The year was 2016, when Xiaomi introduced its very first robot vacuum. Mi Robot Vacuum has since achieved incredible success and remains very popular. Xiaomi managed to sell up to 3 million units worldwide, making it the absolute most popular robot vacuum on the market.
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The success of the Xiaomi Mi Robot Vacuum is all about the perfect price-performance ratio and especially quality. Over those full 3 years, it received almost zero negative reviews. In a quality and reliability test, it scored 18.5 out of 20, which is among the best ratings of any robot vacuum.
Higher suction power
Xiaomi wants to defend its success in this category with a new model – Mi Robot Vacuum 1S. It’s the first direct successor to the legend after long 3 years. It brings a bunch of new features and improvements while keeping a very affordable price.
From the design side, the Xiaomi Mi Robot Vacuum 1S hasn’t changed much; it only got nicer edges. The biggest changes happened “under the hood”. The new model got a more powerful motor – suction power increased from 1800pa to 2000pa, bringing it on par with the pricier Roborock 2 (S50) and the recently introduced Roborock T6.
It knows where the living room or bathroom is
Perhaps the biggest new feature is the advanced navigation system. To the new LDS laser system an image sensor has now also been added. From now on, the Mi Robot Vacuum 1S can detect objects visually. The new sensors help not only with more precise guidance of the vacuum, but also with new possibilities for creating room maps.
With the visual sensor, the vacuum can recognize room doors, as well as specific rooms. The visual data is immediately destroyed after detection, to protect the user’s privacy.
After the first vacuuming, the apartment / house map is stored in the vacuum’s memory. With the new software and sensors, it can now precisely identify and split rooms, as well as edit the map. Mi Robot 1S now knows where your living room, bedroom, or bathroom is. Thanks to that, you can now send it to clean only selected rooms, for example only the living room when you’re expecting guests.
More efficient vacuuming is ensured by the new smart dynamic route planning. The vacuum won’t bounce from room to room anymore, and it will also get the job done much faster. There’s also a new software virtual wall feature, so you won’t need to stick magnetic tape strips on the floor anymore. But it still supports those too.
Automatic recharging, with a 40 % more powerful processor
Among the features is also automatic return to the charging dock if the battery capacity drops below 20%. The vacuum remembers where it left off and, after recharging, returns to the “work area” to finish cleaning.
Since it’s a robot, all of its functions are powered by a processor. Specifically, a quad-core Rockchip chipset with cores Cortex-A35, which is 40% more powerful compared to the Cortex-A7 cores in the previous generation and has 10% lower power consumption. The processor is built on a 64-bit architecture and runs at 1.5 GHz.
Mi Robot Vacuum 1S is powered by the same 5200 mAh battery as the first-generation model. It provides up to 2.5 hours of cleaning or 250 m2 of area. The vacuum includes a total of 12 sensors, including sensors to prevent falls down stairs, a front bumper, a new visual sensor, a new LDS sensor, and more.
It supports a XiaoAI voice assistant, with the option to schedule cleaning for the entire apartment as well as specific rooms. The vacuum still communicates with your smartphone via WiFi connectivity.
Still very affordable
In China, the Xiaomi Mi Robot Vacuum 1S will start selling on 9.4.2019 during the local Mi Fan festival, when Xiaomi celebrates its birthday. The price for China residents is set at 1999 yuan, which is a very reasonable 265 € / 6850 kč in euro terms.
Given the new features and higher performance, the price is really perfect. The same functions are also found in the recently introduced Roborock T6, which costs 370 € / 9500 kč. It does have an extra mopping function, but many users can do without it.
As it’s typical with Xiaomi products, the price for us Europeans will be higher again, and at least in the first months of sales we have to assume it will be more expensive. Over time, the price will drop. As for availability with international sellers, or official availability in Europe, we’ll let you know first via our newsletter.
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