ILIFE 2-in-1 V5s Plus Robot Vacuum & Mop

Review of iLife Robotic Vacuum with Mopping Feature My old Roomba is just that, old! I have replaced parts on it and put in a new battery, but it just sort of does its own thing. So, I decided to try this since it was on a Prime Special in July. I had also done some research and found recommendations from some experts. This was one of those recommendations, sort of. The recommended one was the version without Alexa and Google integration. I started to get it and Amazon showed a newer version and it was only $20 more. Plus, this one mops, too. My hopes when ordering it: it would be more quiet than my Roomba, it would not get stuck under so many things, it would pick up things as well since it doesn’t have a brush or roller, it would map my home and rooms (my old one had no smart features like that), that there would be some method to its vacuuming, that the app would be user friendly, that the battery lasts around 100 minutes as advertised, and that it would actually work with Alexa and Google. I was so disappointed in most aspects. Let’s get this out of the way first, the product description mentions mapping, but there is none. The setup was not too bad. I had to connect to Wi-Fi several times before it finally took. There is nothing in the instructions to tell you which way the button is pressed on the side of the vacuum for on/off, and this is a necessary step in setup and charging. For information, press the button on the “O” icon and not the “-“ icon to turn the thing on. I let this charge overnight as it suggested. Lights flash to let you know it is charging and all lights but the one on the base go off when it is finished. It charges regardless of the position of the on/off switch although the instructions say it does not. Setting up the clock on the remote was okay. I never could get the remote to start the vacuum cleaning. I was able to get the app connected to Alexa easily. I was never able to get it to sync up with Google Home, but this seems to be the case with almost all smart devices I have. Here, Google Home will ask you to download a separate app if you want to connect to Google Home and are having trouble with the Google Home app doing so. Upon downloading the suggested app, there was zero help or steps to follow to connect it, so I just decided to forget Google Home. I pressed “clean” on the robot, and it went forward into the base, backed up, did some spins, and finally took off. I included a video of the initial run to show how minimal the noise is. I was pleased with this since my old Roomba is rather loud and always has been. I was also mostly pleased with the robot’s ability not to run hard into walls and objects. I say mostly because sometimes it did. It will not go under a bed if there is any bedding that drapes down close enough to the floor that the robot sees as a wall or whatever. This was disappointing. The robot has a lot of power in the drive mechanism. I say this because a couple pieces of furniture that I have are crafted with curved metal legs. The robot literally ran up these metal legs a little way. This was not good. I spent almost as much time getting the robot un-stuck from places as I did getting to relax while it cleaned. You cannot remove the mop pad from the robot and clean the house if you have ANY rugs that the robot will run over. I have some really thin rugs under some chairs to protect my hardwood floors. Without the mop pad on the robot, it got stuck and pulled the rugs up every time it tried to run over them due to the hook-and-loop finish on the bottom side of the robot to hold the pads on. I ended up having to put the mop pad back on. It really did not do very well on the edges of the rooms either. And any cords that were even close to being along an edge ended up stopping the robot after it got all tangled up in them. I did not even try the mop feature. I was too frustrated with the poor performance of this robot vacuum already. So, I used the app (which is not very feature-rich at all) and pressed the charge button so that the vacuum would return to its base. It took almost 5 minutes for it to return to its base. I had this running for about 40 minutes (including the time I spent finding it stuck or getting it -un-stuck) and the battery was about 2/3 down. It did pick up quite a bit of stuff. I currently do not have pets and live alone. A photo is included of the dirt bin, which is fairly simple to access and empty. Being so disappointed in this robot vacuum, I boxed it up and started the return process. I hooked up my old Roomba again and let it vacuum some of the areas already vacuumed by this iLife vacuum. I closed off all my other rooms and let it do the main portion and only where the iLife had cleaned already. I posted a photo of the Roomba dirt bin after doing this. Keep in mind that I had thoroughly cleaned my Roomba up, including the dust bin, since I thought I was going to store it away. I was quite surprised by how much dirt the iLife missed. So really, the noise level and the not bumping into most things hard were about the only things I liked about this iLife robotic vacuum. Otherwise, this is a vacuum with lots of room for improvement.