Review – iLife V7s Pro: Affordable Robotic Vacuum Cleaner
7 min read
iLife V7s Pro
$190
Pros
- Good build quality
- Great accessory package
- Dry clean & wet mopping function
- Good cleaning capability
- Great battery life
- Low noise
- Affordable
Cons
- Cleaning pattern could be improved
- Slow wet mopping
After a long day at work, the last thing I want to do when I reach home is to vacuum & mop the floor. Therefore I have been eyeing on a robotic vacuum cleaner for the longest time. There are a couple of reasons why I don’t pull the trigger earlier – one, the price, and two, the doubt of actual usability of it. Until not too long ago, Gearbest has reached out to us so that we could take a look at the iLife V7s Pro, a reasonably priced robotic vacuum cleaner with plenty of features. After using it for over 3 weeks, here’s what I think of the iLife V7s Pro.
Before we get into the review, I have to make clear that while the unit is provided by Gearbest, this is my honest personal review of the device.
Unboxing
Opening up the box and we are treated to a bunch of accessories apart from the robotic vacuum cleaner.
- iLife V7s Pro
- Charging base + cable
- Remote control
- Dust box
- 3x efficient filter
- 1x primary filter
- 1x side brush (replacement)
- Cleaning tool
- Water tank
- Mop base
- 2x mop cloth
- User manual
This is the dry cleaning accessories. It comes with 1 extra spare side brush with the original one came preinstalled on the robot. The dust box takes 2 different layers of filters – one primary filter and 3x replaceable HEPA filters.
For wet mopping, you will need the mop base and they have generously provided 2 pieces of cloth. The water tank serves to provide a continuous supply of water to the cloth while the robot is moving around.
The charging base is rather simple with the metal contact at the front.
Charging Base
This is how it looks like when the iLife V7s Pro is docked.
The black charging base blends into the surrounding with ease. If only if the remote control has black chassis, it would be perfect.
Remote Control
The remote control takes 2x AAA batteries where users can issue certain commands to the robot cleaner such as start/stop cleaning, turning to a specific direction, set auto cleaning time or back to charging dock. It is very handy since it has the timer function to make it work at a certain hour.
Design & Features
iLife V7s Pro
The iLife V7s Pro only comes in a single colour option – Rose Gold. I presume it is because that most of the time that the user/buyer are housewives. The design is clean and doesn’t seem trying too hard to impress. That is exactly why minimalism is the future.
Besides, there is a touch-enabled “Clean” button at the top to start or stop the cleaning process.
You can charge the robot cleaner by directly plug in the power adapter. Not sure in which circumstance that we will need to charge it in this way, but hey, at least we have a secondary option in case your cat destroys the dock. Right under the charging port is the main power switch to actually power on the robot cleaner.
The front “visor” houses all the required sensors for the robot cleaner to work autonomously. The front bumper panel has a spring-loaded mechanism to detect when the robot has bumped into something. At the front, facing downwards is the proximity sensor to prevent the robot from going through the edges such as staircases.
The rest of the bottom section can be divided into 2 different functions, one for manoeuvre and another for cleaning. It uses a roller brush to sweep up the dust into the dust box and assisted by a rather weak vacuum suction motor within the robot.
The front wheel is used for balancing while the two motorised wheel navigates the robot cleaner around your house.
User Experience
Like we mentioned at the earlier of this review, the iLife V7s Pro supports dry cleaning as well as wet mopping. Here’s my experience of using both features every day for more than 2 weeks.
Dry Cleaning
Starting off with the dry cleaning, the dust box has a basic design with dual layers of filters. The roller brush sweeps up the dust and the filters will capture the fine dust and grimes inside the dust box. The V7s Pro is a lot quieter than many other competitor units. That being said, the vacuum motor might be a bit weak, but surprisingly the cleaning ability is pretty impressive.
This is the result of having the robot cleaning the house for 1 hour a day for 3 days. Before this, I would need to mop the floor twice every week, now I’ll quietly tell you that I have extended it to once a week because the floor felt a lot cleaner than before.
The robot cleaner is not without its problems, especially when dealing with cloth floor mats which is very common for robot cleaners. By that, I have to point out that it is extremely important that you don’t leave any hazardous items around that would jam the robot cleaner such as USB cables. Since it doesn’t come with the floor mapping function, the cleaning pattern is not very effective when compared to other more expensive counterparts.
Wet Mopping
Moving on to the wet mopping and the implementation is rather simple. Just velcro the cloth to the mop base and then install it under the robot cleaner.
Fill up the water tank up to 300 ml and installing it into the robot cleaner would provide a continuous flow of water to the mop. A full tank can last up to around 45 minutes of cleaning. Honestly speaking, it is not the most elegant way to implement wet cleaning. The water tank does have a control valve for controlling the water flow.
Cleaning efficiency is alright, but I would definitely recommend you to perform dry cleaning first before proceeding to wet mopping. Then again, the added wet cloth slows down the robot significantly so it would take a longer time to clean up the same area. Since the floor is wet, wheelspins would result in navigation difficulty for the robot itself.
Final Words
Wrapping up the review, at the price of US$190 (MYR 737), the iLife V7s Pro is a lot cheaper than many of the robot cleaners out there. Granted you probably might find one at the half price of this, but god knows what has been skimped out to achieve that kind of price.
The V7s Pro has a good build quality and all the required sensors for the robot to navigate around. Most importantly, its cleaning ability has been praised even by my family members. The remote control is useful if you need to manually direct the robot cleaner to clean a specific spot.
Do keep in mind that you may still need to attend to the robot cleaner during the cleaning process, especially when dry cleaning, you will need to remove all the potential hazards that could hinder the robot’s movement such as cables and rugs. The cleaning efficiency while may not be as good as those expensive high-end models with floor mapping function, however, having the freedom to do something else while leaving the cleaning duty to a robot is a godsend.
Where to buy: Gearbest
