I’m going to take a look at all the amazing properties of the Tineco Pure One Station 5: I’ll show you exactly what you get with this combination vacuum and base station with automatic emptying. I’ll also take a closer look at the special filtration options and how they help keep allergens at bay. I’ll put it through my special array of cleaning tests, and I’ll wrap things up with both the pros and the cons of this vacuum so you can see if it might be right for you.

I would like to say thank you Tineco for becoming an ongoing annual sponsor of my channel. Though the company is paying for my time, it hasn’t told me what I have to say or what I can’t say and I got to test the vacuum out on my own terms so you can consider these thoughts my own.

Unboxing/What you get: Tineco Pure One Station 5

Let’s take a look at what’s in the box.

This vacuum is kind of a three-in-one device, so unboxing there are several parts and components in here.

First out of the gate is the motorized brush head with its anti-tangle roller brush. Next is the removable and rechargeable battery. Two key components of the vacuum are next starting with the combination tool which is both a crevice tool and dusting brush, followed by the extension tube.

The tube lets you use the vacuum as a full-size stick vacuum, or remove it and put the attachments directly into the motor for a handy handheld vacuum.

Speaking of which, the main motor unit with dustbin attached is next, and it feels both sturdy and lightweight.

In the bottom of the box are the three pieces of the Pure One auto emptying and charging station; there’s a top section, the main base unit with its extra large capacity dust bin, and in the box underneath the rest of the cardboard, is a base plate.

See it in action: Watch my FULL hands-on video review here:

Assembly

Everything assembles quickly and easily; just stack the pieces of the base station onto the plate until they click into place. Then plug it in.

The vacuum assembles by sliding the battery pack onto the bottom of the motor handle then you can click the extension hose and cleaner head into place.

The vacuum slides into the top of the dock and a small clip holds the bottom of the vacuum firmly in place.

Filtration: 12 layers of filtration to combat allergies

While we let it charge up, let’s take a look at some of the filtration elements, and them I’m going to get to the cleaning tests.

Tineco says there are 12 components to the filtration and that’s what should make it ideal for capturing allergens.

There’s filtration in both the base station and in the vacuum itself.

Starting with the base station, we have the first 6 sets of filtration: two sets of cyclonic force pull debris away and trap it with a larger filter. Then, ever smaller filters, and two sponge filters trap fine particles.

A HEPA filter located in the rear of the base is the final line of defense that prevents fine dust, pollen, and other allergens from escaping back into your home.

The *vacuum* also filters particles too, thanks to the built-in cyclone and large mess filter, air then passes through a second cyclone and two levels of sponge filter before ending at another HEPA filter.

If you’re keeping tabs that’s another six filters in the vacuum for a total of 12 stages of filtration.

Both HEPA filters and the sponge filters are replaceable and should definitely be replaced yearly depending on how often you vacuum.

Cleaning tests

Anytime I test out a vacuum I put them all through the same tests. I’ll use them around the house for a week or so just to see what the overall experience is like, day to day.

Then, I’ll vacuum spills on both carpet and hard floors; everything from finer flower or cornmeal, two middle sized bits like rice or oatmeal and larger cracker pieces.

Let’s take a look at how Tineco Pure One Station 5 vacuum performs on hard floors first, and do consider watching my full review video to actually see how it performs in real time.

On the fine flour test, you can see it’s able to suck up everything in just one pass. With its large diameter roller brush underneath, that means more gets pulled in in each pass, which translates to less work for you.

Same thing with oatmeal.

With larger bits like these crackers, you can adjust the vacuum height with a switch on the front to ensure you have enough clearance to inhale these, not just push them around. The remarkable thing about this vacuum too is the 120-degree wide-angle headlight that reminds me of a light sabre. It’s pretty amazing how much this helps: It lights up tiny crumbs that are all but invisible to the naked eye, like little beacons, making them much more visible so you can better see where you need to go. This feature is super impressive, and one of my favourites.

Moving to carpet and rugs, fine dust is no match for the vacuum, and the Pure One Station 5 vac was easily able to pull flour from down within the fibres. Plus it quickly whisks away rice and crackers too.

Handheld vacuum

Another great feature of the Pure One Station 5 is that you can convert it in two seconds from a full-size stick vacuum to a very capable handheld vacuum. Just clip in any of the attachments directly to the motorized handle and you’ve instantly got a pint sized powerhouse vacuum which is just as powerful and just as capable as the full-size version. As a handheld, it can tackle everything from sofas and chairs, to other upholstery, and even make quick work of spills in the car. We even used it on a recent camping trip in our van to keep all the doggy dirt from becoming a bigger mess!

 Anti-tangle brush

One of the more common things a vacuum will find in this house is long hair. With a lot of vacuums, unless you clean them constantly, the hair tends to wrap around the brush creating tangles and reducing performance.

Tineco has engineered this vacuum with a special anti-tangle design. Take a closer look: The V shaped roller brush is better able to whisk hair off of the brush before it gets wound up, while the dual comb design untangles and lifts it into the dustbin. That makes this vacuum ideal for not just those with long-haired humans in the house, but long-haired pets as well.

Self cleaning vacuum

Usually the tedious part about vacuuming is dumping out the dust bin. Just opening it over a trashcan or tapping it out after each cleaning session can reintroduce all kinds of dust and particles into the air every day.

And if you’re an allergy sufferer—and after you’ve gone to all that trouble of filtration like we talked about earlier, that would be the last thing you want. That’s why Tineco built the Pure One Station for this vacuum.

When you’re done vacuuming, the station will automatically self-clean the entire vacuum, not only fully emptying the dustbin, but it also engages the motorized cleaning head, to ensure that is clean as well, then it cleans out the extension tube too so that small bits won’t become big blockages in the future. You never need to take it apart to clean it after use.

Tineco says Station 5 uses what’s called a full-path self-cleaning process, ensuring no dust hides inside the tube or brush.

The station’s large 2.5L eco dustbin holds days and days worth of debris and dust. And because it doesn’t use a disposal bag, there’s no need to purchase refills. Just empty it every week or two whenever it needs it.

I want to touch on one last great feature of this vacuum, and that’s that the base station is also a charging dock. As long as you keep your vacuum docked, you will always have a fully charged battery, ready to clean your entire house.

Battery life & Runtime

In fact with a full battery you should get about 70 minutes of run time every single time you reach for it. That also gives you the option of keeping the vacuum nearby off the dock, knowing you’ll have more than an hour of running time.

Overall thoughts: Tineco Pure One Station 5

Overall, Tineco has made some really great, useful improvements to this vacuum and self cleaning and filtering dock. Let’s go over both the pros and the cons so you can see if it might be right for your home

On the pro side, the cleaning power is very strong. It was easily able to tackle everything from day-to-day pet hair, to more challenging spills with ease.

The 12 layers of filtration should be a huge boon to those with allergies.

I like the fact the motorized cleaner head is height-adjustable in case you need to vacuum up larger pieces or if you need to get closer to carpet fibers.

The vacuum was easy to set up and assemble and it looks like a nice tidy package, since all the accessories store in the dock. This is the kind of vacuum you won’t mind leaving out in the open.

The vacuum converts from stick to handheld and back in seconds making it incredibly versatile. With anti-tangle construction, it’s ideal for home with pets and long haired humans.

Plus with a long battery life, and automatic charging and auto-emptying and internal cleaning of the vacuum, you should never have to worry about lingering dust, musty smells, or tedious maintenance. Plus with no need for vacuum bags, you’ll have zero ongoing costs.

So what are the potential downsides? Some folks might find the station is quite tall and potentially difficult to place. It does also need to be near a plug. But those should be easy to work around, particularly since the vacuum offers more than 70 minutes of runtime even when kept off the base station.

In short, I’m really enjoying our new Tineco Pure One Station 5. It sells for about $459USD and you can get one from Tineco’s website … or HERE  from Amazon.

The post Tineco Pure One Station 5 FULL review AND how it battles allergies appeared first on TechGadgetsCanada.com.

In this review I’ll try it out here in my home over a couple of weeks so I can test out each of the brand-new features and improvements. I’ll also put it through my special array of cleaning tests to see how well it performs and if it might be worth an upgrade for you. I’ll wrap things up with the pros and the cons of this robot floor clean cleaner to see if I can recommend it for you.

I would like to say thank you to ECOVACS for sponsoring this video. While the company is paying me for my time, it has not told me what I have to say or what I can’t say about its product so you can consider these thoughts all my own.

Watch the FULL  ECOVACS DEEBOT X8 Pro OMNI in-home review

Components / Unboxing

It’s easy to get DEEBOT X8 PRO OMNI up and running very quickly.
In the box, just beside the reading material, is a tiny corner brush… you don’t want to lose this because you’ll need to install this important component before you get underway so make sure you locate it and set it aside.

Also on top here is a ramp for the base station and your power cord.

Underneath all the wrapping is the star of the show which is the brand new DEEBOT X8. The robot feels larger and heavier than previous generations and that’s probably because there’s lots more power built in here. ECOVACS bumped the suction power on the bot to a crazy high 18,000Pa, so it may not be surprising the robot feels more substantial.

Underneath you can see that new scrubbing OZMO ROLLER too.

In the down deep of the box you’ll find the OMNI Station for cleaning and recharging, which comes nearly fully assembled. Just remove all the tape and protective packaging and connect the base station plate to the bottom. Then connect the included cable plug from the station to the wall outlet. You also get cleaning solution and a user manual.

The last step before you charge it up, is to snap the corner brush into place.

Want to learn more about ECOVACS floor bots? Check out my reviews of the ECOVACS T30S Combo, or the ECOVACS X2 COMBO.

ECOVACS App

The last item you’ll need, is not in the box but it is on your phone… Download or sign into ECOVACS app so that you can pair your DEEBOT to your phone for complete remote control, scheduling diagnostics, updates, and the ability to use your robot’s onboard camera. More on that in a few minutes…

I had my robot paired in less than a minute with just a couple of taps.

The new ECOVACS DEEBOT X8 PRO OMNI is an investment at $1,399.99 so you’ll really want to know its full set of features to really appreciate the value and make full use of its advanced capabilities. Why are we let it charge up let’s get to know it.

Special Features

OZMO Roller-Instant Self-Washing Technology

ECOVACS has continued to make upgrades to its mopping technology, and that means it’s switched from dual spinning mop pads and moved to the new OZMO Roller-Instant Self-Washing Technology.

If you’re thinking, so what, this is actually a huge deal because the roller can self-clean without only relying on the base station.

