Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsnavigation is good, cleaning of hard flooring is simply not up to my standards
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2020
UPDATE 06/06/2020 I am upgrading my previous review from 1 star to 3 stars, to give credit to the customer support team. Although I emailed with several different people and it took a while, I believe that they tried very hard to resolve the issues that I had with the machine, which I really appreciate. If you are having trouble with your vacuum I would recommend that you persist in talking to them. I don't think that the first layer of support knows much about the product although they can help if you are unfamiliar with tech. However, when I persisted, they invited other team members to assist, and finally escalated the problem until I was able to get a resolution. In my case, I agreed to try a replacement unit to see if it would meet my expectations. Sadly, the final resolution was to return the product for a refund, which the company graciously gave me despite the Amazon return window having closed during the support and resolution process.
I also want to update a couple of the cons about the robot.
1. Navigation improved when I turned the robot off and on again. I had to do this several times. I probably just had a bad firmware that wouldn't be fixed without a full factory reset, which they presumably will do before selling as a refurbished model. I was not able to do it; once the firmware was installed, that was it, as far as I could tell. But in any case, the robot did execute its rectangular zig-zag route without getting lost or stuck as it was supposed to do at least for a while.
2. Also improved by turning off and on again, was the robot's following up on its promise to resume the task after recharging itself.
3. Regarding cleaning ability: I don't think that my standards are unreasonably high. My standards are set by what I can quickly do with a broom, and by what my iLife vs3-pro can do. It's true that I do have only hard floors, however, and we never wear shoes in the house, only socks or bare feet. So ANY dust that remains on the floor is quite obvious to us. Before purchasing my first robot, I kept dust cloths in strategic spots around the perimeter of the room to catch fluff that drifted there. Once a week I would sweep with a broom and launder all the cloths. Once every two or three weeks I would damp mop with water and isopropyl alcohol. I didn't expect much from a robot, but I thought it would be better than nothing and that I could clean less frequently. The iLife so far exceeded my expectations that I expected any robot that I paid a lot more for, to be a lot better. The iLife literally leaves the floors squeaky clean, so clean that damp mopping has become unnecessary unless we spill something. The problem for me is that although the Roborock S5 navigation is much more impressive than the iLife's blind bump-and-run procedure, for some reason it just can't get the dust off the floor.
I think it's possible that if you have carpet everywhere, this robot will be good enough for you. It WILL pick up big debris (including rabbit droppings, long human hair, and hay). Then whenever the buildup of fine dust starts to bother you, you can either deep clean with a strong upright vacuum or call a cleaning company. Good enough?
Parts of my original review remain valid, however. They are edited, below.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
This robot picks up large particles, like rabbit turds and little bits of paper, and some but not all of the human and rabbit hair. It picks up some of the lint from clothing. You can see this in the dust bin.
HOWEVER, it does NOT pick up fine dust. In fact, it somehow manages to find fine dust in (in corners? under baseboards?), then redistribute that fine dust quite evenly all over the floors, so that when I walk across the tile in my bare feet I can feel the dust sticking to my feet. The entire point of getting a robot vacuum was so that the floors would be clean enough that I never had to feel that, but that I was not the one to do the labor. In fact, I tried to "upgrade" from the iLife vs3pro in order to get perfect coverage as well as wet-mopping. I didn't care at all about the lidar feature--if it randomly navigated, but REALLY CLEANED, I would have been happy.
But, incredibly, even when I first vacuum the whole house, then attached the water tank and mop, THE FLOORS ARE STILL DUSTY! Except now the dust has been dampened so that it sticks even better to the floors. BOOO!
That's really bad.
By comparison: I was curious just how clean my iLife vs3pro was able to get the floors. So one day I ran the vacuum for a 90 minute run. Then I used a damp mop to pick up whatever was left. Guess what was left? NOTHING. You know how when you damp-mop a floor there is at least a thin gray line at the front edge of the cloth, indicating that there was a little dust on the floor even if you hadn't seen or felt it? There was no line. In fact, the iLife was not just picking up dust. It was peeling fruit labels off the floor with its whiskers, and scraping the residue of kitchen spills off the tile with its whiskers (it doesn't have a central roller brush). Since I got all that for $100, I thought surely I could save myself the bother of ever mopping again by buying a machine with a built-in mop for 4 times the price. Nope.
PRO's:
The dust bin and the filters are all washable. This is such an important feature to me that I rejected many models out of hand because some or all of the collection parts were not washable.
I like the back-and-forth path that the robot takes. I'm not sure that the lines are close enough together, however.
The robot is excellent at negotiating its way over thick yoga mats and high transition strips (I measured mine at a little more than half an inch).
The robot USUALLY can figure out what to do about a curtain that sweeps the floor, or a piece of clothing left on a pile. Other robots I've tried, including my beloved iLife vs3pro, almost 100% of the time are stopped in their tracks.
Sunlight does not bother the robot. I tried 3 robots in addition to the iLife vs3pro, and all of them were confounded by the patches of sunlight on the floor. I have a lot of windows. Those robots all were quickly returned, as it is as much work to run around closing and reopening blinds in my house as it would be to just sweep the floors by hand.
Sure, the app is fun. But I don't want that kind of learning curve or that much work just to hook up with my robot. I prefer a remote plus buttons ON the machine. If I encounter the robot stuck in the bedroom, but my phone is outside on the picnic table, I can't look up the problem or address it without running around looking for my phone. I also don't like the fact that this robot wanted access to my photos and email (WHY?), while toodling around my whole house, then beaming all the data back to who knows where. I had thought it was possible to run the machine without connecting to wifi. It is not.
CONS's
It, um, doesn't clean the floors. I'd say that's the biggest con. Yes, the large junk is gone, but there is so much fine dust on the floors that I swear it's like the machine is putting out the dust itself.
The navigation works sometimes, but not all the time. Actually it worked much better when I got the machine.
I can't control what the robot does. Sometimes I like to run the iLife vs3pro only around the edges of the house and be done with it. I can't do that with this robot. It decides what pattern it will take, where it starts, and where it ends, period. If I pick the robot up, it's lost.
As long as my rubber mats are parallel with the walls and therefore with its path, it works with them pretty well, much better than my iLife vs3pro. However, the ones that are placed diagonally in the room tend to confound it.
After the third firmware update, suddenly the app slowed to a crawl. I was not able to get realtime updates on the robot's progress. In addition, the map was often corrupted.
DESIGN: I can think of no reason whatsoever that the edges of the machine need to be so tall. They don't fit under any of my kitchen cabinets and shelves (all the other robots did). That means that the consistently dirtiest part of any room--the edge--will not be touched by this robot if there is any built-in cabinetry. I have to clean all those by hand. If there is a compelling reason for the machine to be so tall, then THE WHISKERS NEED TO BE LONGER.
OMG, the music. Please, please, for the love of god, don't make me listen to a cutesy little earworm of a melody when the machine turns on! Even when I turn the sound to zero, if I have to start the machine using the button instead of the app, or if I have to power down and restart, the music blares at top volume. I asked about this before purchasing, but Amazon customers either didn't notice, didn't remember, or didn't mind the music, and some claimed that it could be turned off. THE MUSIC CANNOT BE TURNED OFF.
