Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro Review: Staggeringly good value

Verdict

Absolutely incredible value, the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro has a self-empty, self-clean docking station and a proper mopping system. It lacks the full deep cleaning power of its high end rivals, but for day-to-day messes, this robot is a great vacuum cleaner and mop.

Introduction

An early investor in Roborock, to the point where Roborock’s first robot vacuum cleaners only worked in the Mi app, Xiaomi is now making its own products. The Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro is staggering value: £399.99 for a model that has a self-empty, self-clean docking station is outrageous.

Mopping performance and overall vacuum ability are great for the price and you have to spend considerably more before you get a much better experience.

Design and Features

• Self-empty and self-clean docking station
• Mopping with self-lifting pads
• Smart object avoidance

The Roborock Q5 Pro is a brilliant value, basic robot vacuum cleaner and mop, but for just £100 more, the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro offers a lot more. That starts with the large self-empty, self-clean docking station.

As with similar models from rivals, such as the Roborock Qrevo S, this docking station has a clean water tank (4 litres) for washing the mopping pads and for filling the robot’s tank, and a 3.8 litre tank for dirty water.

There’s no detergent tank on this model for deeper cleaning, and you have to buy a more expensive model, such as the Eufy Omni S1 Pro for that.

There’s also a 2.5-litre dust bag, which Xiaomi says can hold 75 days’ worth of dust before needing to be replaced.

Externally, there’s not much difference to tell between this robot and its higher-end competition. There’s a LiDAR dome on top for quick navigation. At the front is a wide-area structured light object sensor, which lets the robot spot and avoid a lot of obstacles.

There’s no camera, so this sensor can’t spot and avoid smaller, common obstacles, such as pet mess and cables; however, it does improve navigation.

Inside the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro is a standard bin (size not stated), which has a washable filter inside.

Flip the robot over, and the layout is quite similar to that of other mopping robots. At the back are two mopping pads, which can lift up to 10mm of the ground to avoid wetting carpet.

There’s a standard floor brush in the middle, which is used to agitate dirt on carpets and hard floors, and a single side-sweeper brush, which is designed to pull dirt out from the edges of rooms.

This robot can’t pop its mopping pads out or swing the side brush out for improved edge cleaning.

As with Xiaomi’s other smart products, this one is controlled through Mi Home. It’s quick to get the robot connected to the app, and then out for a quick mapping run to learn your home.

Once finished, the app suggests rooms, but there’s the option to merge or split them to suit. And, I could also place furniture around the house, roughly where it’s located in real life. This can make quick clean-up jobs faster, such as selecting a sofa to clean around after watching a film and eating popcorn.

No-go and no-mop zones can be added to the map, so you can stop the robot from going where it might get stuck.

Otherwise, the cleaning options are what you’d expect from a robot vacuum cleaner. For quick cleaning, you can just tap the Power button on the front of the robot and send it back to the dock with the Home button.

For more control, you need the app, which gives you a choice to clean the entire house, a specific room, a zone (or around furniture), or the entire home.

There’s a choice to vacuum only, vacuum and mop, vacuum before mopping or mop only. There’s then a choice of four suction modes (silent, standard, strong and turbo), plus three water levels and three routing paths (quick, standard and deep).

Performance

• Solid vacuuming performance
• Powerful mopping
• Long battery life

With a rated suction power of 5000Pa, the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro has around half the suction power of the leading robot vacuum cleaners, such as the Roborock Qrevo Slim. That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad performer.

Set to two passes and on its maximum suction power, the X20 Pro did a reasonable job on my carpet test. A lot of the flour spill is collected, leaving the outline of the ‘X’ on the floor. Sure, more powerful cleaners do better, but for regular everyday spills, the X20 Pro will work well.

I moved on to the hard floor test. Here, the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro managed to collect every trace of dust that was in the middle of the floor.

I then moved on to the tougher edge test, with dust spread up to the edges of the kitchen. Here, the robot did a good job. It got close to the edge, although it did smear some dust into the floor, as you can see from the image below. You’ll need to tackle edge cleaning regularly, but the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro will help improve maintenance.

I then moved on to the mopping tests. Starting with the dried-on coffee stains, I found that the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro did a great job. In mopping mode, set to two passes, the coffee stain was removed.

I found the same was true of the red wine stain, which the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro managed to clean within two passes.

The tougher ketchup stain proved more of an issue. This stain was greatly reduced after two cleaning passes but there was still quite a bit of mess left behind.

My tough ground-in-mud test proved tough for this robot, too. The main stain was greatly reduced after two passes, but some bigger flecks of mud were flicked around.

I finished off by putting human hair on the floor, which the robot managed to collect. However, its floor brush is not an anti-tangle one, so the hair got tangled and had to be cut away.

I measured the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro at 67.1dB, which makes about average for a robot vacuum cleaners that I have tested. It’s loud enough to hear, but quiet enough that you can be in the same room as it while it goes about its business.

Battery life is quoted at up to 160 minutes on the lowest power setting. In reality, you don’t have to worry about battery life. After a double-pass of vacuuming and mopping in the Trusted Reviews Home Technology Lab, the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X20 Pro still had enough juice left for extra spot jobs.

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