The process works by dispersing clean water from its tank through 16 individual water nozzles to the saturate the OZMO Roller Mop while spinning very quickly at 200 times per minute generating up to 4,000Pa worth of pressure. Thanks to the built-in edge scraper underneath, DEEBOT can effectively wring out the dirty water and channel it towards a new, separate dirty water tank in the back off the bot, without contaminating the clean water. In a nutshell that means while the robot is cleaning it is also constantly cleaning the mop as well and then storing that dirty water for disposal back at the base, so you’re getting a clean that’s a lot more than just rubbing a dirty pad over the floor like some other bots.

The self-cleaning scrubbing roller is just the beginning though: the mop is actually able to reach out from underneath the robot and align with walls and edges so it can mop them extremely thoroughly. This happens automatically thanks to some other technology….

AIVI 3D 3.0 Omni-Approach and TruEdge 2.0 3D Sensor

The right side of the ECOVACS DEEBOT X8 PRO OMNI features a new and highly sophisticated TruEdge 2.0 sensor that uses high precision structured light to effectively scan for edges.

TruEdge Sensor.

The sensor can identify the most protruding part of the edge so it can position itself just close enough for effective edge cleaning without collisions. This makes both vacuuming and mopping super intelligent, in particular when cleaning around edges with hidden skirting boards, narrow gaps, even around boxes, or obstacles like chair legs, as you can see here; each leg gets the close-up mopping treatment.

VACUUM Suction Power & ZeroTangle 2.0 Technology

With the mopping already more advanced, ECOVACS also made significant upgrades to the vacuuming.
For starters, it redesigned the vacuum roller brush on the DEEBOT X8 PRO OMNI, now with a triple V-shaped structure design that completely gathers and untangles hair. Combined with the 18,000Pa of suction power I mentioned, the DEEBOT X8 PRO OMNI is designed to be very powerful.

OMNI Station

The new OMNI Station is where your maintenance happens: here, the robot can empty its vacuum dust bin into a sealed bag, it can empty the dirty water from cleaning the mop, disposing of it in one of the two large tanks on top, and it can refill its tanks for washing, from the large clean water reservoir.

Also hidden in here next to the vacuum bag? A special detergent dispenser which you can fill with ECOVACS cleanser that is dispensed automatically as needed, to ensure your floors and your mopping pads always stay fresh and tidy.

The OMNI Station is a big drink of water, but only because there’s so much going on. Despite the large footprint, ECOVACS has really worked to make it more attractive by adding some beautiful brushed surfaces, and ensuring all the finishes are in the same colour tone.

Cleanser tank & vacuum bag.

The station even evaluates the dirt levels based on which rooms it’s cleaned, and can make adjustments to the mop washing – 40°C water for bedroom cleaning, warmer 55°C for post-kitchen cleaning, and it will wash the mop with 75°C water after bathroom cleaning. Once finished, the station can generate hot air at 63°C to dry the mop for two hours which helps keep the mop from developing mold and mildew, leading to odors and germs.

Yiko Voice assistant

Another feature I’ve been enjoying is the Yiko voice assistant. Just by asking Yiko, I can start or stop a clean, empty the dustbin, wash the mops or pause drying.
You can even go anywhere in your home and call for Yiko to ‘clean this spot’ and it knows where you are by measuring the distance to your voice. Pretty cool.

Schedule

One of the most useful features of a robot vacuum is the ability to schedule cleanings anytime. The app makes it easy to choose regular daily or weekly cleanings and I find this is one of the best ways to maximize your investment.

Cleaning tests

By now you’re likely thinking all this technology is great, but how does it work in real life, in a real home? It’s time to get to my Cleaning tests to find out. With robot vacuum-mops, I always put them through the same set of tests: I will start out by spilling dry goods like rice, oatmeal, and cracker pieces on both carpet and hard floors to see how well the vacuuming works.

Cleans nearly 100% of debris.

To test the mop I will spill liquids on the floor to see how it’s able to clean those up, and then I will also let some liquids dry to test scrubbing performance on dried stains.

At first I just schedule it go out every other day to get the dog hair and minor dust, and it did a great job.

With my spill tests like coffee, DEEBOT X8 is easily able to wash away any still damp spills. And when it comes to more dried on spills, that rotating scrubber does a good job at removing all but the thickest most-dried areas.

When it comes to the vacuuming, it’s extremely thorough gathering up about 95 to 99% of all spills I left for it. It was particularly adapt at lifting extremely fine spills like flour or sugar, and was great at picking up crumbs both small or large.

The robot actually seems to have almost a seeking ability where if it does kick something away with its spinning brush, it almost appears to go looking for it so that it can vacuum up every last bit. On carpet the DEEBOT X8 is similarly adept, and was able to pull dirt from the fibres of both carpet and rugs. [will add more].

Obstacle avoidance

Easily avoids all kinds of obstacles.

I also tried running the robot through another series of tests where I left obstacles in the way to see if I could trip it up. As you can see it seems to know to avoid fallen cords and cables, and I also found this to be very true under the sofa and under the bed where I have plenty of cables running. Other robot vacuums constantly get tangled up in these but the X8 pro Omni didn’t get tangled up once. Similarly it can avoid things like shoes and fallen clothing, even this drinking glass too. ECOVACS robots have always been among the best when it comes to object recognition and avoidance so here I’m delighted but not surprised.

Roving security camera

Part of that object recognition and avoidance comes courtesy of built-in cameras into the bot. While they are ideal for this purpose, they also double as a roving security camera if you want. You can simply tap on the app to access the onboard camera and the video is shockingly clear and sharp. You can even turn onto two way audio with it or send it on a home patrol which will automatically drive the camera around a few key locations so you can see whether your baby gate is still up or if you left a light on or the back door open. Yes… You can even check if your dog is sleeping on the sofa. Pretty cool.

Overall Thoughts: ECOVACS DEEBOT X8 PRO OMNI

The ECOVACS DEEBOT X8 PRO OMNI seems to mark a new gold standard in cleaning, obstacle detection, edge cleaning technology, and you can really tell how advanced things have gotten once you see the robot vacuum in action and how it treats objects like cables and watching it just clean right snug to the edge of walls
Let’s go over both the pros and the cons of this device so you can see if it might be an ideal fit for your home.

On the pro side the suction is outstanding. It’s some of the strongest available in a consumer robot floor cleaner and it cleans very well. The new rotating mopping roller seems to be able to add even oomph to floor washing, wiping up not just drips and dribbles but powering off dried on spills too. The sliding cartridge of the mopping roller is a pretty amazing advancement that lets it clean deeper into corners and hard to reach areas than ever before.
The app is easy to use and trouble free and lets you keep tabs on your robot, schedule cleans and more. And speaking of keeping tabs, the ability to use the robot vacuum as a security Rover is pretty amazing also. With obstacle avoidance, scheduling, Yiko the built-in voice assistant, and self-cleaning from the OMNI station, there’s so much to appreciate.

So what are the downsides? I think the biggest barrier for people may be the size of the base station. There’s no escaping that it’s huge and you do need room for it.

In short I can absolutely recommend the ECOVACS DEEBOT X8 Pro OMNI if you’re looking for the smartest, best cleaning floor bot with extras.
Regular price is about $1299 USD / $1,799 CDN and you can get one from ECOVACS.com or from Amazon. Be sure to check the description for any current coupon codes or special offers. *** Original Price: $1,299.99 – Discounted Price from February 11 – March 2: $1,169.99 (after 10% discount)

Want to learn more about ECOVACS floor bots? Check out my reviews of the ECOVACS T30S Combo, or the ECOVACS X2 COMBO.

The post ECOVACS DEEBOT X8 Pro OMNI: Full in-home review appeared first on TechGadgetsCanada.com.

Like most new floor cleaning bots these days, you’ve gotta have a couple features that make you stand out from the crowd, and on that Shark doesn’t disappoint. In this review I’ll take a look at what makes this robot floor cleaner different from the rest, what it can do and how exactly it cleans. I’ll run it through my full battery of cleaning tests and then I’ll wrap this video up with the pros and the cons of this device so you can decide if it’s going to be right for you.

I would like to thank Shark for gifting me this robot. While the company did send one to me, it did not ask for or receive permission to have any any input whatsoever into this review. So you can consider these thoughts my own.

What’s in the box

Let’s unbox this robot so you can see what you get.

The charging and self cleaning station is the biggest item in the box. Right on top you’ll see the special reusable cloth mopping pad.

Next up is a box holding the robot itself. There’s also two small corner brushes packaged in red plastic that you want to make sure don’t get lost or accidentally discarded. These simply clip into place on the robot; just one to begin, and the second one is an extra.

You’ll also find an odour neutralizer cartridge in here which is going to be installed in the base station shortly.

The robot comes with another mopping pad already installed.

There’s a sample size bottle of Shark cleaning solution which is a nice extra touch.

Lastly you want to remove and unwrap the base station. A plastic floor protecting plate that doubles as a bit of a ramp is also in here.

Flipping the robot over to get a closer look, you’ll see the mopping plate with cloth preinstalled, and the small single roller beater brush underneath.

Getting a look at everything all laid out, the only thing you really can’t see is the water tanks which are hidden under the lid of the base station.

This robot floor cleaner set has a pretty utilitarian look. While a lot of brands are opting to try to get their substantially sized robot floor cleaners to blend in to homes a little better, there’s no hiding what Shark POWERDETECT NeverTouch Pro robot vacuum and mop is all about.

Set up & assembly

Before you can start using the POWERDETECT, it needs to get a bit of a charge and you’ll need to connect it to the Shark Clean app.

Situate the base station near a plug and then dock the robot inside. You can also twist in the special odour neutralizing cartridge now, and fill the clean water tank with clean water and a couple ounces of cleaning solution.

Once it powers up you can open up the Shark Clean app and follow the instructions to get it connected to your Wi-Fi network. I was set up and ready to go in about five minutes.

The next order of business is to get the bot to map your home. The app will prompt you to do this and the robot will roam around your house at low speed until it generates a full map of the space.

Mapping took about 10 minutes, but it created a very accurate map. The robot will go out a second time to do what it calls carpet detection and then it will draw out all of the carpeted areas in the house —and it got them bang on.

The map is going to come in handy when you want to tackle room specific cleanings, have it clean certain areas within a room, or if you want to automatically schedule cleanings each day or each week.

One thing I should point out fairly early in the game is that when you call for a clean, you need to choose whether the robot will vacuum or whether it will mop; it’s not going to do both at the same time—at least not effectively. It seems like it might use a teeny bit of suction while mopping, but I wouldn’t expect it to clean thoroughly.

