Review on iLife A7 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

My wife decided that we, including me, needed a robot vacuum cleaner. I was against it. But, no objections like “this is expensive” or “he will rebel against us” were not accepted, so we made a compromise with her and bought a robot vacuum cleaner.

In fact, the wife is right. In our apartment (especially in summer), a lot of dust accumulates, from which washing the floor (there are no carpets) twice a week and periodic dry cleaning with a classic vacuum cleaner does not help. Literally half a day after cleaning, we feel dust, crumbs and more on our feet. Purely not where they clean, but where they don’t litter, you say. But to make not litter two children, the cat and me, and even close the dusty windows … No, I would rather accept the robot into my family.

In general, after six months of choosing and trying to negate the thoughts of buying a robot vacuum cleaner, this IlifeA7 device was chosen and purchased

First, I’ll explain why he is. Ilife is a brand in its own right with a proven track record in cleaning robots. Chinese brand. But honestly Chinese and already solid. At the same time, it is not the most expensive, vacuum cleaners of the same Chinese from Xiaomi are more expensive. Further, it was decided that a vacuum cleaner was needed without wet cleaning and the choice was reduced to the Ilife A series, which is just without it. And, in fact, the decisive factor was the large 0.6 l container, because in most robotic vacuum cleaners, containers come with a volume of 0.3 liters. For an apartment of 85 m2, a large container is still important. Well, also some additional features have strengthened this choice. About them a little further.

He has a very nice design. Black color. But the top is glossy anthracite black. Marky a little, but very beautiful. Reflects. This is noticeable in the photographs. I have warm light everywhere at home, so it even “yellows” a little. But it looks very solid. And not only a vacuum cleaner, but everything. All the details feel of high quality, the packaging is reliable and neat, the main box is beautiful and sellable and modest on top for transportation, even the passport looks expensive and serious. The Russian language is present, we do not order a vacuum cleaner from China, but we buy it in a Russian store, with a guarantee.

Noises like a small vacuum cleaner. You can’t hear it through the wall at all. In the same room with him it does not bother me too much, except that watching TV interferes. The vacuum cleaner has two suction modes: normal and enhanced. Here on the reinforced one it makes more noise. But honestly, the reinforced one has not come in handy yet, it copes with the usual.

Yes, and the vacuum cleaner is large for a robot, well, with such and such a container, it is certainly larger than its brothers.

Of the interesting things, I note that he has two side brushes with which he rakes up the debris in front of him, and then with the central main brush in the form of a shaft pushes it towards the nozzle and pulls it into itself. For example, the same smart and expensive Xiaomi has only one side brush, and budget vacuum cleaners do not always have a central one. And also the presence of both a bumper and sensors for detecting obstacles. Often, cheaper vacuum cleaners only have a bumper. He also has sensors for detecting differences in height, so as not to fall off the stairs. But I have no stairs, as well as an open cellar, for example.

This model does not have the ability to memorize the floor plan and use it in the future. However, this is not really necessary, and I will explain it further.

What’s in the box? Remote, spare side brushes, extra center brush with bristles, charger, docking station, spare hepa filter and brush so you can clean the brush that cleans the floor.

There are three filters in the garbage container: the first is a regular boot, the second is a foam rubber intermediate and a hepa for fine air purification at the outlet. The container and the first two filters are washable.

So what can Ilife A7 do? Two things: scare the cat and vacuum. It has several cleaning modes. Briefly about each.

1) Cleaning from wall to wall with a snake. The robot will drive along a section of the wall, move to the opposite one and begin to drive between them, passing the entire room lane by lane. Effective, but it will not reach the walls a little, although it will try to take into account furniture and other irregularities in the walls. As a result, he vacuums most of the room.

2) Cleaning along the walls. The robot will travel along the entire perimeter of the room (apartment) with brushes literally touching the baseboards and perfectly clean the entire space along the walls.

3) Max mode will start the vacuum cleaner in a spiral in a small area. This mode is useful if you need to clean up a lot of concentrated waste. Well, that is, if you overslept something, then Max is what you need.

4) Automatic mode. The vacuum cleaner will start to move around the room in an essentially chaotic manner. Now through the center, then along the wall will pass. But gradually, supposedly, it will clean the entire room. And he will even move to other rooms himself. Well I do not know. In my opinion, the regime is dubious. First, it does not capture the entire space. Secondly, it takes a long time to clean. Thirdly, in some places it passes several times. It is much more efficient to start cleaning from wall to wall, and then along the wall. It will be cleaner and it goes through these two cycles faster than one automatic. On the positive side, in this mode, the cat cannot guess at all where the vacuum cleaner will go, and it is cool to run from it.

5) Manual mode. You can control the movement of the vacuum cleaner from the remote control and get out where you need it, or just drive the cat again. To be honest, it is very convenient and useful: without bending over, just using the peak-to-peak remote control and assembled the “kaku”. You feel like a child with a radio-controlled car. But he drives more precisely than any car.

I decided in advance that I did not need him to travel around my apartment. I prefer to lock it in a specific room, kitchen or hallway when no one is there. It does not interfere and vacuums them effectively. Therefore, I did not think about a vacuum cleaner with a room memory function and saved 5-8 thousand rubles.

There is also a cleaning schedule, which I also do not use. Speaking of it, I’ll walk through some of the other aspects of the A7 along the way. Because we have a schedule here, which means there are hours. Yes, they are. The display (and it has a display) shows the time and day of the week. The display also shows in which mode the vacuum cleaner is working. There is no calendar. Accordingly, you can set up the cleaning time for each day of the week, with different times on different days. The vacuum cleaner will start itself from the docking station, tidy up, return to it without your participation, charge and turn off, going into power saving mode. Well, a robot, what really. True, the robot forgets what the time is, what the schedule, if you completely disconnect it from the power supply with the toggle switch on the body.

There is one more feature that helps to control the vacuum cleaner and set it up, though it is still questionable. I’m talking about control via an app on a smartphone. The idea is that when the vacuum cleaner and the smartphone are in the same wifi network (it doesn’t matter if the router created it or the smartphone), then you can set up a schedule, see the wear resource of brushes and filters, search for the vacuum cleaner using sound, control its movements directly from the smartphone. The remote control must be found and sent to the vacuum cleaner, and with a smartphone you can sit in another room and “steer”. But, to be honest, I did not see the need for this. Moreover, the application for both android and ios is in English and has very bad reviews. They write that it does not just work badly itself, but causes malfunctions in the work of the vacuum cleaners themselves. I do not want to check the reliability of this information.

About the docking station. It is usually called simply the base. The A7 has a charger like a phone and a connector on the case for charging. But also, you can connect the charger to the base. The vacuum cleaner can be put on it, or it will drive itself in and will be charged through the terminals on the bottom. There are problems with her. He finds it badly. He discovers that she is, a couple of meters from him and can literally drive around the room for 10 minutes, no longer sucking, until he figure out where she is exactly and how to call her in more precisely. It doesn’t matter if he did it after cleaning or at your command by pressing the “home” button on the remote control. If the base is disconnected, it will not immediately detect it and will disconnect. This option, in my opinion, is more effective and convenient. Calmed down and stood up. In general, I removed the base. I just charge it with a wire when it runs out. A full charge takes about 5 hours.

Let me summarize. We are satisfied with the Ilife A7 vacuum cleaner. Objectively satisfied. He will not make the apartment sterile, classic general cleaning is still needed. However, it became much cleaner with him. We launch it in about a day.

The article is written on the basis of materials of this site.