Review: Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X10+

Robot vacuums are one of the most useful smart home appliances you can buy. What is not to love about automating your household chores? You can quantify it, which will eventually pay itself off; like a bean-to-cup coffee machine.

Robovacs are appealing because they don’t require human intervention; does the chores as needed – better than any human can, and returns to its base station with no complaints.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed how the robovac has evolved. From vacuuming, to mopping, climbing on carpets, mapping and creating virtual block zones, storing multiple maps, cleaning both floors and carpets seamlessly, and emptying itself; the list goes on.

There is a product for every household, every size, every budget, across multiple brands. The “best” robovac you can buy is the one within your budget. If you want a premium robovac with the latest and greatest features, know that you have to fork out for it. I point this out because it is one of the most common questions I get asked on my IG Q&As.

This is where the Xiaomi Robot Vacuum X10+ with self-emptying capabilities comes in. It is a premium smart home product from Xiaomi, priced at R18 999.

It is not the first self-emptying robovac I’ve tested, I previously reviewed the Roomba iRobot i3+ with the same feature, but it lacked the floor mapping capabilities.

X10+ Quick Look

• Vacuum and mop all-in-one cleaner with self-emptying dock
• 4000Pa suction power
• 5200mAh battery, up to 2 hours per charge
• Dust box capacity of sweeper: 350mL
• Water tank capacity of sweeper: 80mL
• Dock: Water tank: 2.5L
• Dock: Disposable dust bag: 2.5L
• Weight: 3.8kg
• Pairs to Mi Home app
• Max power: 1000W

Features

The Xiaomi X10+ is quite an advanced robovac, it’s like a tiny self-driving car in your home. It is equipped with AI advanced 3D obstacle recognition and avoidance with LDS laser navigation. This allows it to accurately scan and map your house in full 360-degrees, even in the dark, and slows down when it sees obstacles.

It can climb on carpets by raising the cleaning pads, has four suction settings, and its 4000Pa suction power really does the most (when compared to my Hobot Legee D7 at 2700Pa).

The X10+ has automatic self-cleaning, self-emptying, pad washing, dust collection, hot air drying, and water refilling. It does all of this on its own, without you having to poke around.

Using the Mi Home app, you can access the stored map of your home. You can label each room accordingly, and create virtual barriers or block zones. This is useful so the robovac won’t go near your TV stand or areas with cables near a cabinet and the like.

The app home page also lets you see things like battery life; the last cleaned area and time; floor plan; and when you scroll down, things like modes that you can set the intensity for.

The custom tab is great because you can set what to do in advance for each room, like a turbo clean for the kitchen, with mopping; whereas a silent clean for the bedroom with just vacuum.  You can choose to do both; make it silent, standard, strong or turbo; and choose mop humidity (low, medium, high).

Another thing worth mentioning, the unit draws a maximum of 1000W of power for dust collection. Its drying and charging power is 90W, and cleaning power is 55W. This makes it suitable for plugging into a lot of portable power stations. I have an EcoFlow Delta 2 that is max 1800W, which is sufficient to connect it to.

Setting up

The X10+ is a massive appliance, and I’m not exaggerating. The robovac round unit itself weighs 3.8kgs, with a dimension of 5cm x 35cm x 9.7cm. The all-in-one station weighs 8.3kgs, and has dimensions of 42.3cm x 34cm x 56.8 cm. The dock carries an IPX1 water resistance rating.

It needs a fair amount of space for placement in your home, and I would suggest you think wisely about where you place it because it’s not a good idea to move it from its base after you map your home. Also leave some space next to either side, you don’t want to cramp into a narrow section.

It pairs easily on the Mi Home app where you can customise to your liking, as mentioned in the features above. It is best to let it map the house completely before you start using it. You can then go into the area editor to merge rooms or areas, divide them, rename them, and add your block zones or virtual barriers.

Using the X10+

I have a domestic worker, so I’ve been testing the vacuum around what she does but I think using it for 20 clean-ups totalling 7 hours is a decent amount of time to have experienced before I could write this review.

I use the X10+ on different floor types, plus carpets. There is a mode to disable it from cleaning carpets. My one long-haired carpet had the brush get tangle on it once, but the other short haired ones, and the bedroom ones are perfectly fine for it. It can climb 7mm on carpets, but Mi says for long fibre ones to choose the “avoid carpets” setting.

I typically ran it in the morning before my domestic worker comes in, in the living areas, and then at night while watching TV in the living room, I send it to the bedrooms. I use it a lot on weekends though, for deeper cleaning around the whole house.

Its really simple to control from the app. Sure it supports voice commands but you need to make sure the smart speaker understands you with the correct syntax. I stick to the app so I know there is no room for error.

I have a black cat, so there’s a lot of pet hair; and due to minor allergies, it is best I am not in contact with dust. The self-emptying aspect is perfect for that, I don’t have to sneeze uncontrollably when it is cleaning (true story). The app will let you know when to empty the unit itself.

The actual cleaning is fine, noise level wise, depending on the mode but when it self empties and cleans, it makes a really loud noise. So be aware of this if you want to use it at odd hours if you live in a complex etc.

In terms of battery, because of the way I used it – per room, at different times, it never “ran out” of power during a clean where it had to return to the dock to recharge and continue, but it does that, like any other robovac. You can go into the settings and toggle this to “resume cleanup” or not.

The Mi app lets you do things like access your cleaning history, prompt it to clean the mop pads, add schedules for cleanups, setup a DND period, and check your consumables. The consumables management is great, it shows when you need replacements for the filter, brushes mop pads, and disposable bags. The downside is that you don’t get spares, you have to buy them.