THINGS I LOVE V1 - ROBOT VACUUM

I never thought I would be one of THOSE people, you know the ones who owned a robot vacuum, you see the ones advertised on TV for like $1000 and I just can't justify spending that much, especially when my first vacuum was a house warming present and the only vacuum besides this one I spent $40 on at target. I loved that $40 vacuum, it was bag-less, it worked, but I hated the cord. Plus it was loud, it scared Simon, and when we moved into this apartment, we left it with my mother-in-law. I had all intentions of replacing it with an identical model, but then the Amazon Prime Days happened, and my husband really wanted a robot vacuum. The rest, is history.

Meet the ILIFE A4s Robot Vacuum Cleaner, we named ours Brobot (bonus points if you get the reference). Brobot has changed our life. He is priced at $170, but with the sale we only paid $134, WORTH EVERY SINGLE PENNY. He isn't a super fancy model, more of a no-frills, he doesn't memorize your house, doesn't come uncalled, but when I tap his little head, the shiny silver button, he comes to life and cleans for about an hour and a half, or until he is full, and then goes to his home.

Usually I turn him on first thing in the morning when I'm doing laundry, it helps when I'm walking around, that way I can pick up any cords that he might suck up. If he does get caught on a cord he will beep really loud a couple of times and his light will turn red. Then he will shut off. That's it. He doesn't pull chargers out of the wall or anything. He seamlessly goes from the carpet in our bedroom to the linoleum in the rest of our apartment, he even climbs onto our shag rug. Very rarely, it is too hard for him to climb, so I lift him up and he cleans away.

A word of caution for my fellow long-haired beauties out there, you need to flip your robot over and cut the hair out of him every couple of runs. I do it once a week, and I run him three times a week. I have a picture of his belly and I'l explain better. The circle in the middle is just a wheel but to the left and right (I call them his feelers), they catch hair and need to be cleaned, along with area inside of the yellow piece. The yellow piece pops right off, and the tube comes out and I just take scissors and cut my long hair off of it, and it looks brand new again. They do send you spare parts, but I've had Brobot seven months and he is still brand new.

The only thing I do plan on changing out soon is his filter, the bottom trap pops out and needs to be emptied every time you run him. Sometimes he can't run the full 90 minutes because he gets full. If it ever just stops in the middle and doesn't make it home, it might be too full to continue, I've had a few unfortunate times when I forgot to run him all weekend and come Monday he gets full before he's cleaned the whole apartment.

So a few drawbacks, we only have a one-bedroom apartment and it takes him 90 minutes to clean it, I'm sure if you have a bigger house you might have to run him twice, we actually want to buy a second one when we move.

During the sale there was similar model that also mopped the floor that a family member bought, theirs have quit working, while Brobot is still running strong, but I do wish he did a little more. Ours does have a timer, where you can set it to come on at say, noon every day, but I wouldn't turn it on and leave the house because there is no guarantee it will get clean. I have used the feature a few times with luck, but once I turned it on and my husband forgot to pick up his phone charger and I came home and Brobot was stuck under the bed.

Sometimes he gets caught in the furniture and it is a little annoying, he doesn't always find his way out and turns off, so I have to come get him from under a chair and turn him back on. Also, our pup likes to hide under the bed, and Brobot really terrorizes him.


Overall, I can not sing the praises high enough, $134 and I can mostly turn it on and forget it, yes there is a little babysitting it occasionally, but if I'm already up and walking around the house, it is just a quick nudge.  I can live without my Brobot!