If it vacuums it’s going to leave the mopping pad in the base station, and if you ask for it to mop it will put it on like a pair of hammer pants.

Special features

Pad Drop

One of the chores associated with certain robot floor cleaners is that you may have to swap a vacuuming plate for a mopping plate. This can be tedious and kind of grungy. Shark solves the problem by having the robot manage the mopping plate for you. In essence, if it is programmed to mop, it will back into the base station and lock the plate in place. If it’s only going on a vacuum run, it will leave the plate behind. The technology is rather ingenious and I’ve never seen this in action before. But I can definitely say it works and I like the idea of letting the robot figure out what it needs to do on its own. And at the same time you should never have to worry about carpets getting wet.

Odor neutralizer

Shark is one of the only brands I can think of that uses an odour neutralizing cartridge in its filtration system. This is a unique concept since as it pulls air through the system to help evacuate the robots dustbin, filters keep dust from re-entering your home, and then as it’s exhausted back into your room, the odour neutralizer freshens it so that it doesn’t smell stale or musty. It’s extremely subtle but it is a nice touch and it does add a bit of freshness each time the vacuum empties itself.

Never Stuck Technology & Lifting

Shark POWERDETECT NeverTouch Pro robot vacuum and mop has a feature which shark refers to as “Never Stuck” technology.

How you’ll see this working is that if the robot encounters taller than average flooring transitions, thresholds, or obstacles, it can actually lift itself up to cross over or avoid them. This same technology can also lift the bot up and skate over carpets to avoid dampening them with the mopping plate in use.

Self cleaning

Once your robot has completed a clean it will always return to the base station for recharging. It will empty it’s onboard dustbin first, then automatically wash and dry the mopping pad with the fresh water and cleaning solution in the tank.

Shark says the POWERDETECT NeverTouch Pro robot vacuum and mop should only need maintenance and attention from you about every 30 days or so, but of course this will depend greatly on how dirty your home is and how often you’re running the robot. My testing period only ran about two weeks so I’m not yet able to say if it is actually this effective or not.

Cleaning tests

Now that you’re familiar with all the special features of this robot vacuum and mop, let’s test its cleaning power. I run all my robot vacuum devices through the same sets of cleaning tests. I will spill dry goods like rice, flour, and oats on both carpet and hard floors, and to test the mopping I’ll spill some wet messes and let others dry to test the scrubbing power.

Starting with its performance on hard floors, I was fairly impressed with the job it was able to do.

It was able to be extremely thorough; seeming to almost see spills and zero in on them, then spend a minute or two going over and over and over the same area until it was incredibly clean—I’d say it probably got about 100% of the dirt I left for it.

I will also note that this vacuum appears to run at a much quieter volume than some other competing models.

Scrubbing mop

The mopping is quite different on this robot. That’s because the robot will determine on its own whether or not it needs it’s mopping plate, and retrieve it if it does or leave it behind if it’s going to vacuum.

With the mopping feature, preparing for mopping does take some time. The robot fills it’s on board water tank and this takes about 1 minute and 15 seconds. It happens relatively silently so it shouldn’t be a bother.

The mop has a unique way of scrubbing the floor with a small back and forth motion.

I had it tackle a particularly difficult cleaning test which is dried on coffee. I was actually quite impressed that even on regular mopping mode it was able to tackle about 95% of this spill, leaving only the thickest and most dried on portions of the edges. This is a cleaning test that even extremely expensive and advanced floor bots can struggle with, but I’d say the shark NeverTouch matched them in cleaning prowess on this.

Unfortunately that back and forth mopping motion also resulted in a repetitive tap beat. The mopping pad makes an incessant clicking sound as it’s going around the house which I found rather annoying and distracting.

When in mopping mode if the robot detects carpet, rather than avoid it altogether, it pops its back up about an inch to create clearance and then continues over the carpet.

This is a bit of a strange way of doing things… particularly for a product that has the word “detect” in the name. Many bots simply recognize and avoid carpet when in mopping mode, but this one is determined to show off its lifting abilities I guess. And circling back to the topic of the noise, there is also a pop squeak noise every time the robot lifts and lowers itself which makes this robot in my opinion one of the noisiest floor cleaning bots I’ve ever tried, not even taking into account the vacuum motor sound.

There’s also quite a bit of water used on the floor. This didn’t bother me so much, as it seemed to help it do a more thorough job, but I know some folks with more dainty floors who wouldn’t want it to stay damp for as long as this one did.

I also tried out the spot cleaning feature, but I only got it to work once which allows you to clean about a 6 ft.² area. The single time I got it to work I will say it seemed the robot does an incredibly thorough job with this; essentially spinning itself in never ending circles across the floor to really power away anything that might be there. As it is extremely effective it does take a little longer, which is probably expected.

I realized something else while doing this test. If you have anything like large boxes on your floor while your robot is doing the mapping or you move furniture or other objects around, you’ll need to re-map your house. I had a large box sitting in the corner of my kitchen when I did the initial mapping. And later when I created a test spill in that area, the robot simply would not go to that spot to do any cleaning, despite the fact the area was now free and clear. It wasn’t until I had the robot re-map the entire house that it was able to fill in the holes.

For that reason I can’t emphasize enough to make sure your floors are clear of any objects even temporary ones, or there’s a high chance the Shark robot may never get to some areas.

Back to trying that spot cleaning…I tried this again so I could really have it tackle a tough spill, however the robot simply wandered all over the room, and then the house, multiple tries.

When it’s done the robot will return to the base and wash its mopping pad. In another minor annoyance with this, the mechanism makes a buzzing and repeated whaaa-whaaa-whaaa whining sound while it’s cleaning. Then it follows that up with much sloshing and plumbing noises as it drains the excess water into the dirty water tank. Since the cleaning cycle lasts for several minutes, it definitely does get annoying after a while.

I also didn’t see an option for cancelling the self-cleaning or being able to shorten it at all. So I had no choice but to wait it out.

Battery life & runtime

A typical cleaning cycle lasts for about an hour, but this will depend on the size of your home and if you’ve asked for a room specific cleaning.

The Shark POWERDETECT can take up to four hours to fully recharge from an empty battery.

A Recharge & Resume feature lets the bot return to its base to recharge if it reaches low battery charge (under 15%) during a cleaning mission, and still has area left to clean. When docked on the base, the robot recharges until the battery is 100%, and then resumes the cleaning mission.

Recharge & Resume is automatically activated on your robot by default, but it can be turned off in the Settings section in the app. You should also turn on Do Not Disturb if you’re going to use this feature, since the robot could decide to resume its clean after you’ve already gone to bed.

Overall review

The more time I spend with this robot the more conflicted I am about it. It does a great job at cleaning, but it’s both noisy enough and has enough small quirks that it might scare you off.

Let’s go over the pros and the cons so you can see if these may be dealbreakers for you.

On the pro side it both vacuums and mops incredibly well and was able to ace all but the most challenging cleaning tests; and even then it got about 95% of the dirt.

I also like the fact the dust bin doesn’t require a bag so I never need to worry about replacements, and it holds a lot of dirt so I also don’t need to tend to it constantly. While the robot has interesting lifting capabilities that do allow it to clear very tall thresholds and obstacles, I am a bit puzzled about why it needs to lift on carpets when it’s mopping at all; the smarts and carpet recognition in this bot should really mean that it simply avoids carpet in the first place when it has the mopping plate attached. And in another puzzle, the device couldn’t seem to recognize obstacles like cords and cables and tied itself up in them pretty good…though it was able to untangle itself after a couple of minutes.

That brings me to the downsides…two of my biggest complaints were about the noise level; both the click clacking of the mop while it was cleaning, the lifting mechanism, and the ultra loud and sloshy cleaning cycle were a major annoyance.

I’m not thrilled about the fact that it doesn’t vacuum and mop at the same time like a lot of other floor bots in this price range do. While I do think the mechanism and the leave behind plate are quite clever, sometimes there are times you just need to get everything done at once.

And on a more minor note, the mapping process during set up could be a lot more efficient; covering not just the mapping but the carpet detection too in one drive around the house.

I also struggled with getting it to do a proper spot clean, and I do find the design of this device to be pretty utilitarian.

I have to say for me, this is not one of my favourite robot floor cleaners. There are just too many things that put me off about it that would mean I’d take a pass on it.

The other deciding factor for me is the very high price. Selling for $1299 CAD/$1000 USD this should be a top of the line robot floor cleaner package, and I feel like it has enough knocks against it that that price cannot be justified. I’m kind of disappointed about that because I really like Shark as a brand.

**A note about Affiliate Links: TechGadgetsCanada & TechGadgetsInternational is supported by our readers. Occasionally I will include affiliate links in my reviews. I do this partly for convenience of the reader (since I’ll almost always include a link to the company website or similar anyway) in case you want to read more or purchase, but I also may get a small commission from the click, which helps me keep the blog running. If you choose to use this link I thank you greatly for supporting the blog. There’s no obligation or cost to you for using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 

The post Shark POWERDETECT NeverTouch Pro Robot Vacuum & mop appeared first on TechGadgetsCanada.com.

I’m putting it to the test here in my home. I’ll try it out on day to day vacuuming and put it through a range of special cleaning tests, including the toughest test I’ve ever devised… One that even the most powerful Dyson has failed. I’ll show you what it is about this vacuum kit that makes it special and then I’ll wrap things up with both the pros and cons and let you know if I think I can recommend this cordless stick vacuum to you.

I would like to say thank you to Shark for sending me this vacuum so I could try it out here in my home. Though the company has sent me the vacuum at no charge, it has not asked for or received permission to have any input into this review, and I got to test it out as I wanted to, so you can consider these thoughts my own.

Watch my full video review & shocking cleaning tests

Shark doesn’t come out and say it, but I believe this vacuum is meant to take on high end vacuum competitor Dyson. With a list of both helpful and interesting features, Shark is trying pretty hard, but Dyson has set the bar for cordless vacuums really, really high. So will this vacuum be able to take it on? We’ll find out in my tests.

Last October, I reviewed the Shark Cordless Detect Pro – an ambitious vacuum by one of Dyson’s fiercest competitors and it did its job in making short work of messes on hardwood floors and carpets. Dirt detection was a bit hit-or-miss for me though and in a world where most vacuums have some form of dirt sensing, Shark really needed to up their game. Shark’s new Cordless PowerDetect is a surprise return to form that maybe should have competitors worried.

About the Shark Cordless PowerDetect

The version I’m reviewing is cordless, not to be confused with its upright plug-in PowerDetect counterpart.

