Airbot’s new self-cleaning robot vacuum boasts 3 promising features, we test each one out
[This is a sponsored article with Airbot.]
I’ve been a big fan of robot vacuum cleaners for their ability to maintain the upkeep of my home by cleaning up dust, dander, and fur without me having to lift a finger.
However, my glee is often dampened by the tedious task of maintaining the unit itself, as my past experience can attest.
As someone with dust allergies, it may be worth investing in a self-sufficient robot with auto bin-emptying capabilities.
So when Airbot came to us to review its newly launched self-cleaning Robotic Vacuum L108S Pro Ultra, I decided to put it to the test based on its promising features.
For context, Airbot is a Singapore-founded brand specialising in air dynamic engineering technology to create high-quality and affordable home appliances for consumers.
Airbot’s product line comprises vacuum cleaners, air fryers, and air purifiers, to name a few, and they’re distributed around China, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Setting up my little helper
The robot vacuum cleaner is relatively easy to set up. It comes with an extensive set of attachments and accessories to plug and play once you connect it to the Airbot app.
The box included the vacuum’s charging dock which contains the clean and dirty water tanks and dust collection bag, the robot vacuum with its attached brushes, power cable, and user manuals.
It also contained replacement units for its E11 HEPA filter, dust collection bag, hex side brush, and a tiny cleaning brush.
Testing its promising features
Feature #1: It can smartly map rooms and suggest No-Go Zones
Boasting advanced LiDAR mapping, the Airbot L108S Pro Ultra claims that it can automatically recognise rooms, detect easy-to-get-stuck areas, and propose No-Go-Zones. This will then display invisible walls to block certain areas, which can be further tweaked in the app.
Airbot also states that the robotic vacuum detects and avoids obstacles with ease, with a cliff sensor that prevents it from falling down stairs, for example.
Reality:
With the battery fully charged, which gives the robot up to three hours and 40 minutes of battery life, I let the robot explore my space.
I was impressed by how the robot’s advanced LiDAR mapping could predict the area’s layout even before it completed its first cleanup round.
In terms of its obstacle avoidance, I suppose it somewhat lived up to its claims?
During its first few cleanups, the robot’s collision bumper on the front would bump into partition walls and furniture, and rev up its motor while trying to mount onto carpets. This is rather normal for robot vacuum cleaners in my experience, especially in their mapping stage.
After three complete cleanups, the map was saved, and the Airbot L108S Pro Ultra navigated with fewer bumps.
That said, if a chair sits slightly out of its previously mapped spot, the robot would still bump around its legs to clean under the area—kudos for a thorough cleaning job.
Interestingly, throughout my week of testing, I did not notice the robot suggesting any No-Go Zones in the app. Perhaps it didn’t detect any easy-to-get-stuck places in its surroundings.
However, I did manually set up No-Go Zones for areas like the washroom and carpeted areas, which was simple enough to do, and resulted in smoother subsequent scheduled cleanings.
Feature #2: It can deep clean floors
The Airbot L108S Pro Ultra features an 8,000 Pa suction power when vacuuming, which is stronger than typical robotic vacuum cleaners in the market (average of 2,500 to 3,000 Pa). Essentially, the higher the Pa value, the greater the force of lifting debris off the floor.
Mopping-wise, the robot is marketed to have a 400ml high-capacity ionised Ag+ water tank and hot water activation feature. Simply put, this function is meant to heat up water and get the Ag+ ions activated to kill germs and bacteria on the floor.
Reality:
When put through a regular cleanup, the robot performs as expected picking up dust, dirt, and hair around the space.
Its suction power would also auto-adjust between Eco and Standard modes based on the dust levels it detects, and switches to Strong or Max mode if it’s cleaning a short or long-haired carpet.
Other than dust and hair, it also sucked up larger particles like cookie crumbs relatively well. The robot would use its hex-side brush attachment to push crusty debris towards the vacuum’s main brush to be suctioned into the dust compartment.
With 200rpm dual spinning mops, it cleaned up my coffee spills with no issue either. The robot’s mops are capable of pressing down with up to 500g pressure, mimicking a human’s manual deep cleaning.
