Xiaomi Roborock T6 in-depth review: an excellent robot vacuum cleaner

Posted in Apr 15, 2019 in Reviews, no comment

Xiaomi Roborock T6 in-depth review: an excellent robot vacuum cleaner featuring map management 3.0 and 2000Pa suction.

Roborock robot vacuum cleaners have been well-received for its outstanding performance and best price-performance ratio. Recently, Roborock technology team released new sweeping robot – Roborock T6 robot vacuum cleaner, which is an all-new upgraded products on the basis of Roborock S5 and once again won the German IF design award 2019. Now, I am making a detailed review about the Roborock T6 to test how about its cleaning performance and user experience.

The Xiaomi Roborock T6 is an all-round evolutionary product of Roborock S5. It retains the core basic functions including LDS laser navigation function, sweeping and towing integration function, 2000Pa high suction rate, a 5200 mAh large battery, zone cleaning function, APP intelligent control function and so on.

Xiaomi Roborock T6 specs
First, let’s take a quick look at the main specs of the Xiaomi Roborock T6 robot vacuum cleaner.

Product name	Xiaomi Roborock T6 robot vacuum cleaner
Navigate mode	LDS laser navigation
Battery capacity	5200mAh
Suction Power (Pa)	2,000
Dust bin capacity	480ml
Cliff sensors	Four in front and two behind
Hardware system	Carpet pressurization, hardware virtual wall, removable cleaning brush, noise reduction air screen
Software system	Cleaning route display, regular cleaning, software virtual wall/restricted area, intelligent partition, area segmentation, dynamic z-shaped coverage, designated room cleaning
Mopping module	Water tank: seepage type, supports in-situ inspection, two-level water level control, 140ml capacity, disposable cloth
Water box capacity	160ml

Design: Modular design with simple look
The Roborock T6 is packed in a Beige cardboard box which shows the logo and specs information. In addition, it can be clearly seen here that the weight of the Roborock T6 is about 3.6 kg, which is lighter than the 3.8 Kg of the first generation of the sweeping robot. As a result of adding many functions, it is slightly heavier than the Roborock sweeping robot S5.

The body of the Roborock T6 adopts black color. But its black is not pitch black, it also shines like a mirror. This tone is a kind of milky white used in Mi products, which is quite novel. The charging base of the Roborock T6 is bigger than Roborock S5 and Xioami Mijia robot vacuum cleaner.

The bottom wheel of the Roborock T6 uses German Covestro tire skin with high wear resistance to ensure the service life of tires. It can achieve a maximum height of 2cm obstacle surmounting, so it an easy thing for the Roborock T6 to climb through the doorsteps and doormats.

The Roborock T6 adopts a removable main brush. This way, if the sweeping robot encounters occasional hair involvement after a long working period, you can also easily disassemble it and take out the whole group of hair. And the brush hair of the main brush is made of Dupont special nylon material, which is flexible and durable.

More specifically, the disassembly process is simplified to three steps: uncovering the main brush bearing, unscrewing the main brush cover, and removing the winding hair, so there is no more trivial matter. The dust box filters of the Roborock T6 can still be washable directly like the Roborock Robot S5.

In order to meet the needs of more households, the Roborock T6 uses a new water tank to adjust the size of water. In addition, it also supports disposable mops, so you don’t need to wash the mop after each cleaning.

Cleaning experience: Map Management 3.0 and automatic zone cleaning

1. Map Management 3.0
As an important product of Xiaomi ecological chain enterprise, Roborock sweeping robot naturally still supports the control of Xiaomi APP. It should be noted here that the Roborock T6 only supports 2.4G Wi-Fi as its predecessors did. The function of the whole control software is basically the same as that of the previous generation, except that the newly upgraded Map Management 3.0 system supports automatic partition of rooms, which makes cleaning more flexible.

That is to say, after the first cleaning, the Roborock T6 sweeping robot can accurately remember the home map and intelligently divide the area. During the subsequent cleaning, it can monitor the changes of the surrounding environment in real time and update the map. It does not need to waste time to scan repeatedly and start work. In addition, the functions of regular cleaning, zone cleaning are also preserved.

It is worth mentioning here that the UI interface of Roborock T6 App, especially the map management UI, has changed greatly compared with the previous generation. The background color of the map and the icon reference image of the Roborock T6 are more concise and clear. Each room is also distinguished by different colors. The parameters of sweeping area, power status, sweeping time and so on are also moved from the bottom to the top, so the space is arranged more reasonably. Through Mijia APP, the Roborock T6 can be controlled to perform regular sweeping, check sweeping records, and locate the robot. It still retains five cleaning modes, namely, only mopping, quiet cleaning, standard cleaning, enhanced cleaning and max cleaning. The Roborock T6 uses a new and upgraded LDS laser navigation algorithm. Compared with previous generations, it can build and memorize indoor maps more quickly. It still uses SLAM algorithm to plan room sweeping path and cover the area more comprehensively.

As shown above, the protrusions at the top are LDS laser rangefinder and pressure sensor. Its omni-directional pressure sensor can be 360 degrees omni-directional sensitive and should be slightly collided to prevent the upper part of the robot from jamming. The new Map Management 3.0 system on the Roborock T6 can achieve zone cleaning according to rooms in your house.

