Robot vacuums remind me of the old telly show Tomorrow’s World.
We’d tune in each week to see that latest gizmos of the future and be dazzled by what was on the telly in the 80s.
And while I’m still waiting to see the mass rollout of flying cars that they promised, robot cleaners are very much here and on sale in 2024.
But are they any good or just a gimmick?
Well, having tested out the RE4 Plus I’ve got to say the technology is not only very real, but also very effective.
This little bot does indeed hoover and mop your floors for you.
And it’s pretty good.
The RE4 Plus isn’t cheap at just shy of £300 but what you get is a clever mid-sized device that can run around some 300m2 of floorspace on a single charge.
It not only effectively sucks up all the crumbs and dust from your everyday living across three strength settings at a max suction power of 4000 Pa, but also give them a good old wet wipe in the same process.
It’s all controlled by the Ezviz app.
You sign up to an account and add your new bot to the list of wi-fi connected devices. I renamed mine Chloe the Cleaner based on my young daughter’s order.
On boot up, the rather loud vocals of the circular vacuum unit fires into life and declares it will begin to map your living space.
It then starts doing it’s thing, driving at modest speed around your home, deftly evading obstacles and walls and generally working out exactly the shape of the room or rooms available to it.
It’s quite impressive to watch as your home unfolds in a digital top-down form on the app screen.
The RE4 uses LDS LiDAR radar-style scanner technology to ‘see’ the room as well as infrared sensors across the front and sides of the unit to slowly map out a space and, if it’s big enough, portion it into various ‘rooms’ to clean.
The RE4 then strategically maps out the most efficient cleaning route with the aim of leaving no corner untouched.
And you can customise the fully drawn map of your home to partition or block off areas, like tables for example, which are impossible to access underneath due to all the chair legs.
When you’re happy with the layout, it’s a matter of picking a full clean of the entire floor space or picking a ‘room’ to clean, say for example just the kitchen in a big open-planned downstairs space.
And the RE4 then sets off from it’s charging station and either hoovers, mops or does both at the power you require via app control.
An average front room probably takes 10 minutes or so for the efficient bot to cover back-and-forth and the results are impressive.
It knows when it hits a rug and speeds up if necessary when transitioning from a wooden floor to carpet for a deep clean.
Thanks to it’s circular design, the unit is able to get fairly close into corners and awkward spots to cover most parts of a room.
It’s not noisy at all on the lower, everyday settings. At its highest suction it’s still fairly quiet as to not upset kids and pets too much.
And the extra, rather wonderful gimmick on this particular unit is that when it’s done and re-docks with its charging box the RE4 offers hand-free emptying.
The big white docking box has it’s own vacuum section that hoovers up all the dirt in the unit and places into a four-litre bag that is said to last you three months before you need to bin it.
So no more robot dustbin emptying after every clean.
The consistent mop pressure sanitises floors and carpets and its 300ml clean water tank guarantees thorough, whole-home cleaning.
It’s easy to top up and the cloth on the bottom of the unit pops off for you to wash in the washing machine when it gets grubby.
The robot will automatically return to the charging base to recharge if the battery is running low too, so no idling when the battery is down to its last ebbs.
This really feels like the future when you see it in action and the idea you can push a few buttons on your phone at work and come home a bit later to a crumb-free, mopped downstairs via wi-fi control is pretty amazing.
The RE4 is built well and robust with clever tech under the hood.
It’s vacuum doesn’t quite catch all the dirt in places, particularly corner areas, and the mop is good but ultimately a thin watery wipe, rather than a deep clean.
So you’re really looking here at a device that does an excellent, general regular light clean of well used areas.
That’s ideal for me and I’m happy to have to bot keep a lid on the overall mess until I can come in at the weekend with my trust old human vacuum and mop and bucket to get into those nooks and crannies.
At £300 you’re getting a lot of decent cutting edge tech here for the money.
VERDICT 4/5