What I liked about the Airbot L108S Pro Ultra is that the mop function contains some notable features at its base station.
For one, I could adjust the mop’s wash interval times between eight to twelve square metres to ensure that the mop stays fresh and clean throughout its cycles. This prevents the mop pads from spreading around sticky spills throughout the entire space.
This leads me to my favourite aspect of the Airbot L108S Pro Ultra.
Feature #3: It’s self-cleaning and self-emptying
The robot’s charging dock can self-empty the vacuum, meaning it can considerably reduce one’s contact with dust, which is particularly beneficial for those plagued with allergies.
Inside, you’ll get a 2.8L clean water tank, a 2.4L sewage tank (as Airbot calls it), and a 2.7L dust bag that can clean out the robot’s dust cup. Airbot claims that you won’t have to change the dustbag for up to seven weeks’ worth of vacuuming.
Additionally, the charging base has a warm air drying feature to dry the mop pads and prevent mould and bacterial growth.
Reality:
The Airbot L108S Pro Ultra lived up to its claims.
The clean water tank could supply enough water to the robot for a week of scheduled daily cleaning, and the sewage tank thoroughly cleaned the robot’s mop pads as advertised.
Even the coffee spill the robot mopped up didn’t leave any stains on its microfibre mop pads. The warm air drying feature could dry the mop pads in three hours, which meant that I didn’t have to separately remove and air dry them after each cleaning session.
And alas, my most appreciated feature of the Airbot L108S Pro Ultra is its effective and efficient dust-collection abilities. On the app, I scheduled to have the base empty the robot’s dust tank after every third vacuum cycle.
This meant that I wouldn’t have to confront the large clumps of dust that would gather in a normal vacuum’s dust tank, which may or may not disperse into the air, and trigger my allergies.
-//-
After all that cleanup, emptying the tanks from the Airbot L108S Pro Ultra’s base was a breeze.
The dust bag had already consolidated all the gunk from the vacuum, and once it filled up, it just needed to be replaced with a new one.
Meanwhile, the sewage water could be easily dumped into the drain and rinsed briefly before the next cleaning cycle.
Ultimately, there’s no way of completely avoiding the loose hairs and dust that get trapped onto the detachable brushes of the robot. The tiny cleaning brush provided in the box came in handy here.
The Airbot app was intuitive to use as well, giving me remote access to the robot’s functions. I could set up the robot’s scheduled cleaning times, edit its virtual map, and monitor where it’s cleaning in my space.
I could also direct the robot’s path with the app’s remote control, adjust the base’s self-cleaning frequency, view its charging status, and be notified when it’s time to change its consumables (HEPA filter, brushes, dust bag, etc.).
All in all, the Airbot L108S Pro Ultra would be a great helper to have in any household or office to maintain overall cleanliness.
Of course, it’s important to ensure that all cables and small objects are removed from the floor so the robot won’t get stuck in the process like ours did a couple of times.
Priced at RM2,399 (from its original RM5,199), the Airbot L108S Pro Ultra is available for sale on Airbot Malaysia’s official website and its authorised Lazada and Shopee stores.
The device’s one-year warranty (serviceable at Airbot’s service centre in Klang) will be automatically activated when the product is shipped out from its local hub.
Also Read: Here’s the startup idea that won these Sixth Form students RM50K from 1337 Ventures
Featured Image Credit: Vulcan Post
How this RM1,199 smart vacuum-mop fared against the clutter of our 5 fluffy pets
[This is a sponsored article with Airbot.]
Here at Vulcan Post, most—if not all of us—are pet parents. Collectively, we’ve got a handful of dogs, guinea pigs, and at least a dozen cats.
It’s widely understood that we share the same problem: the mess our furry friends make from shedding, messy eating, and toilet-going.
With that in mind, we were curious to see how the Airbot Hypersonics MAX vacuum would fare against the common clutter and litter that our furkids would make at home.
Unpacking the vacuum cleaner
Out of the box, the cordless handheld vacuum cleaner is relatively easy to set up. It came with an extensive set of attachments and accessories that will click nicely onto the vacuum’s head.
