I'd long thought about getting a robot vacuum cleaner to do 'between real clean tidying' but wasn't up to spending the sort of money the market leader's command.
My 'real' home vacuum is a commercial backpack PacVac Superpro 700. It is powerful and has a mega-long cord so can clean the house, garage, even cars on the drive outside, without changing plugs. It's awesome but the arrival of a cat with long white, seemingly always shedding, fur meant fairly constant light cleaning was needed...
When I saw the AIRROBO P20 at Jaycar NZ, for a couple of hundred dollars, I was tempted but didn't buy. Back home I read some reviews, which were good, and decided it was worth a punt.
Why so affordable?
The tagline for the P20 is 'Simplified but not simple' and that is the secret. It has the basics right, powerful suction, reasonable size (600ml) onboard dust catcher, smart enough navigation, and a slim stylish casing that fits under low furniture. What it doesn't have is lidar, mapping memory between cleaning sessions, a hard floor mop function, or self-emptying that some, including Airobo's own T20, much more expensive alternatives offer.
It navigates by tracking where it has been, avoiding obstacles by bumping, falls with edge sensors, and uses a random (but patterned) approach to ensure coverage. Once it has covered the area, or if low on battery, it heads home to recharge to be ready for the next clean.
You can use the supplied remote, which can be docked in the home base, for control or a simple but effective phone app. Feedback is via audio prompts from the unit (including cries for help if stuck!) and, if the app is connected, phone notifications.
The phone app can manage multiple cleaners, as a Red Dwarf fan I had to name mine 'Scutter', and the 'Living Room' location shown is manual, just to remind me which (split) level of the house the unit is on as it doesn't store the floor plan or location. Each cleaner has a command screen which shows status and has several cleaning modes (all available from the remote control too):
- Automatic is the everyday mode; it cleans in a logically random pattern until the area has been defined and covered. It then cleans the perimeter again and returns to base to charge.
- Edge just follows the outer boundary of the area.
- Spiral circles out from the start point (for an area without boundaries?)
- Spot covers a zig-zag square patch for spot cleans.
- Manual lets you drive the robot to an area to start a clean. Useful as carrying it means it takes much longer to find 'home' (bumping around the entire area perimeter) as it uses inertial sensors and wheel tracking to know where it is going/has been.
In addition, in preferences you can select from three suction (thus noise) levels and settings includes provision for scheduled (one-off or recurring) cleans and optional Google/Amazon smart assistant connection. The 'Plug' button ends the current clean session and sends the unit home, the map button opens a screen showing clean progress.
The cleaning progress is mapped in the current session but forgotten once the next session starts. The inertial tracking, bump navigation, clever logic and edge sensors means it copes well with obstacles, stair edges, floor surface transitions, and avoiding getting trapped. The first few times I ran it while at home, noted and fixed a few things that foiled it like loose cords or fringed edges on carpet rugs. Now they are sorted I use the app scheduler to run it at night, while I sleep, or while away without problems.
My split-level house means I just move it (and the charging base) between levels, it doesn't mind that at all. The screenshots below show it completing a level and heading back home to dock and recharge.
The highest suction setting (spec says 2800 Pa) cleans carpet really well and is not too noisy. I have it running overnight in the living/kitchen/entry area of an open plan house while sleeping nearby without closing the bedroom door. The middle setting is a good compromise for mix of carpet/hard floors and gives longer cleaning session per charge, the lowest 'quiet' mode cleans OK, good if you are in the room while the unit is operating.
And then it went wrong...
Having been amazed by the performance, given the cost, after a few weeks the app advised a firmware update was available that would improve the navigation. Installing it was easy (one click, wait until the app had done its thing) and all seemed well.
However, 'Scutter' started exhibiting some odd behaviour. If the cleaning area was smaller than the battery life all was good and, when complete, it returned home to charge. However, if the area was larger than the battery life (only one level in the house) it just kept going, and going, until the battery was completely flat. At first the small area homing confused me, but I soon realised it consistently failed to recognise the falling battery level and never attempted to go home from large areas.
I looked at the website FAQ, but nothing there helped so contacted support. To be honest I didn't expect much, it's a cheap product after all.
Skeptical, amazed, then impressed!
I got a prompt response but then exchanged quite a few emails requesting the unit GUID, then photos, then proof of purchase, then even short videos of the robot in action in various states of operation. I emphasised this didn't seem to be a hardware fault (thought they were heading towards a replacement unit) and only happened after the firmware change but was told they were looking into it.
Then yesterday, about a week later, I got an email saying a firmware update had been made available for my machine to test and report back. On opening the phone app it was there, installed it and ran several tests to find 'Scutter' has been fixed. It now cleans as well as ever, seems to be navigating even better, and heads home whenever the battery gets down to about 20-30% as it did before.
I was impressed with the product before this, it is great value and works well if you empty the dust cassette between cleans (which is easy). I was really impressed with the support service which was much better than I've had for some hardware, and software, costing hundreds or thousands of dollars more.
If you need a good, affordable, robot vacuum I can recommend the AIRROBO P20.
Update 2024-07-11: 'Scutter' is still working perfectly, another feature I learned of since writing. It is future proofed with a user replaceable rechargeable battery!
