I used to own a robot vacuum but wasn’t really very useful as it kept bumping into things or get stuck at certain areas. However, robot vacuums have since improved with new technologies added into its features, making it a reliable and convenient tool to have in your cleaning arsenal. The new Tapo RV30 Plus is a mid-range robot vacuum that retails for S$509 at its current promotional price.
Unboxing
Inside the box, you’ll find the following items:
- Robot Vacuum Cleaner ×1
- Auto-Empty Dock ×1
- Mop Cloth Mount ×1
- Quick Installation Guide
- Washable Mop Cloth ×2
- 4L Disposable Dust Bag ×2
- Side Brush ×2
- HEPA Filter ×2
- Cleaning Brush ×1
Design and build quality
Both the Tapo RV30 Plus and its dock come in a white and black colour style in a matte texture, which will blend in seamlessly with any home decor. The dock is quite compact so you may be able to tuck it under certain furniture if you wish to. The Tapo RV30 Plus also feels pretty well built.
The front of the Tapo RV30 Plus is rubber coated to prevent damage to your furniture, and has some sort of suspension gasket system to reduce the amount of force it makes to the furniture the vacuum hits. There are also 3 buttons located on the robot itself, so if you’re lazy to whip out your phone you can quickly press them to pause cleaning or send it home.
Most of the components can be detached for cleaning, such as the main bristle brush and the dustbin & water tank combo. There is also a HEPA filter found on the Tapo RV30 Plus to ensure 99.9% of allergens are captured during the cleaning process. One small point to note is that the Tapo RV30 Plus comes with an on/off power switch at the side. It’s a nice button to have as you can turn off the vacuum quickly when you’re going overseas.
Navigation system
One of the main upgrades on the Tapo RV30 Plus versus the RV10 Plus is that it uses a combination of LiDAR & Gyroscope for its mapping and path planning. Having LiDAR allows the Tapo RV30 Plus to have a map of your house, perform repeating cleaning, and continue to have good vision even in the dark.
When setting up the Tapo RV30 Plus for the first time to map your house, make sure to open all your doors and remove things that don’t usually belong on the floor. This will help to make the mapping more accurate. The mapping is completed in about a few minutes and there are useful features in the app to edit it for better accuracy. Note that there is only a 2D view of the mapping.
App features
You will need the register an account in the Tapo app in order to get the best use for the Tapo RV30 Plus. Once you have the Tapo RV30 Plus connected to your home’s internet, you can order it to clean your house right from the app even when you’re not connected to the same Wifi. There are many settings and features in the app, so I’ll just go through some of the main ones below.
Rooms
Once the initial mapping is complete, you can edit the map by dividing and merging different areas of your house into “rooms”. You can also rename and colour code each room to make it easier for your own viewing.
No-Go Zones & Virtual Walls
During my first few test runs of the Tapo RV30 Plus, I found that there are some areas of the house that it tends take a long time to navigate out. For example, at the corner of the living room, the Tapo RV30 Plus took a while to exit the space because it was adamant to get on top of the low-profile weighing scale.
For instances like this, I set a no-go zone for it so that the Tapo RV30 Plus will not go to that area to clean. You can also set virtual walls to slice out places you do not want the robot vacuum to go there, such as the toilet.
Remote control mode
There is a remote control mode where you can move the Tapo RV30 Plus using the on-screen controls. It would have been more useful if there is live video feed of what the Tapo RV30 Plus is viewing so it is possible to control the movement without having line of sight of the robot.
Cleaning presets
You can setup cleaning presets where you will decide on two main preferences:
- Cleaning order (which room gets cleaned first)
- Cleaning preference
- Cleaning times (no. of repetition)
- Vacuum power (Quiet, Standard, Turbo, Max)
- Water level (if you wish to perform mopping)
You can then access these presets on the home screen of the vacuum tab.
Zone cleaning / Room cleaning
If you just wish to clean a particular part of your house, you can draw a zone on the floorplan. After which the Tapo RV30 Plus will navigate to the zone and start cleaning. Also, you can order the Tapo RV30 Plus to clean specific rooms instead of your whole house. Within each room, you can setup personalized settings following the “cleaning preference” as stated above. For example, you can set the suction speed to Turbo in the Living Room, and Standard in the Bedroom.