What’s in the Box

Unboxing the Shark Cordless PowerDetect is probably the most time-consuming aspect of this vacuum because it comes with several parts you need to assemble along with a few accessories. While it may look like a lot of confusing pieces, everything actually goes together easily.

Vacuum Components: Stick or handheld

The stick vacuum comes with three main components: the handheld vacuum component containing the motor and controls, Shark’s unique MultiFLEX Wand, and the main cleaner head. Even without getting into the accessories, you can already get a feel for Shark’s modular approach to its components.

You can attach the floor nozzle or any accessories directly to the handheld vacuum, effectively transforming the Cordless PowerDetect into a portable handheld vac, great for upholstery, the car or stairs.

Fully assembled, you can even stand the Shark Cordless PowerDetect up by itself and it won’t fall over.

Vacuum Accessories

Like most stick/handheld vacuum hybrids, the Shark Cordless PowerDetect comes with a 2-in-1 crevice and brush tool. Switching from crevice to brush mode is as simple as sliding the brush to the crevice edge until it clicks into place.

You also get a pet multi-tool for hand vacuuming upholstery. The pet brush is semi-stiff and actually pretty genius and does a really good job of combing pet hair from upholstered fabrics so the vacuum can suck it up. Already this is one of my favourite attachments.

Charging Dock Components

The vacuum’s charging dock requires a bit of easy assembly: just slide the charging post into the opening until you hear that satisfying click.

Then twist in the odour neutralizer which also comes free with every Shark Cordless PowerDetect purchase. You may optionally attach the included accessory storage section on either side of the base so you have a spot to place all your accessories. Setting up the charging dock involves sliding the charging post into the exposed tube until you hear that satisfying click.

Features

Sensors Galore!

Shark Cordless PowerDetect boasts numerous sensors that automatically trigger certain vacuum actions. Some of these you’ll notice at work while others do their job in the background.

Shark refined the dirt detection feature to work far better in sensing highly dirty areas and properly responding by increasing the suction power. The Cordless PowerDetect also features sensors on each side of the floor nozzle to detect edges so the vacuum can pull in and suck up dirt in those narrower spots.

The neat thing about these sensors is how the vacuum’s built-in lights respond in real time. Powering on the vacuum feels like starting a car where the lights on your dashboard switch on as well as the taillights and the Shark Cordless PowerDetect has a similar feel.

Let’s take a look at how this works on one of my dedicated cleaning tests. I always run vacuums through the same paces; I spill different things like cornmeal, oats, and cracker pieces on both carpet and hard floors to see how much the vacuum can pick up.

The cleaning power and suction on this vacuum is wildly impressive. It picked up absolutely anything and everything I could throw at it, from finer flour to bigger bits and even rollier things like rice. Its performance was equally outstanding on both hard floors and carpets and rugs.

This is the type of vacuum that leaves a noticeable line of clean where it has been compared to where it’s going.

With the Shark Cordless PowerDetect, whenever the sensor detects dirt, not only does the info screen show a dark purple indicator, but the back lights on the floor nozzle turn dark purple too giving a satisfying visual of what the sensors are seeing. Even the edge detect feature intelligently lights up the side of the vacuum close to the edge.

Unlike some other vacuums I have tried which say they have dirt detection but all you’re really getting is a bit of a light show, the dirt detection of the Shark Cordless PowerDetect seems to actually work and work well, and I was constantly seeing purple on dirtier areas and then return to normal on tidier spaces.

Carpet boost & floor identification

The sensor near the roller brush can also distinguish hardwood floors from carpet which not only causes the vacuum to augment suction power, but brush roller speed as well! This is quite remarkable and also works incredibly well. Particularly on plusher rugs you can both hear and feel the suction kick in. Even on flatter rugs like Ruggables, the machine appears able to detect the surface and really power dust and dirt from it.

I will also give one more shout out here to Shark: I’ve been finding with more and more stick vacuums that they are unable to vacuum neither plusher nor flatter rugs without getting the rug fibres tangled in their rollers and shutting the whole thing down.

But this device, there was no catching or pulling, and I was able to vacuum all of my rugs, very deeply, without any problems.

Lastly, the Cordless PowerDetect comes equipped with light sensors which automatically illuminate the area when you approach a dimmer area. I’m quite shocked Shark didn’t jump on the bandwagon and straight up call this AI like every other manufacturer seems to be doing even when it’s not really AI, but the sensors truly add to the intelligence aspect here in a non-gimmicky way.

Cleans in TWO Directions : DuoClean Detect Nozzle

Earlier I talked about this vacuum having a feature that helps it clean twice as effectively. Shark calls this ‘DuoClean’. To explain what it does, you have to understand how most vacuums work. They really only are able to pick up dirt with the roller brush when pushed forward. That’s because the brush spins in just one direction to push debris into the cleaner head where the suction brings it up.

But if you look underneath the floor nozzle of the Shark Cordless PowerDetect, you’ll find a fancy black and teal striped removable roller brush and a second fixed solid teal brush. Both rollers allow the Shark Cordless PowerDetect to collect dirt while vacuuming BOTH forward and reverse which essentially means twice the cleaning power in every pass which has the further effect of cutting your total cleaning time.

You aren’t necessarily going to see this in action, and that’s because the vacuum already does a pretty amazing job at inhaling everything on its first forward pass, but it should mean fewer wayward crumbs that mean you have to go over an area repeatedly.

The floor nozzle also features integrated combs for each roller brush to prevent hair from ever tangling them.

Customizable Modes

The “trigger” button on the vacuum is responsible for changing vacuum modes. For starters, I would leave the Detect Mode on as it enables the use of all sensors. But if for some reason you want to maximize battery life or go all out with its suction capabilities, you may switch to the Eco or Boost modes.

Agile With Some Flexing

Despite the vacuum’s bionic and potentially bulky appearance, the Shark Cordless PowerDetect is surprisingly agile and turning and pivoting feel smooth.

But for vacuuming underneath furniture, the Shark vacuum can perform a secret flexing trick. Just press the button on the vacuum’s joint to allow the bottom part of the wand to bend allowing you to push the floor nozzle under a tight spot, without you needing to bend over.

This feature is incredibly effective and works really well. And saves you having to lean or bend and stoop.

There is one thing I noticed with this vacuum and that’s if you accidentally lock the main cleaner head into its 90° storage position while you’re using it, it will automatically shut the vacuum off. During my testing I was constantly doing this accidentally and having to unlock and restart it again.

Powerful Auto-Empty Charging Dock

The included charging dock has tricks of its own and you can try them out as soon as you finish vacuuming.

Think of this dock as a vacuum of its own, suctioning the dirt from the cordless stick’s onboard dustbin, and sealing it away in a larger bagless dustbin protected by a HEPA filter to ensure dust won’t leach out.

When the bigger bin on the dock is full, just press the release button to remove it and then hold it over a trash can and release the lower door to dump it.

I have to say after using this vacuum for a few days, I was pretty shocked at the volume of overall dirt and dog hair it had inhaled from our house.

If you installed the odour neutralizer, every time the auto empty sequence happens, you may get a whiff of pleasant scent. The odour neutralizer isn’t overwhelmingly scented, but it does have the effect of making the air around the charging and emptying dock smell a little less musty and dusty every time you go through the emptying process.

Shark sells odour neutralizer refills separately in case you need a replacement.

The vacuum auto empties itself each time you return it to the docking station, but if you don’t want it to happen that often or you need to keep the noise down, you can switch the dock to “Quiet Mode” and it’ll just shut off the auto emptying until you reenable it.

Class Leading Runtime

If you thought all the sensors in this vacuum were all about the dirt detection, it turns out they also have a hand in helping it run longer. The sensors help manage the PowerDetect’s suction power more efficiently by not working too hard on a clean area or, keeping the lights off in a brighter area.

Intelligently maxing the suction power on tougher messes also helps with efficiency as the vacuum will finish the job faster and dial back the speed when finished.

With this unique combination of sensors, the Shark Cordless PowerDetect ends up lasting far longer than most other vacuums. With 70 minutes of average runtime, you might get days or even weeks of cleaning without needing a full recharge depending on how frequently you want to vacuum.

Of course because the vacuum is meant to stay on its charging and emptying base, it should always be ready for you with a full charge.

Maintenance

All the convenience the Shark Cordless PowerDirect brings to the table comes with occasional maintenance responsibilities to ensure the vacuum remains at peak performance even after its impressive 5-year limited warranty.

The handheld vacuum houses its own HEPA filter and foam filters which you should wash from time to time to avoid ever needing a replacement. Since accessing these parts requires removing the dust canister, you might as well give that a good rinse too. The charging station’s HEPA filter is hidden beneath a door behind the dock while the exhaust foam filters are located underneath the dustbin. Shark also recommends you clean each of the sensors with a microfiber cloth for optimal Detect Mode performance.

Overall Thoughts: Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean & Empty System

Overall, I have to say I’ve been blown away by not just the features of this vacuum but it’s effectiveness. I’m going to come right out and say this vacuum could definitely be the Dyson killer Shark is hoping it would be. Let’s go over the pros and cons so you can see why this might be my new favourite cordless vacuum.

On the pro side, you’re getting a lot with this package including the auto emptying and charging base, a very versatile vacuum that doubles as both a stick and a handheld, and some incredibly advanced technology.

With duo direction cleaning it picks up more dirt in a single pass, and I absolutely love how it bends in half to make vacuuming under furniture and beds incredibly easy. The carpet boost works wonders too.

When it does its emptying, I appreciate the odour reducing puck that adds a touch of gentle freshness to each empty, and I’ve been incredibly shocked at the sheer amount of dirt this vacuum has been picking up each time I dump the bin. Plus with a bagless design, there’s no need to purchase any extra accessories.

I’m also a huge fan of the fact I can use this on any type of rugs and it’s not going to jam the rollers and stall the vacuum.

It goes without saying the cleaning power of this vacuum is top-notch and I would put it up against the most powerful and expensive vacuums on the market today and say this one can beat them all.

What are the downsides?

It’s really hard to find any major faults with this device. There’s nothing that came out in my testing that seems like a misstep or an error.

I suppose the things that might be a concern for people are the large size of the base station which is quite tall.

I also kept accidentally locking the cleaner head into its storage position and inadvertently shutting the vacuum down as a result. The more I used the vacuum the less this happened so perhaps this is not so much a con as it is just something to get used to.

In short I think this is one of the best cordless stick vacuums I’ve tried in years and if you’re trying to decide between this one and a Dyson, I can confidently say save the money on the Dyson and get this one. You won’t be disappointed at all.

