Robo­Vac G10 Hybrid.

Additional points worth noting

The basic bud­get ver­sion of the device is enough for the clean­ing to be of high qual­i­ty. If you are look­ing for an option up to 15,000 rubles, then you can find an option from Xiao­mi, Midea, TCL. We col­lect­ed the top 5 bud­get mod­els in a sep­a­rate arti­cle. All these robots cope with their main func­tion — clean­ing sur­faces from debris.

If the bud­get is not very lim­it­ed, you can pay atten­tion to more expen­sive mod­els. They have more inter­est­ing options. They are not manda­to­ry, but they make clean­ing eas­i­er and the gad­get smarter.

Self cleaning

New and use­ful option. Thanks to it, you do not need to clean the vac­u­um clean­er your­self after each clean­ing. The set includes an enlarged dock­ing sta­tion. There is a hid­den con­tain­er in its body. The smart assis­tant fin­ish­es work, dri­ves into the dock­ing sta­tion and dumps all the garbage into a spe­cial bag.

The tank is usu­al­ly 2.5–3 liters. There­fore, the device can do clean­ing and self-clean­ing sev­er­al times. This is handy if you’re away for a few days or weeks and want the robot to keep things tidy at home.

The option is also avail­able for bud­get mod­els. For exam­ple, the Lyd­sto G2 has a capa­cious 3 liter bag. More expen­sive mod­els with a self-clean­ing func­tion are avail­able for gad­gets from the brands Vio­mi, ECOVACS.

What does the self-clean­ing sta­tion look like for Xiao­mi Lyd­sto R1. Pho­to: ventureindustries.com.ua

Washing napkins

The next stage of evo­lu­tion is robot­ic vac­u­um clean­ers that can do every­thing on their own. They emp­ty the trash can, wash the mop and drain the dirty water and fill the con­tain­er with clean water. Such mod­els are not from the bud­get seg­ment, the price starts from 80,000 rubles. Roborock and ECOVACS brands have robot vac­u­um clean­ers with the list­ed func­tions.

Roborock S7 Pro Ultra is almost a stand­alone mod­el. Pho­to: mobillegends.net

Recognition of pets and objects

An infre­quent option, but in demand. For exam­ple, Roborock S6 MaxV can rec­og­nize cats, dogs and any objects from 3 cm in height. On the map that the robot builds while mov­ing, there are icons depict­ing the dis­cov­ered item.

What is it for?

• For the gad­get itself, it won’t scare a cat, won’t run into a child’s toy, won’t smear the earth from a fall­en pot on a white car­pet.
• For own­ers — you can find things that were con­sid­ered miss­ing.

Selection of restricted areas

It is not always nec­es­sary to clean the entire room. For exam­ple, in one cor­ner there is a Christ­mas tree, a lot of frag­ile toys and dec­o­ra­tions. And it is impor­tant that the gad­get does not enter this ter­ri­to­ry. In this case, you can use:

- mag­net­ic tapes (the robot can­not cross it);

- vir­tu­al walls. A small mod­ule that gen­er­ates an invis­i­ble wall. The robot­’s sen­sors detect the beam and iden­ti­fy it as an obsta­cle.

A sim­ple mag­net­ic tape will pre­vent the robot from enter­ing the restrict­ed area. Pho­to: miele.co.uk

And in some appli­ca­tions, you can zone rooms, cre­ate vir­tu­al walls and restrict­ed areas. The zone can be pro­hib­it­ed only for wet clean­ing or in gen­er­al for any.

Not all gad­gets have the abil­i­ty to cre­ate such zones. Now only expen­sive mod­els have it. For exam­ple: ROIDMI EVA, Roborock Q7 Max.

Carpet cleaning

one. For car­pets with pile up to 1.5 cm enough stan­dard mod­els with a capac­i­ty of up to 3000 Pa.

2. For pile more than 1.5 cm 3500–5000 Pa mod­els are need­ed. If the pile is more than 3 cm, the device may not be able to han­dle it. It is bet­ter to knock out the car­pet, and then addi­tion­al­ly use a hand vac­u­um clean­er.

Impor­tant: addi­tion­al fea­tures increase the price of the prod­uct. There­fore, such a gad­get costs 7–10 times more than a sim­ple device. Pho­to: pixy.org

Control

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, you can con­trol the robot vac­u­um clean­er through a spe­cial appli­ca­tion from your smart­phone. Also on the body of the gad­get there may be 2–3 but­tons for start­ing, turn­ing off and send­ing to the dock­ing sta­tion. Robot con­trol appli­ca­tions are very sim­i­lar. In them you can see the built map, select clean­ing modes, set a sched­ule.

Some­times there are addi­tion­al options. For exam­ple, the abil­i­ty to select restrict­ed areas. The avail­abil­i­ty of such func­tions does not depend on the appli­ca­tion itself, but on the capa­bil­i­ties of a par­tic­u­lar vac­u­um clean­er. There are also mod­els addi­tion­al­ly with remote con­trols.

For exam­ple, some robots from Tefal or Red­mond can be remote­ly con­trolled through the remote con­trol. The remote is a handy addi­tion. For exam­ple, if a robot was bought for a pen­sion­er who does not use a smart­phone. Many mod­ern mod­els can be con­nect­ed to a smart home and con­trolled by voice (for exam­ple, using the Alice assis­tant).

Aromatization

Anoth­er unusu­al option from the ECOVACS brand. In mod­el 9 AIVI there is an addi­tion­al con­tain­er for an aro­mat­ic cap­sule. Dur­ing oper­a­tion, the gad­get not only removes debris and wash­es the floors, but also sat­u­rates the air with a pleas­ant aro­ma.

Results

one. For a one-room apart­ment with­out car­pets and ani­mals a device with a pow­er of up to 2000–2500 Pa, a bat­tery of up to 2000 mAh, a dust col­lec­tor vol­ume of 200–300 ml is enough.

2. For a two-room (with the con­di­tions spec­i­fied above) a gad­get with a pow­er of 2500–3000 Pa, a bat­tery of up to 3000 mAh, a dust con­tain­er vol­ume of up to 300 ml is enough.

3. For a three-room apart­ment — bat­tery from 3500 mAh, dust con­tain­er vol­ume from 400, pow­er 2500–3000 Pa.

four. If there are car­pets and/or petsthen it is bet­ter to choose the max­i­mum pow­er, bat­tery capac­i­ty and garbage con­tain­ers for your bud­get.

5. It is bet­ter to opt for a mod­el with the max­i­mum set of sen­sors and/or the func­tion of build­ing vir­tu­al walls. Then the robot will not get stuck and it will not have to be con­stant­ly “res­cued” from the wires. If this is not pos­si­ble, then it is bet­ter to buy a mag­net­ic tape to pro­tect the restrict­ed areas.

What is the best vac­u­um clean­er for your home? One that meets all your require­ments and will help you think less about clean­ing. We hope that our guide will help you find the opti­mal smart assis­tant mod­el.