Scheduled cleaning
As with all smart appliances, you can setup schedules for the Tapo RV30 Plus to perform cleaning. One good schedule could be to clean 1 hour before you reach from from work so that you won’t have to hear the noise generated from the cleaning, and come back to clean floors in your house.
Voice Assistant integrated
You can also add the Tapo RV30 Plus to your Google Home or Alexa so that you can use either voice assistant to trigger cleaning without taking out your phone. I couldn’t find any Siri shortcuts for the Tapo RV30 Plus at this moment. It would have been nice to see HomeKit support.
Cleaning effectiveness and user experience
Having used the Tapo RV30 Plus for a few weeks, I found that the navigation of the robot vacuum to be largely efficient thanks to its LiDAR sensor. The routes taken were the shortest possible when travelling for room to room. When placing some items on the floor to purposely block its path, the Tapo RV30 Plus managed to identify the most of the obstacles and barely got stuck. Cables can be quite tricky to handle though. I also found that Tapo RV30 Plus kept getting stuck at the corner of my EverDesk+ frame as it tries to climb over it. This was a quick fix as I just have to create a small no-go zone at the desk.
As for cleaning pattern, the path taken by Tapo RV30 Plus is of a zig-zag manner. Observing the cleaning report and the robot, I found that the Tapo RV30 Plus was quite thorough in its operation and was able to rid almost all of the test debris placed at difference corners of the house. It is also able to clean under my sofa. And once the cleaning is done, the Tapo RV30 Plus will automatically return home to its dock.
Tapo RV30 Plus has four suction speeds (Quiet, Standard, Turbo, Max), with the Max going at 4,200Pa. I found that the standard speed was sufficient to clean most of the dust in my house. Tapo RV30 Plus also has an Auto-Boost to Max mode where it will dynamically increase the suction speed to Max if it encounters carpet. There is no reflection of the speed in the app so I cannot tell for sure.
If you have high pile carpets at home, the Tapo RV30 Plus should be able to climb onto it as long as they are under 2cm of thickness. The carpets I have at home are low pile so the Tapo RV30 Plus had no issues going up on it. But having seen it climbing up my weighing scale, I’m pretty sure it can handle most carpets without hiccups.
When it comes to noise, it is definitely audible but bearable at Standard speed. The noise is a combination of the vacuum suction and the wheels as it moves. The wheels movement is louder than what I expected.
Mopping option
Tapo RV30 Plus also offers a mopping function through its removable mop pads that you attach on the back of the robot. The dustbin & water tank combo allows up to 300ml of capacity and can perform mopping up to 2,100sqft. You can choose up to 3 levels of water flow to suit the different floor types you have at home.
I found the mopping feature to be largely adequate. Good if you require simple mopping but don’t expect deeper cleaning which is usually achieved through dedicated mop or wet-dry vacuums.
Maintenance
Maintenance of the Tapo RV30 Plus is easy thanks to its auto-empty feature. Once the Tapo RV30 Plus is done cleaning, it will empty the contents in the dustbin to the dust bag in the dock. The 4-litre dust bag should be good to use for ~70 days.
If you tend to use the mopping feature then you’ll have extra maintenance work to do as the dock does not support auto-clean & drying for the mop pad (which are features usually seen on high-end robot vacuums). This means you’d have to remove the mod pads to wash and dry them. From time to time it is also good to remove entangled hair and dust stuck on the main bristle brush.
Battery life
The Tapo RV30 Plus is packed with a 5,000mAh battery that Tapo say will last 3 hours of cleaning. An hour cleaning of my house used about 10-15% of battery so the Tapo RV30 Plus will definitely be able to perform multiple cleaning of your house.
Conclusion
Personally, I feel that if you’re intending to buy a robot vacuum, you should get one with LiDAR sensor offers so much more benefits. There will be less bumping into furniture, more accurate and reliable cleaning due to the vacuum having a virtual map of the house. At S$509, the Tapo RV30 Plus offers a solid choice for a robot vacuum if you want a fuss free option for vacuuming that has the ability to fully automate.