The Shark Cordless PowerDetect Clean & Empty System sells for about $499 USD / $628 CAD and you can save about $70 USD by getting the vacuum without the dock, but you do miss out on the convenience.

The post Shark Cordless PowerDetect Pro Auto-Empty: full in-home review appeared first on TechGadgetsCanada.com.

Upright floor washers that can both vacuum and mop are all the rage. Today I’ll be looking at the Narwal S20 Pro, a vacuum and mop with strong suction, scrubbing pressure, smarts, and self cleaning. I’ll show you how it works by running several cleaning tests and then wrap up with the pros and cons of this device so you can see if it’s going to be right for you.

I’d like to thank Narwal for sponsoring this post. While it has paid me for my time, it hasn’t told me what I have to say or can’t say about this device and I got to test it out in my own home and devise my own cleaning tests, so you can consider these thoughts my own.

What you get

Inside the box, you will find the main vacuum-mop unit, plus a handle that clicks into place. There’s also a handful of extra accessories including a roller and filter, plus a bottle of cleaning solution and a cleaning brush. You also get a docking and recharging base with plug.

The dirty water tank is easily visible since it lives on the front of the main vacuum unit.

The clean water tank is actually very cleverly hidden as part of the cleaner head. Just pull out the back part of the head to remove it, and fill it with water. If you’d like to use cleaning solution, remove the small plastic plate that covers the roller on the front of the cleaner head, and then lift up the silver door. Add cleaning solution into here and then replace the covers.

Right away I can feel how light-weight the S20 Pro is: it feels a lot lighter than competing models, and I can confirm it’s very easy to lift and would be no trouble at all to carry up or down stairs.

Narwal S20 Pro also has a small color LED info screen which will show the remaining battery power, detergent level, as well as the current cleaning mode.

Lay-flat design

The Narwal S20 Pro is not only light and manoeuvrable but it also has a convenient lay flat design with a low profile. You can extend the handle all the way to the floor to get the S20 Pro underneath almost any piece of furniture, from sofas to sideboards, to tables and beds.

Narwal added an extra trick to bump up its agility just a bit. Narwal calls this the Smart Posture Detection technology which can help detect whether the vacuum is upright, turning, or flat and it will prevent any water from leaching out.

Anti-Tangle Technology

The S20 Pro also boasts anti-tangle technology so you don’t have to worry about unwinding strands of hair from the roller brush.

AI DirtSense

Narwal just couldn’t resist joining the AI era with its own dirt detection technology called AI DirtSense. The feature works with the vacuum’s built-in display; yellow for mild dirt and red for very dirty areas. How does it work? The vacuum’s cleaner head uses a blue light and some sensors which help the vacuum adjust the suction power for even better cleaning efficiency.

Cleaning Tests

Let’s get right to the cleaning…

In my daily use it was very easy to grab the Narwal S20 Pro to mop up spills in the kitchen. With 20,000 PA of suction power, it’s made to inhale anything in its path.

Higher suction power translates to better ability of cleaning up tough spills in a single pass. This is a big improvement over the 14,000 Pa suction power of its predecessor.

Whenever I test out a device like this I give it a handful of spills to contend with; I’ll spill liquids like coffee, ketchup soy sauce and jam and let some of them dry, so I can see how well it cleans a variety of spills. I also do things like spill chunkier messes like milk and cereal or rice soup just to see how it’s able to manage.

In my cleaning tests you can see that with the wet spills it’s able to mop everything up in just a single pass.  Even sticky syrup didn’t seem to gum up the machine, nor did spilled BBQ sauce.

With its edge to edge roller brush it gets right up against baseboards and edges.

With dried-on spills it does take a couple of additional passes over the area to get them clean, but this is not uncommon. You can see it was even able to power away dried coffee.

When it comes to thicker and gummier dried on ketchup or BBQ sauce, it does take a few runs to get everything from a dried-on sticky stain off the floor, but this is expected with a device like this… and the Narwal easily matches the performance of other upright mops I’ve reviewed.

Self-propelled

One of the other features I really liked is that there is self propulsion built into this machine. Essentially it gives it push – pull assistance so that there is less effort required by you to push it across the floor and drag it back. That translates to making it even easier to maneuver with a lot less effort.

Cleaning Modes

The Narwal S20 Pro has five special cleaning modes. Smart Mode can adapt on its own to deliver the best clean based on your floors dirt level and will automatically adjust things like suction power, and water volume.

If you just want to suction up a spill or excess water from the floor you can put it into Suction Mode. Quiet Mode tackles the noise level above all, while Turbo Mode offers increased water flow and more suction. At the top of the cleaning modes is what’s called Max Enhancement Mode. This is the most powerful cleaning used for extremely stubborn or dried on stains, and this mode is accessed using a small trigger under the handle.

Self Cleaning

The worst part about a wet-dry upright is usually the emptying process, and trying to keep it clean. With the Narwal S20 Pro the filter basket design on the inside of the dirty water tank makes it much easier to separate solids and liquids, and then dump out debris, hair and particles right into the garbage, while you’ll just pour the dirty water away.

This S20 Pro also runs its own self cleaning cycles whenever it sees that’s necessary.

Using warm, fresh water and cleaning solution, it flushes its insides then deposits the dirty water in the tank. The wash runs about 2 minutes, and it spins the roller in both directions to get it thoroughly clean. Then it will dry the mop with warm air to keep the roller from developing musty smells. With a full tank, the detergent can last up to 40 days, and a small indicator light will let you know if it’s low.

Battery Life

Narwal S20 Pro is rated for a 60-minute battery life, which is almost double what some other similar devices offer. This means you can do a lot more cleaning on a single charge; and even keep the S20 Pro stored close by without having to necessarily leave it on its charging base, if a plug isn’t nearby.

Overall review

Overall the Narwal S20 Pro is a capable and convenient upright wet-dry mop-vac that makes cleaning floors easier. Let’s lay out the pros and cons.

On the pro side, it cleans well and tackled all the challenges I laid out for it. Plus it cleans and dries itself.  With the option of adding cleaning fluid, you’re getting a better-than-just water clean, and the S20 Pro will let you know if it needs topping up. With its lay-flat design it easily gets under all kinds of furniture.

It’s easy to set up and with different cleaning modes, you can always find a balance between powering away dirt, and protecting floors. The battery lasts a long time and the package came with extras like a roller filter and brush.

So what are the downsides? The full recharge time may take a while. Even so, this shouldn’t be an issue for most people because the cleaner will usually be stored on its base station. The only other consideration might be the base station does need to be placed somewhere it can be plugged in at all times, so that might limit where you are able to store it, but again with its longer than average battery life you can keep it handy without needing to keep it constantly charging.

Those really just feel like considerations to be aware of as opposed to true downsides or defects, so for that reason I can definitely recommend the Narwal S20 Pro to you.

It sells for about $499 USD/$699 CAD which is less than some of it competitors. You can get it from Amazon.

**A note about Affiliate Links: TechGadgetsCanada & TechGadgetsInternational is supported by our readers. Occasionally I will include affiliate links in my reviews. I do this partly for convenience of the reader (since I’ll almost always include a link to the company website or similar anyway) in case you want to read more or purchase, but I also may get a small commission from the click, which helps me keep the blog running. If you choose to use this link I thank you greatly for supporting the blog. There’s no obligation or cost to you for using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 

The post Narwal S20 PRO upright vac-mop appeared first on TechGadgetsCanada.com.

Yeedi M12 PRO+

The Yeedi M12 PRO+ (see full review) is the robot vacuum that surprised me the most because it packs an incredible feature set along with the level of performance you’d normally expect from a vacuum costing over $1,000. Its impressive 11,000Pa suction power can take care of all sorts of dirty messes on hard floors and carpets. No need to worry about mopping afterwards either because the M12+ can mop your floors on the same cleaning run. The vacuum even has special sensors that tell it to lift the dual spinning mop heads when it approaches carpets. The Yeedi M12 PRO+ is truly a robot vacuum without compromise and is my top pick in this roundup if you have extra to spend.

Regular Price: $999USD, with discount, Current Price is $549.99. Amazon has this bot on sale, and you can find it here.

Watch the full video review

Yeedi M12 ULTRA PLUS

Powered by a brand-new high-speed motor Yeedi’s flagship M12 ULTRA PLUS delivers next-level cleaning efficiency, particularly on carpets where it’s ZeroTangle Anti-Tangle Technology and Dual Comb Teeth Arrays are great for homes with pets or long-haired humans. But with strong mopping capabilities to this is an ideal robot for homes with just as much hard flooring as carpeting. Yeedi’s TruEdge Adaptive Edge Mopping means precise edge cleaning and with OZMO TURBO 2.0 and Auto Small Tank Refill you can expect continuous water replenishment for optimized mopping and powering off of stubborn stains even if they’ve dried on. Plus the compact base station is ideal for smaller spaces.

Regular Price: $1099USD, with discount, Current Price is $619.99. Find M12 Ultra Plus on Amazon.

Yeedi C12 Combo

One of Yeedi’s newest offerings is this multi use kit which combines a capable robot vacuum with the helpful assistance of a built-in stick vacuum and mop that also doubles as a handheld. Everything empties into one bag central dust bin so there’s almost no maintenance required from you. This is a versatile kit which I have the chance to get hands on with recently so you can check out the full review here and find out why it’s ideal for not only automating much of your cleaning, but also being able to get into the spaces a robot vacuum just can’t go.

Regular Price: $899USD, with discount, Current Price is $559.99. Get C12 Combo at its lowest price yet on Amazon.

Watch the full video review

Yeedi C12 PRO PLUS

The Yeedi C12 PRO+ is a slightly toned-down version of the M12 PRO+ with 8,000Pa worth of suction power, but still powerful enough to deal with most heavy pile messes. While you must physically swap the vacuum bin with a mop bin to perform mopping duties, I still find the low price of this robot vacuum super competitive simply because most vacuums in this price range can’t mop at all! Read my full review of Yeedi C12 Pro Plus here.

Regular Price: $599USD, with discount, Current Price is $329.99.  Shop it on Amazon today!

Watch the full video review

Yeedi C12 PLUS

Yeedi specifically targeted the C12 PLUS robot vacuum to the super budget conscious while retaining almost all the power and features of the C12 PRO PLUS. As a vacuum, the C12 PLUS performs right up there with its superior C12 PRO PLUS sibling. The C12 PLUS retains the mopping function, but it lacks the OZMO PRO 2.0 mopping technology which I’ll explain in the Yeedi Innovations section. The package also comes with just one mopping pad instead of two. Go for this robot vacuum if mopping isn’t your major concern and you want a decent self-emptying station.