Time to clean up our pets’ clutter
With the 2,200mAh Li-ion battery fully charged, we started with the 2-in-1 soft brush nozzle attachment that’s great for irregular surfaces, such as the corrugated cardboard truck toy for Sarah’s cat (she admits she hasn’t vacuumed or cleaned this in a year).
Squeezing the trigger, there was a slight 0.5 second delay before the motor revved up on auto mode to brush out debris and fur stuck in the crevices of the cardboard.
To more efficiently suck up the now detached hairballs, the crevice nozzle did the trick. We watched as the LED display ring on the vacuum switched from red to blue, indicating that the dust has been cleared.
This colourful light indicator is the Airbot’s way of showing that it’s picking up dust particles of all sizes, with readings ranging from 10 nanometres to 500 nanometres, and above.
The LED screen also displays the device’s battery life, maintenance notifications, suction power, and the suction speed.
With the toy truck cleared, we moved on to the doggy bed.
Attaching the dust mite cleaning head, we vacuumed the fluffy outer layer where the Airbot’s sucking power automatically revved up to a higher speed that goes up to 33,000Pa.
This is one of the Airbot’s key features, its auto-adjust suction. When the vacuum detects minute amounts of dust, it switches to eco mode, and if there’s lots of dust to clean, it automatically goes into boost mode. You can see when it switches modes by looking at the colour changes on the screen.
Not only did the vacuum work as intended at sucking up hair, dust, crumbs, and possibly even dust mites that are naked to the eye, but we noticed that the mat’s surface got fluffier.
For the flat bottom layer, vacuuming was smooth and didn’t require as much effort. The Airbot’s auto mode likely felt the same, we heard its suction power reducing in intensity to presumably save power.
So that micro particles don’t get circulated back into the air, the vacuum cleaner comes with an E13 HEPA filter that captures 99.97% of particulates ranging from 0.3 microns and above.
It’s worth noting that the suction performance of the Airbot may reduce from extensive usage. Hence, the brand recommends replacing the HEPA filter every so often, which can be bought via their Shopee page.
Next, we moved onto the foster kitten’s den. Luna is still a young kitty, she’s yet to learn how to go neatly in her litter box, so there was plenty of spilt litter around her playpen, not to mention some kibble on the ground.
Attaching the floor brush head onto the extension tube, we found that it efficiently picked up the stray hairs and other larger items like stray litter and kibble.
The hybrid roller brush attachment is great for cleaning carpets, since it has brushes attached to it.
Using it on our colleague’s guinea pigs’ mat littered with hay and food, we turned up the vacuum’s sucking mode to the max via the LED touchscreen.
In the midst of vacuuming, we noticed the Airbot lowering the suction power’s intensity, presumably sensing that it didn’t require as much power as we thought.
Tip: It’s worth noting that you shouldn’t completely rely on the Airbot to clean up larger particles you’d already be able to pick up and throw out with your hands, especially if you don’t want to clog up the extension tube.
To wrap up our cleaning session, we used the rotating mop attachment to wipe up spilt water from the pets. With its digital tank that can hold up to 200ml of clean water, it precisely dispenses water based on the amount of dust still left on the floor, enabling us to mop the area efficiently.
-//-
Most pets are generally afraid of the loud noises a vacuum cleaner makes. We were quite pleased to learn that the Airbot Hypersonics MAX was rather quiet on its low to medium settings.
Of course, noise levels do increase when the suction power is set on max, up to 60 or 70dB, according to the Airbot team.
The Airbot would be a great tool to have in any household or office, whether or not pets are in the picture. Weighing 1.1kg, it’s very portable and easy to use, and didn’t strain my arm even after a whole morning of cleaning.
If you have furkids like us, or you’re just particular about having a clean and dust-free home, the Airbot Hypersonics MAX (priced at RM1,199) is a budget-friendly alternative to the usual Dyson range of products.
Tip: On discount (AKA Shopee’s upcoming 9.9 sale), the Airbot Hypersonics MAX costs RM999.
The device’s warranty will be automatically activated when the product is shipped out. If there are any faulty components, they can be replaced with new parts, after inspections are conducted by the team.
Also Read: Here’s a M’sian XR summit aiming to fill workforce gaps in metaverse-related industries