However, it should be noted that the automatic zone cleaning function will be available only in the following premise:
1. Start cleaning from the charging seat.
2. Do not move the charging seat during cleaning.
3. Let the robot vacuum cleaner automatically recharge after finishing the cleaning.
4. After successful recharge, the robot vacuum cleaner will save the map and partition automatically.
5. Open and save the map in the setting.

After the first cleaning, the Roborock T6 will accurately remember the indoor map, and then monitors the changes of the surrounding environment in real time. Here the Roborock T6 uses Rock Navigation path planning to adjust the path intelligently and dynamically. After the first cleaning, the Roborock T6 accurately remembers the indoor map, and then monitors the changes of the surrounding environment in real time. Here T6 uses Rock Navigation path planning to adjust the path intelligently and dynamically.

Thereafter, we can open Mijia App as above for various operations, and use custom zone cleaning to meet our customized needs. We can divide the home rooms into bedroom, living room, kitchen room and so on. If the zone partition is not correct, we can adjust it manually. With that function, you can only choose the area you want to sweep. In the process of using it, I found that the cleaning is based on the principle of long side priority and proximity. It is more efficient to develop cleaning path, which is more suitable for families with rectangular corridors, rooms and other areas to be cleaned.

2. Customized zone cleaning
The Roborock T6 still offers two distinctive sweeping modes: zone cleaning and customized zone cleaning. As mentioned above, when first used, the Roborock T6 will have a exploratory cleaning, through the high-precision LDS laser ranging sensor combined with SLAM algorithm to build a room map. Let’s start with zone cleaning. As shown above, this is very suitable for focusing on stains cleaning in an area. For example, if you accidentally spill a large piece of paper scraps on the ground, then you can customize the cleaning area to tlet the robot vacuum cleaner only clean the assigned zone.

3. Virtual wall and forbidden zone
In the past, the sweeping robot often broke into the bedroom, bathroom and move several laps to bring back all things that should or shouldn’t clean up. That only only affect cleaning effeciency but also bring users many inconvenience. Now, the Roborock T6 is newly added virtual wall function and forbidden zone function, so you can set virtual wall and forbidden zone on the APP so that it will not clean the areas you don’t want. On the APP, you can also check the cleaning trajectory and learn the cleaning progress of the sweeping robot.

Suction and cleaning noise test: 2000Pa powerful suction and reduced cleaning noise

1. Carpet boost mode test
As you can see before, the carpet boost mode is not only listed in App, but also represents the maximum suction of 2000Pa for the Roborock T6. Generally speaking, you can feel the powerful suction when the Roborock T6 enters the carpet boost mode. On a carpet that can be called a housewife’s nightmare, it can collect and absorb the more difficult scraps of paper. It is worth mentioning that the Roborock T6 will automatically return to normal suction after leaving the carpet, which is more energy-saving.

2. Noise test
The Roborock T6 has a completely new noise reduction design based on the large suction rate of 2000Pa. The noise reduction unit has been optimized as a whole, and a new 30.5mm motor and a matching gearbox of a large torque motor have been replaced to reduce noise. According to the official introduction, in order to minimize noise, it is also filled with silent cotton and noise reduction air screens. We used the instrument to test the decibels at the position close to the sweeping robot, and then compared it with the previous Roborock sweeping robot S5. As shown above, under the same test environment and conditions, the noise test data of the Roborock T6 has decreased significantly, which shows that the noise reduction measures adopted by the robot are visible and audible.

Sweep-and-mop test: upgraded sweep and mop, disposable mop
The Roborock sweeping robot has combined sweeping and mopping functions since its predecessors. This feature can be inherited and retained on the Roborock T6. The water tank of the Roborock T6 has two additional water adjustments, which can meet the needs of different degrees of household sweeping. It also innovatively uses a stack of disposable mops, i.e. throw them away, and never wash them again.

To test its ability to mop the ground, I did the following tests. It’s also a familiar old place. This is a rare dirty area I can find that is not cleaned. The stains, dust and mud on the floor tiles are clearly visible. Next, I added a complimentary tank to the Roborock T6, filled it with water and opened the “mop mode” to clean up the stains. As shown in the figure, the dust and mud stains where the Roborock robot passes have disappeared, and the floor tiles are shiny after being wetted. In the testing process, the author found that the water has been uniform, that is to say, the tow is dry; when it does not move, the tow automatically stops seepage, so that it can be freely retracted and released.

The filter element keeps automatic water absorption, so that the mop always has sufficient water content, so that the water is uniform and does not seep. So even sweeping the mop floor, there is no need to worry that the water will corrode and destroy the board.

Conclusion: Fully upgraded household sweeping robot
Over the past few days of use experience, the overall upgrading of the Roborock T6 relative to the previous generations of products is particularly obvious. The Roborock T6 is a comprehensive evolutionary product based on Roborock sweeping robot S5, which retains the core basic functions of LDS laser navigation, sweeping and towing integration, 2000 Pa large suction, 5200 mAh large battery, zoning cleaning, APP intelligent control, etc. In addition, breakthrough changes have been made in automatic zoning cleaning, one-time towing of water tank adjustable volume, etc.

In my tests, whether for cleaning test or noise test, the performance of the Roborock T6 is quite perfect, and it has greatly improved compared with the previous two generations of products, especially in noise reduction, its efforts have been fruitful. Generally speaking, the Roborock T6 is a solid work that has undergone many generations of product upgrading and iteration step by step. There is no doubt that we believe it can continue the reputation of past generations of products.

Did this article help you? If so, please tell me in a comment what do you think about it.

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