Regular Price: $479USD, with discount, Current Price is $299.99. Find C12 Plus on Amazon now.

Yeedi C12

The Yeedi C12 is a trip back to old days when docking stations only charged the robot vacuum. This means absolutely no extra bulk taking up space in the room, but also no automatic dumping ground convenience when the C12’s 0.4-liter dust box capacity fills up. The good news? The C12 retains several of the other innovations like the 8,000Pa suction power, ZeroTangle Technology, lidar navigation and mapping, and full compatibility with the Yeedi mobile app. This entry-level vacuum can mop as well, just in case your floor needs extra polish while you are away. Although the charging dock cannot wash or rinse the mopping pad, you may easily remove the pad and wash it yourself.

Regular Price: $399.99USD, with discount, Current Price is $169.99. Shop Yeedi C12 at its extraordinary price on Amazon.

Learn more about Yeedi tech innovations

What makes Yeedi several steps ahead of other budget brands are the technologies empowering the company’s vacuums. From finding a way to mop right to the edges of your floors, to all in one cleaning stations that are compact and extremely useful, to special OZMO mopping technology and zero tangle brushes, Yeedi is clearly at the forefront of the robot vacuum world. Learn a bit more about some of this extraordinary technology and where you can find it in the company’s products.

TruEdge Mopping (M12 Series Only)

The M12 Series features a mopping pad uniquely attached to an arm which can extend to reach spots its other stationary mopping pad can’t clean. This is useful for cleaning spills around corners and under baseboards.

All-in-One Station (M12 Series Only)

The Yeedi All-in-One Station features a unique modular design consisting of a dual chamber water tank for clean and dirty water and a dedicated compartment for the massive 3.4-liter dust bag. The station also doubles as a mop washer which uses hot water to dissolve grime and grease on the pads and hot air drying to get ready for the next mopping session.

OZMO Mega Mopping (C12 PRO PLUS Only)

Flat mopping pads have its limitations compared to the plushier spinning ones found in the M12 PRO+, but the C12 PRO PLUS model can still handle some messes thanks to the OZMO Mega Mopping System. OZMO Mega Mopping System works by vibrating the pad up to 480 times per minute, creating a scrubbing effect to help thoroughly clean stains.

Self-emptying Station (C12 COMBO, C12 PRO PLUS and C12 PLUS Only)

Yeedi’s Self-emptying station may not have the mop washing features or the large dustbin capacity, but it has a simpler, less bulky design. The dustbin doesn’t depend on bags either saving you the trouble of buying consumables.

ZeroTangle Vacuuming (All Models)

All vacuums use the same dual-bristle brush with ZeroTangle technology making any of the Yeedi vacuums decent for pet owners. The V-shaped brush design resembles other pricier vacuums that use a similar brush design.

Deep Clean Power (All Models)

The M12 ULTRA PLUS model may be the king of suction power with 11,800Pa, but the other vacuums are no slouch with 8,000Pa. Last year, I reviewed the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra and I was already impressed with its 6,000Pa suction power! Robot vacuums have gone a long way with deep cleaning power.

Learn more and compare Yeedi vacuum models

**A note about Affiliate Links: TechGadgetsCanada & TechGadgetsInternational is supported by our readers. Occasionally I will include affiliate links in my reviews. I do this partly for convenience of the reader (since I’ll almost always include a link to the company website or similar anyway) in case you want to read more or purchase, but I also may get a small commission from the click, which helps me keep the blog running. If you choose to use this link I thank you greatly for supporting the blog. There’s no obligation or cost to you for using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The post Unlock Up to 58% Off: Yeedi’s Best Robot Vacuums at Unbeatable Prices This Black Friday! appeared first on TechGadgetsCanada.com.

Review: Yeedi C12 Combo: Robot, Stick vac, handheld + wet cleaner

In this clever kit you not only get a robot vacuum, which you could refer to as the Optimus Prime of the package, but you also get a 2-in-1 convertible stick-to-handheld vacuum that empties itself too AND this entirely new offering comes with a unique new mopping device that’s the first of its kind I’ve ever seen… and I review a LOT of floor cleaners… If I’m keeping up with my transformers metaphors, this light and nimble gadget is Bumblebee.

Watch my video about Yeedi C12 Combo

In this review I’m going to test out the entire kit here in my home over a couple of weeks. I’ll show you all the different things that can do, and we’ll take a look at what it’s best at, and what it shouldn’t be used for. I’ll wrap things up with the pros and the cons and let you know if I think I can recommend this device for you. I’d like to thank Yeedi for sponsoring this video. While they have paid me for my time, they have not told me what I have to say or can’t say about this kit and I got to test it out on my own so you can consider these thoughts my own.

What you get

Yeedi is referring to this set as a “COMBOT” which I think is clever . There is a lot to unpack here in the relatively small box so let’s get to it…
There is a compact handheld vacuum motor with attached dust bin that’s first out of the gate, and the C12 robot vacuum is also in here underneath you’ll find some of the other components including the main motorized vacuuming brush for the stick vacuum as well as a extension tube. The self cleaning and charging station is the largest item in the bottom of the box.

Breaking out the rest of the components, there’s also a special wet cleaning tank and two washable and reusable pads, and how these get used is going to be quite different from what we’ve typically seen in robot vacuums, so stick with me.
The other two key components are a plastic base for the robot and a base for the vacuum components.
And there’s one last hidden surprise. If you remove the door panel on the left-hand side of the base, you’ll find two additional vacuum accessories; the dust brush and crevice tool. These cleverly store inside the base so there’s no stray pieces floating around.

Set Up & assembly

You’ll have a few steps to take care of to get your Combot ready to use. Place the base station in a clear area near a plug and connect it to power.
Attach the two base plates and then you’ll need to remove a small silicone stopper from the side of the machine and twist in the plastic bracket which will hold the stick vacuum attachment.

Then you can set the motor handle for the stick vacuum in it’s dock which not only keeps it charged but also empties the dust bin anytime it’s replaced. Lastly, place the robot in it’s mini garage to charge up, and thois is where the bot will also empty itself.

Once it has some juice you can connected to the Yeedi app which is where you can automate a lot of your cleaning. All you really need to do is follow the steps in the app to connect it to your home’s Wi-Fi which I had done in about two minutes.

Then let your robot create a virtual map of your home by roaming around the house for less than 10 minutes. Once it’s had a chance to scan your space it will generate a highly accurate map which you can now use to handle room specific cleaning and create cleaning schedules.

About Yeedi C12 Combo

The Yeedi C12 Combo is a part of Yeedi’s C12 midrange robot vacuum series which consists of four variants at the time of writing. The C12 Combo is the most expensive variant of the bunch since it comes with the stick vacuum and accessories while the base model C12 gives you just the vacuum itself plus charging-only dock (though it’s a steal at about $299 USD).

Let’s dig in on each of the two main components, and tackle the different cleaning scenarios you can use them for.

Yeedi C12 Robot Vacuum: Robot floor vacuuming

Scenario:

Your in-laws are coming for dinner and you’re behind on the cooking. The solution? Ask your voice assistant to send out the C2 combo robot to clean the floor. To make it even quicker you can get your robot to just focus on the areas they’ll see.

The C12 Combo robot is incredibly capable at vacuuming… Because that’s it’s main focus. Like some other robot floor cleaners which will also mop, this version is dedicated to vacuuming only so it’s able to do a really good and thorough job. Particularly when used on its highest suction power it can easily tackle things like cracker crumbs, oats, rice and cornmeal on both carpets, rugs, and hard floors. If you like an extra clean floor, you can even have it automatically do two passes over an entire room which turns in already thorough job into a pristine clean.

Yeedi Stick Vacuum

Scenario:

Having a robot vacuum means never having to worry about the mess… Particularly if you have pets that shed. But what do you do about the pet hair that can float off into the corners, or into narrow spaces your robot vacuum just can’t access? That’s where the two in one stick vacuum comes in.

Depending on what you need to vacuum you can add the extension tube to create a full length stick vacuum along with the motorized brush head, or you can clip several of the accessories right into the motor handle and run this as a highly portable handheld vacuum.

What you can expect from the stick vac is a versatile little cleaner that can fill in some holes a robot vacuum can’t handle, like vacuuming tighter spots, or corners, but the stick vacuum unlike the robot can also unlock a whole new level of vacuuming allowing you to tackle upholstery, baseboards and walls—not to mention messes out in the car.

The 95 watts worth of power in this brush is better for lighter messes, or, like I said, to filling in the gaps the robot isn’t designed for.
With a ZeroTangle roller brush and its V-shaped spiral design and comb teeth, it’s also ideal for homes with shedding pets and long-haired humans.

Mop Add-on

The newest element to this transformational floor cleaner is that there is a wet cleaning attachment for it, but unlike other bots this is not an attachment for the robot… Here it will be connected to the stick vacuum, transforming it into a dual-purpose, twin cleaning solution.

How does it work?

The mopping cartridge consists of a boxy water tank which you can fill with fresh water and a bit of cleaning solution. Rinse the reusable cloth pad and wring it out to get going, then attach it to the bottom of the cartridge, and then click the wheels of the motorized brush into the opening.

What this then gets you is a damp floor mop which can swiffer away finer dust particles. It will be important to note that the mopping cartridge is simply a damp cloth, and there is no liquid suction, so this combination should not be used to vacuum or mop wet messes.

Mopping tank.

I was surprised to find it actually does a pretty good job at wiping up the floor while vacuuming, and definitley sets it apart from traditional vacuums, mops, or robots. The water flow is substantial yet well measured and it’s a good way to give your floors a quick wipe.

Even if you’ve got smaller dried on spills, this mopping plate is quite well equipped to help tackle it. So not only are you getting a thorough vacuum, but you’re getting a cleaning wipe also.

The vacuum is outstanding at hard floors and carpets, and quite adapt at getting into the folds of our sofa. The attachments also do a great job at baseboards and out of the way corners like the space behind a door.

Out in the car, it’s an ideal small space companion for hoovering up crumbs.
The best part is that when you return the vacuum to the docking station it will automatically empty the dustbin. That means you’re always starting with a clean vacuum.

All-in-One Charging Station

Speaking of the auto-emptying, Yeedi C12 Combo’s charging station is easily the most innovative component of the bundle because it takes very little space and is cleverly designed to keep the the Combot parts neat, tidy, and within reach without interfering with the robot vacuum’s ability to dock when needed.

