As far as robot vacuum cleaners go, there’s no dearth of choices and options out there. However, most of them are from brands unheard of, or extremely expensive. So when Xiaomi launched its Vacuum-Mop P in India for just Rs. 24,999, it looked like a deal too good to be true. After all, its competitors, such as the Roomba are priced around Rs. 1 Lakh, and they don’t even offer things like a mopping function. So, if you’re thinking of buying a new robot vacuum cleaner for your home, here’s our review of the Mi Robot Vacuum-Mop P.
First, let’s take a look at all the attachments and accessories you get inside the Mi Robot Vacuum-Mop P box when you first open it.
The most obvious thing about this entire contraption is the sheer weight of it. Not in a bad way, though. In fact, the Mi Vacuum-Mop P is really well designed and built. It looks and feels extremely high-end to the eyes in every way imaginable.
The glossy top lid for the compartment is a fingerprint magnet, which means by the time you take it out of the box and set it up on its dock, it will have plenty of fingerprints all around the edges. Still, since you won’t be touching the vacuum cleaner much in every day use, that’s not a big issue.
As impressive as it is that this device is built so well and looks so good, what’s really important in a vacuum cleaner is how well it actually cleans, and this is where I need to mention a few caveats.
When you start the cleaning process, the vacuum roams around the edges of walls, tables, stools, and every other immovable object in the room to create a map of the space. From there, it proceeds to clean the entire area in nice continuous motions, turning around when it senses an object or obstacle, and cleaning everything in its way.
The suction here is pretty good too, and while I could simply mention 2100Pa of suction power, I think you’ll care more about what it picks up and what it doesn’t. To be honest, it pretty much picks up everything it’ll find on your floor that can fit inside the relatively small vacuum hole.
There’s also the vacuum and mopping mode, which is my personal favorite here. As good as regular vacuuming can be, mopping is what really gets a floor clean, and this vacuum can do that as well, and it does a pretty bang up job of it.
Another issue I noticed with the vacuum cleaner is the side brush. This is something you will attach when you first set the vacuum up, and while it’s nice to have, it tends to get stuck on things like carpets or doormats and then it gets separated from the vacuum and you will end up finding it in random places in your house.
To be honest, you can use the vacuum without connecting it with the Mi Home app and it works perfectly well. However, connecting it with the app does bring a boatload of extra features that are quite useful.
You can also choose whether the device should operate in silent mode, standard mode, medium mode or turbo mode, depending on how powerful you want the suction to be for cleaning the place.
Smarts and Obstacle Avoidance
The smarts of the vacuum extend to obstacle avoidance as well. I’ve mentioned it before, but I need to go into a little extra detail to really explain how it works, and how well it does this.
Cleaning the Filters
While the vacuum cleaner will clean your house well enough, every now and then you will have to clean out the dust compartment (or water and dust compartment) to make sure it keeps working well.
Once the filters have been cleaned, you can just place the dust compartment back into the vacuum cleaner, and its ready to be used again.
The Mi Vacuum-Mop P comes with a 3,200mAh battery. That number itself won’t tell you much about how long this thing can last, however. In my usage, which was usually on medium mode, the vacuum could easily clean my house and return to the charging dock with around 50 to 60% battery remaining. Obviously, a lot of this also depends on whether you’re using the vacuum function, or the vacuum and mop function (which uses more battery).
Pros and Cons
Pros:
Cons:
Should You Buy the Xiaomi Vacuum-Mop P?
At the end of the day, the real question is whether you should buy the Mi Vacuum-Mop P. Look, I can’t tell you whether you need a robot vacuum cleaner. However, I can tell you that you won’t know how much easier this thing makes your life until you use it, because it does. It cleans pretty well, it mops the floor as well, and it does all of it without asking you to keep an eye on it.
