The Xiaomi ROIDMI Eve Plus has many things I want in a modern-day robot vacuum – and for just RM1,579, it’s one of the best value-for-money options in the market right now. In this review, I’m going to explain why.
Design
The ROIDMI Eve Plus looks fairly minimalist – it doesn’t stand out all too much, which is a good thing if your home is geared towards a muted aesthetic. White is your only colour option, and the automatic dust collector is the same shade as well. Although the pair will fit any home interior, they pick up dirt and stains easily, so you’ll have to wipe them down frequently.
The power button on the robot lights up, while the dust collection station sports a touch LED panel that tells you the battery percentage of the robot, and dust collection status when the cleaner is docked.
ROIDMI dictates that you should place the station in a space with a 0.5m clearance on both sides and a 1.5m clearance on the front. With a size of 358x350x175mm, the station sat snugly in a corner of my home without any issues.
Setting up
The process of getting started was simple enough – hook your station up to a power source, power up the Eve Plus, and download the ROIDMI app from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. From there, the pairing process took only 5 minutes.
ROIDMI App
Once paired up with the companion app, you’ll be given real-time information about your Eve Plus, including its location, status, state of consumable items like filters, and more. You can also change the vacuuming and mopping levels on the fly. For the most part, it’s pretty intuitive, and I’ve never encountered any issues.
You can create partitions, add keep-out zones, virtual walls, and even customize any map. You can also create multiple maps for different floors. If you need it a quick clean of a particular spot in the house, you can use the manual mode to control the robot by yourself. To top it off, the app supports Google Assistant voice controls too.
Cleaning features
The Eve Plus comes with vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping features – with the app, you can choose the power at which the robot cleans, or how much water it uses for mopping. The package comes with an extra filter for the robot, plus a reusable mop and a pack of disposable ones too.
The first cleaning cycle is necessary for the robot to fully map out the space – features such as the LDS laser navigation system that uses algorithms to help navigate the space fairly quickly.
The vacuum packs a brushless motor that has a 2,700Pa suction power; it’s accompanied by a pair of rotating side brushes, and a flexible nozzle that adjusts to different floor conditions. At its default mode, the robot cleans up dust, crumbs, and litter easily.
In terms of noise, in quiet mode, the vacuums and rotating brushes are audible, meaning you’ll still be able to hear it even when you’re in another room. However, I’ve never found it to overbearing; but if you’re new to robot vacuums, it may take some time to adjust to.
When it comes to mopping, the water tank can fit a 250ml tank, and it was more than enough for my small-sized apartment. As mentioned earlier, you can adjust how much water it uses in the app itself – and I never really needed to go higher than medium amount of water needed.
Navigation and obstacle avoidance
With the LDS lidar scanner, the Eve Plus was able to able navigate my cluttered rooms fairly easily and avoid most obstacles. It is able to climb over 2cm objects and it was able to avoid most obstacles that were taller than that.
The Eve Plus has a height of 98mm, and it can fit under most of my furniture – and it also has ability to detect if an opening is too short, so you don’t have to worry about it getting stuck under anything.
It’s not all peachy however as it did get stuck on the legs of my IKEA Poang chair, and it didn’t learn to avoid it in subsequent cycles. A workaround for me was to create a virtual wall near the chair so the robot would stay clear of it. This is a small blip in an otherwise fuss-free cleaning experience.
Battery Life
The machine packs a 5,200mAh battery and ROIDMI says it can last up to 250 minutes and cover up to 250 square meters of space. In my own tests, it used 40 percent of its battery covering my entire apartment on the standard vacuum mode, with the mopping feature turned on.
The robot will automatically return to its charging station when the battery levels drop below 15 percent, and it’ll be able to resume cleaning where it left off, which is very convenient. Charging up the robot takes a little over an hour from 30% to full.
Dust Collection and Charging Station
Besides emptying and charging the Eve Plus, the station also comes with a self-sterilization and deodorization system that keeps itself as clean as possible. It uses a combination of Deodorizing, Particle Generators, HEPA filters, and Active Oxygen technology to treat the waste collected in the 3L dust bag inside the station.
You only need to clean swap out the dust bag after 60 days – the extra bags are provided too, which is nice.
Verdict
The Xiaomi ROIDMI Eve Plus doesn’t break new grounds with what it does, but that’s not a bad thing – it simply works and its plentiful features, easy-to-use app, dust-collection station, cleaning performance, and extra consumables well justify its RM1,579 price tag. You can visit ROIDMI’s official Shopee page or official website to purchase.