The vacuum motor easily slots in the top of the station to charge the battery while the arm and floor component attaches to the side.

Both the stick and robot vacuum components unload their onboard bins automatically to the same 1.5-liter bagless dustbin. The bonus here is that you can just empty this straight into a garbage and never need to worry about paying for or finding replacements for disposable vacuum bags.

The station also uses HEPA filters to keep the vacuums’ suction power at peak performance and prevent dust from re-entering your space. The station’s dustbin filter has a nice red accent which adds some identity to the overall look.

Overall Thoughts: Yeedi C12 Combo

If you don’t have a robot vacuum or a stick vacuum and you don’t want to blow your budget figuring out the best type of vacuums for your situation—or worse— buying three devices to solve all your cleaning woes, the Yeedi C12 Combo is a convenient, affordable 3-in-one floor solution.

I do love the concept of a “COMBOT” so let’s go over the pros and cons of this device.

On the pro side there’s a lot of versatility in this kit. You’re getting a convenient robot vacuum as well as a handheld vacuum and full sized stick vacuum all in one. That you can also add a special wet cleaning cartridge to give your floors a wipe just takes things another step further.
The included stick vacuum is a great way to fill in the gaps where a robot just can’t go and it’s convenient that everything can stay stored together. It cleans well and with advanced robot vacuum features like scheduling, home mapping and room identification as well as the ability to avoid getting stalled by tangles, Yeedi C12 is smart too.

On the cons side, some may not love the way the base station holds all its components. It could come across as a bit haphazard but it’s easy to see Yeedi tried to keep things as compact and streamlined as possible.

In terms of other possible downsides, if you were looking for a robot vacuum that also handles the mopping, you could check out Yeedi Cube, which I’ve reviewed.

Some folks may also not appreciate that you can’t mop up full wet spills with this device, but since that’s not at all what it’s designed to do, there’s absolutely no points deducted here.

In short, if you’re looking for multiple floor cleaning solutions on a budget, you should definitely check out Yeedi C12 Combo.

The full kit sells regularly for about $899USD, but you should check for any promotions the company is offering as you might be able to land one at a steep discount: Special offer: Sale Price is $569.99 Use Code ‘tgcYeedi’ until December 2 to get 5% off.

You can also check out some other cleaning options from Yeedi, like the Cube I mentioned, Yeedi M12 Pro +, or the Yeedi C12 Pro +. Or see what’s new on Yeedi’s website.

The post Review: Yeedi C12 Combo: Robot, Stick vac, handheld + wet cleaner appeared first on TechGadgetsCanada.com.

Owners of pricier robot vacuums, especially the ones we review here at TechGadgetsInternational probably know by now that these vacuums are offering premium features for the premium price tag. Not only do they boast ultra-high suction power, but they also come with many features that help make these autonomous pucks more independent. We no longer have to rearrange our furniture for optimum vacuum performance and we don’t need to roll away our carpets when the vacuum starts mopping. What you pay for is pure cleaning power and extra smarts to ensure we trust our vacuums to do the job even when we leave the house.

The question is, which expensive vacuum should we trust more? The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra is out with the usual spec flexing and it’s bringing AI to the conversation too. Let’s see if this offering is worth the hype.

About the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra

The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra sits at the very top of the Roborock vacuum pecking order. Being part of the Roborock’s flagship S8 series, it not only possesses the full feature stack of the S8 series, but it also features the highest suction power in the family. Roborock is asking for $1,799.99 USD for that luxury which is a full $200 more than the S8 Max Ultra ranked below this one. Read on to learn more about the specific features exclusive to the “MaxV Ultra” model. For those new to Roborock’s naming scheme, that letter “V” is a meaningful distinction.

Watch my full hands-on review of Roborock S8 Max V Ultra

What’s in the Box?

Inside the large box, you get the robot vacuum itself with the VibraRise Mop Cloth, dual rollers, and spinning brush preinstalled. The charging dock comes packaged with its own components including a clean water tank, dirty water tank, cleaning solution cartridge, and disposable dust bag. The Roborock vacuum also includes a separate docking base known as the ‘8-in-1 RockDock’ which has a special ramp and power cord. Roborock provides a large quick start guide on a single paper to assist you with assembly and setting up the mobile app.

Set up

Setting up the machine is quite easy. You’ll just need to attach the ramp to the base station and situate it near a plug. Then settle the bot into the dock and let it get charged up. Once ready open the Roborock app and follow the steps to connect your bot to your home Wi-Fi. I was set up and ready in under 10 minutes.

With this bot, you’ll also want to take the extra step of filling the special cleaning fluid.

Your robot will want to go on an initial reconnaissance run of your house and it will be able to do this in just a few minutes. It uses the information from that recon, to build a detailed map of your house. Once the map is populated, you can use it to schedule cleanings, or initiate room specific cleanups.

The technology:

V is for Vision (and Vigorous too!)

Since the introduction of the Roborock S6 MaxV, Roborock reserved their most advanced obstacle avoidance technologies for the MaxV models and the S8 MaxV continues that tradition.

RGB Camera

With a built-in RGB camera, the Roborock S8 MaxV can essentially ‘see’ objects which is something that existing LiDAR Navigation technology cannot do on its own.

The camera + LIDAR combo forms the basis of Roborock’s Reactive AI 2.0 Obstacle Recognition technology and this helps the vacuum navigate around floor obstacles including objects as small as 3cm tall and 5cm wide. This feature is the same as its predecessor, the S7 MaxV Ultra and it houses the same chip and camera.

The Roborock S8 MaxV doesn’t just use the camera for object recognition either. The second use for the camera is as a security rover.

Using the Roborock app, you can remotely connect to the vacuum and get a real-time feed of the camera’s vision. The interface is pretty cool as you can see a mini map of the house as well as some on-screen buttons for manually controlling the vacuum. You can set what are called target points around the house and simply have the robot rove around from point to point so you can see what’s going on. It also has a pet locator where it will look around the house for your furry pals, and even an audio button so you can talk to your pets too.

The camera feed is very good, and the interface to use it is incredibly easy.

Using the robot as a mobile camera does require you enabling it inside the app and with a physical button press sequence on the device. Once you’ve enabled it anytime the camera is activated through the app, the robot will announce “remote viewing is activated”. That way you’ll always know if someone is taking a look.

The third thing the camera helps with is Dirt detection.

Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra can use what’s called its DirTect technology to dynamically alter its suction power depending on the dirt or dust detected by the bot. Plus, while mopping the mop and brush will automatically lift when it detects carpets to help prevent soaking or dirtying them.

Improved HyperForce Suction

Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra breaks new ground as the company’s first vacuum to hit a 10,000pa worth of suction power which is nearly twice as powerful as its predecessor. That doesn’t mean the vacuum will always operate this way as flexing its muscles requires using the battery-draining Max+ mode, but it will help make short work of those heavy pile messes on thick carpets.

Finally, the S8 MaxV Ultra has a built-in voice assistant. That may not sound very groundbreaking since you can issue voice commands to other vacuums, but this feature does not require a smart home device or even an Internet connection. The vacuum will recognize “Hello Rocky” as the trigger and you can tell it to do basic things like starting and pausing cleaning, mopping, and dust emptying.

Other Roborock S8 Improvements

Like other Roborock S8 variants, the S8 MaxV UItra gets some design improvements to back the suction upgrade. This includes a DuoRoller Riser Brush that minimizes the hassle of hair tangling around the roller, as well as a FlexiArm Side Brush to help pull dirt and debris found on tougher spots like corners and under furniture. Broader coverage extends to the mopping capabilities of the S8 too thanks to the spinning small circular mop pad on the side of the vacuum.

The “Ultra” Factor

The “Ultra” portion of the name mainly points to the various automation extras the S8 MaxV Ultra possesses. The dock can hold up to 580ml worth of detergent which automatically dispenses to the vacuum for mopping.

Cleaning tests

Let’s get to the cleaning power… I run all my robot floor cleaners through the same tests.

I will run it around the house for a week or two just to see how it does with day-to-day cleaning. Then I put it through a series of more vigourous tests. I spill dry things like cornmeal, rice and cracker crumbs on both carpet and hard floors. For the mop, I will create wet spills on the floor like coffee and soy sauce, and let some dry to test the mop’s scouring power.

With S8 Max V Ultra, I was really happy with the day to day cleaning it did. It was noticeable to me that the bot had been through the house after each outing. It was great at getting all the pet fur tumbleweeds and even mopping up coffee dribbles and spills.

Let’s see how it handles the dedicated cleaning tests…

On dry spills, it was beyond impressive. It was able to suck up almost everything in its path. It has an interesting way of moving that almost makes it look like it is seeing its way around. It targeted everything from cracker crumbs on the floor, to powering fine cornmeal from a rug. I’d say during my tests it got about 99 to 100% of all debris off the floor.

On to the mopping, and again I am impressed but not surprised at how good a job it’s able to do. On coffee or soy sauce it was able to wipe up everything often in a single pass.
I even created a special, large dried coffee spill on the floor and used a hairdryer to bake it on. I wasn’t sure the robot would be able to completely deal with this one…yet to my surprise I found it was able to scrub off most of the dried on coffee after just one pass, and then when it came around to finish it’s cleaning route it got most of the rest. It really only left behind a small mark, so I’d say when it comes to more thoroughly dried on spills it can get you about 95% of the way clean.

Self Cleaning and Drying

Once the vacuum finishes its run, the dock will automatically return to its base and empty the bot’s onboard dustbin into a sealed bag inside the base station. From my experience with Roborock’s flagship bots, the bag should hold several months worth of debris. Then the RockDock will wash the mop with warm water and cleaning solution, and dry the mop with warm air. While the auto emptying and washing process is loud, the drying is virtually silent.

When the dirty water tank fills up you can just pour it away. The device will let you know when it’s time to either empty or refill your tanks.

Overall Thoughts: Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra

If you’re questioning the steep asking price of robot floor cleaners, you’re not alone, but these bots have reached a new level of sophistication and all-in-one autonomy that means you can have clean floors without the work.

The whole idea of a flagship vacuum like the S8 MaxV Ultra is to tip the odds in your favor. With really high suction power, advanced object detection, and an automated dock, the S8 MaxV Ultra is Roborock’s biggest attempt to thoroughly cleaning the house while minimizing the extra effort you might have to do to finish the job. If you don’t think those extra features are worthy of the price tag, Roborock has lower-end models that still manage to keep the core features intact.

Let’s go over the pros and the cons

On the pro side, I like the simple design that’s relatively compact and unobtrusive. Roborock bots are easy to set up even for novices. The scheduling and room-specific cleaning features are no-brainers in a bot, but handy. The bot cleans really well, both when vacuuming and mopping.

With a self-cleaning and emptying base station, there’s almost no maintenance from you; just swapping out the dustbag every few months and tending to the clean and dirty water tanks when needed. And the option of using the cleaner dispenser gives you added cleaning power.

With the super-easy roving security cam option and the cameras also being used for dirt and object detection, this is pretty advanced technology.

So what are the downsides?

Typically the biggest complaints people have about robot vacuums like this revolve around the price, noise level, and the design. We’ve already talked about getting what you pay for with pretty advanced technology. If the noise is an issue, you can use the Roborock app to adjust how often it happens, or to keep that feature to only certain times of day, and if you’re looking for something a little more design forward, I guess the only recommendation here would be to place it in a lesser used room of the house.

I don’t find that any of these potential downsides distract from what a thoroughly smart, capable, and effective robot floor cleaner the Roborock S8 Max V Ultra is.

I think if you want the best of floor cleaning technology, this is a great option and I can definitely recommend it to you.

Roborock S8 Max V Ultra sells for about $1799USD/$2599CAD and you can get it from Roborock or Amazon. And if you’re looking for something a little more budget friendly or perhaps with fewer bells and whistles, I’ve reviewed many Roborock floor bots. Check out a couple of those reviews.

**A note about Affiliate Links: TechGadgetsCanada & TechGadgetsInternational is supported by our readers. Occasionally I will include affiliate links in my reviews. I do this partly for convenience of the reader (since I’ll almost always include a link to the company website or similar anyway) in case you want to read more or purchase, but I also may get a small commission from the click, which helps me keep the blog running. If you choose to use this link I thank you greatly for supporting the blog. There’s no obligation or cost to you for using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 

The post Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra: My in-home review appeared first on TechGadgetsCanada.com.

The new Roborock Q Revo Pro is one of Roborock’s newest floor bots. But what makes this one worth the money? And what differentiates it from the basic Q Revo model? In my hands-on in-home review I’m going to put it to the test. I’ll try it out on day-to-day cleaning and put it through some specialized cleaning tests to see if it’s capable. I’ll wrap up this review with the pros and cons and let you know if I think I can recommend this robot to you.

What you get

Q Revo Pro is a robot vacuum-mop combo that will automatically vacuum and mop your floors. It comes with a special self cleaning and maintenance dock that will not only empty the robot’s onboard dustbin, but it will refill the onboard water tank with fresh clean water. When a full cleaning cycle is over it will even wash and dry the mopping pads with warm water and warm air. And if it detects your mopping pads are especially dirty it will give them an extra clean.

You may have noticed robot vacuum cleaners are climbing in price. Why? Mainly because every year since I’ve been reviewing them, the manufacturers are adding more and better technologies. With high suction power, sophisticated sensors, and advanced chips for things like dirt or poop detection, plus more self cleaning and automation abilities, all that advanced tech can really drive up the price.

So what’s a person to do if you don’t want to spend up to $2,000 on a floor cleaning bot? If you don’t have the need for all of those fancy technologies and you can adjust your expectations to be more silver or bronze medal instead of gold medal, you might find you’re able to get a really great floor bot at a more reasonable cost.

Surprisingly, $1,000 US/$1,499 CAD has been the midrange price point for quite a while and because tech progresses quickly year over year, I expect these vacuums to perform as well or perhaps even better than the flagships of yesteryear. Roborock has certainly proved that in the past as I gave their Roborock Q Revo a full five stars for being an exceptional vacuum despite its lack of fancy technologies. Is the Roborock Q Revo Pro worth the extra $100 over the non-Pro model?

Watch my full hands on video review + cleaning tests

What makes it Pro?

The Roborock Q Revo Pro is one of several new Roborock vacuums that expands on the mostly midrange-focused ‘Revo’ sub-brand. So what separates the “Pro” model from the original Q Revo?

Increased Suction Power

The Q Revo Pro has a higher suction power of 7,000Pa which is 1,500Pa more than the Q Revo. That modest increase technically makes the Q Revo Pro more powerful than last year’s Roborock S7 Max Ultra, which Roborock now sells for $1,099 USD.

FlexiArm Design Mop

During a mopping session, the Q Revo Pro performs a cool maneuver when it mops alongside a wall or approaches a corner. The right spinning mop extends out from the body of the robot, touching the wall and more effectively mopping baseboards and under toekicks, which saves a lot of effort in mopping difficult spots.

Intelligent Dirt Detection

Many floor robots tend to carry out their mopping orders the same way they would for vacuuming. The problem is mops can dirty themselves really quick depending on how messy your floors are. Rather than configuring the robot to take frequent washing trips, the Roborock Q Revo Pro can use Intelligent Dirt Detection.

This works both on your floors, and on the mopping pads themselves. The robot can recognize how dirty it’s spinning mop pads are and head back to the base station for mop washing when necessary.

And using the same technology if it happens to detect a lot of dirt on your floors, the Q Revo Pro can also automatically re-mop any dirty spots that the bot may not have fully scrubbed after a single pass. You do need to turn this feature on inside the app for it to take effect.

Cleaning tests

Let’s get to what you all want to see and that’s the cleaning tests. I run all my robots through the same set of cleaning pieces. I will run it around the house for a week or so just to see how it does with day-to-day cleaning. Then I put it through a series of more vigourous tests. I spill dry things like cornmeal, rice and cracker crumbs on both carpet and hard floors. For the mop, I will create wet spills on the floor and let some dry to test the mop’s scouring power.

With Q Revo Pro I found it was fine for light day-to-day vacuuming, but once I started to give it more challenging tasks, this robot seemed to lose it, and I was confused…
Let me back up. It has actually been an excellent mop. I ran it through a series of mopping tests and it was extremely good at getting targeted spills as well as doing day-to-day wiping of the floor.

Watch my full video review linked above to see the robot in action.

Vacuum not working?

When it came to the vacuuming however the performance seemed abysmal.

I ran it through my regular series of cleaning tests and was shocked when it barely picked up anything. It was almost like the vacuum had zero suction power. I was so disappointed in the performance I decided to run the test again, this time with the vacuum at maximum suction power. After a couple of minutes it was very clear the vacuum just couldn’t cut it. So is this the end of it? Not yet…

Dustbin not auto-emptying

Puzzled about why such an advanced vacuum would be struggling so much I decided to check the onboard dustbin. Despite the fact that I’ve only been running it for about five minutes, I was surprised to find the dust bin was crammed so full there was absolutely no room for any more dust or dirt inside. This is surprising because the robot is supposed to manage emptying of its onboard dustbin itself and most robots will empty it after every cleaning run. It appeared to me that it had been running all week in my house but never emptied itself once. But since it was crammed so full it was likely impeding the suction a lot.

With the dustbin clear, I decided to re-run all the tests again. This time the performance improved from capturing only about 40 or 50% of debris up to about 60 or 70%. I was still pretty unhappy with the performance, but it turns out that might just be a first pass. I let the robot carry on cleaning, and when it was finished I’d say it had gobbled up about 99% of the debris. After that cleaning session it also emptied the dustbin.

Not sure if this was a one-off I decided to re-run all my tests for a third time and capture it on timelapse video… you can see the sorry state I left my floor in.. and while the Q Revo Pro looks like it’s missing stuff at first, if you wait until the end, you can see it gets everything eventually. Again, about 95-99% of all debris on the floors was gone.

What is still missing?

Like the original Revo, the Roborock Q Revo Pro still lacks the high-speed sonic mopping feature found in a higher-end Roborock, but I found the dual spinning mop configuration to function just fine. Plus, the added “Pro” mopping features more than make up for this missing feature.

Also missing; the small corner brush on the robot does not have the ability to extend and reach like the mopping pad does. That would be a cool way to improve the vacuuming and edge vacuuming prowess.

But if there is one reminder that the Roborock Q Revo Pro is still in the past, it is its use of a single roller brush. Personally, I did not find that an issue, but if your room requires a lot of pet hair cleaning, you might like the anti-tangle nature of the DuoRoller brushes found in the S8 series and the expensive Q Revo Master.

Q Revo Key Features

All the things I loved about the original Q Revo remain true with the Roborock Q Revo Pro.

The dock has the essential dirty/clean water tanks and it boasts a sleek design that shouldn’t offend.

Obstacle avoidance is phenomenal thanks to PreciSense LiDAR Navigation. The Roborock app is polished to a tee offering great mapping and flexible scheduling features. If you have a lot of carpeted areas, the Q Revo Pro can automatically lift the mopping pads when it approaches them to prevent soaking.

Overall Thoughts: Roborock Q Revo Pro

Overall, I went from shocked to really happy with this vacuum review. Let’s go over the pros and cons…

On the pro side, it’s a fantastic mop, with spinning scrubbing pads, and that reaching mop really does work at edge and overhang cleaning, and if you leave it to its vacuuming it finishes the job leaving floors really clean. It’s a nice looking station, and reasonably compact, given what’s going on. It empties, and washes and dries itself so there’s very little maintenance for you. It avoids tangles and obstacles well and never got stuck. The battery lets me clean the whole house, and it’s got adjustable suction and waterflow too.

Downsides?

It’s important to understand how this robot works; it does have less suction than some other premium level bots, and that shows in its first cleaning passes. It seems to do a first and then second pass over an area so if it seems like it’s not picking up everything after it rolls over it the first time, let it finish the job before you judge. I also wasn’t able to figure out why the onboard dustbin wasn’t emptying itself after my first few days of tests. But since it seemed to resolve itself, that’s good. I’ll just keep an eye on things.

Despite getting off on the wrong foot with this robot, I found that once I gave it a chance and understood it, it’s a capable and thorough floor cleaning bot and I can recommend it for you.

Roborock Q Revo Pro sells for about $1,499 CAD or $999 USD and you can get it from Roborock or Amazon, and if you’re not sure about this robot for your home, Roborock has plenty of other options and I’ve reviewed many of them.

**A note about Affiliate Links: TechGadgetsCanada & TechGadgetsInternational is supported by our readers. Occasionally I will include affiliate links in my reviews. I do this partly for convenience of the reader (since I’ll almost always include a link to the company website or similar anyway) in case you want to read more or purchase, but I also may get a small commission from the click, which helps me keep the blog running. If you choose to use this link I thank you greatly for supporting the blog. There’s no obligation or cost to you for using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 

The post Roborock Q Revo Pro in-home review appeared first on TechGadgetsCanada.com.