Verdict

Great navigation, good vacuuming, light mopping and several cleaning modes make the affordable Roborock E25 a compelling robot cleaner.

Pros

• Cleans carpets well
• Light mopping ability
• Good navigation
• App based set up and control
• Great value

Cons

• Poor edge cleaning
• Tricky app and Wi-Fi set-up
• Noisy on max power

What is the Roborock E25?

The Roborock E25 is a versatile cleaning robot with the ability to vacuum multiple surfaces and mop hard floors. It offers different cleaning modes and power levels, including the powerful Max option, and navigates the room rather than randomly bumbling around.

With great cleaning results on carpet and a light mopping function, the E25 is low enough for vacuuming under most sofas and picks up well on the highest power setting. It was rather noisy on the high-power setting, and setting up the app wasn’t the easiest. However, overall the E25 is a great robotic vacuum with an attractive price.

Roborock E25 – Accessories

With a sleek body and dark grey colour, the Roborock E25 certainly looks the part and, considering it costs less than £300, it feels well-made and sturdy. There are three main controls on the top of the body, with most of the advanced features saved for the app.

The Spot Cleaning button sends the E25 off to clean in a circular pattern with a 1.2-metre diameter for dry spills. The Power button includes a colour-based battery-level indicator and the Recharge button sends the robot back to its dock for a top-up.

Low height makes it perfect for under-the-sofa cleaning, getting into places that a standard vacuum cleaner can’t. A smallish brush bar and vacuum slot beneath focus the cleaning power, but they’re a long way from the side of the machine, indicating edge-cleaning isn’t going to be its forte.

A rotating side brush aims to pull in fluff from the edges, but won’t be much help on the carpet. Two standard wheels and front omni-directional wheel keep the E25 rolling, giving it the ability to get up and down small bumps such as rugs.

Bristling with dual-gyroscopes and dual-optical motion tracking sensors, Roborock says the E25 has the intelligence to effectively tackle different or complicated environments, without it becoming stuck, falling down stairs or running out of power mid-clean.

A lot of similar models will run off in random directions, but the E25 navigates in straight lines, up and down the room, mapping as it goes. The room map begins to appear on the app as it cleans. The sensors continuously monitor its direction and adjust navigation to follow alongside its previous path. The result is a robot that cleans faster and using less battery power than standard “random path” robotic vacuums.

Something you don’t usually see at this price range is the mop feature. It comes supplied with a clip-on water tank and mopping cloth that gently dampens and wipes the surface behind the vacuum clean. A waterproof mat is easily fitted onto the docking station to stop water leaking onto the floor after the clean has finished.

Complete with a decent-sized dustbin that’s fairly easy to remove and empty, the E25 comes with a brush cleaning tool that’s handy for pulling out hairs and debris left in the brush bar. At the E25’s attractive sub-£300 asking price, there are no virtual walls configurable in software, although you can buy magnetic strip to put down and stop the cleaner from going where you don’t want it.

Roborock E25 – Setup and programming

Roborock uses the Xiaomi Mi Home App for a range of different products. Finding this on the App Store using an Apple or Android device is nice and simple. However, during our setup we struggled to connect to the E25 – and, strangely, had to click on another model (not one labelled Roborock) to do so.

Following 10 painful minutes of trying, we finally connected the robot to the Mi Home App, where we were then told to bring the vacuum closer to a router to finalise the setup. After physically having to pick up the Roborock and take it into another room with the router, we were finally set up. Hurrah!

Six cleaning modes is an impressive number, covering Carpet, Quiet, Mopping, Balanced, Turbo and Max offering plenty of flexibility. From the app you can select Spot or room-cleaning modes, schedule cleaning times, or navigate manually by virtual remote control – always fun to chase the dog around.

Aside from the slightly difficult setup, the Mi Home App is detailed and very helpful. It’s full of information and guides, including product description, battery level and routine maintenance reminders to clean brushes, the filter and sensors.

Another great touch was the Locate My Robot option. If you’re having difficulty finding your E25 when it’s stuck under the furniture or gone feral and exploring your flat, this feature forces the E25 to reveal its location by voicing: “Hi, I’m over here”.  We thought this was a simple but effective feature with immense comedy potential when unsuspecting visitors are over.

Roborock E25 – How does it clean carpets and hard floors?

Testing began in our living room, with its usual assortment of sofas, chairs, cabinets and tall lamps on a hardwood floor with a large carpeted rug in the middle. We laid down four X-shaped test patches of mixed talc and carpet cleaner, in both open space and close-to-the-edge spots. The rug had one large X scattered across it, along with its usual mix of daily dog hair and debris.

Using the Max mode for a powerful clean from the outset, the E25 gave a good account of itself. Navigating back and forth across the room, cleaning on the carpet was impressive on the first pass alone, and it had no problem with the room’s variety of obstacles.

It prompted  itself up onto the rug and rolled over this area with ease. It slowed and steered around major obstacles and bumped gently into smaller, less visible hazards such as chair legs. It also went where nobody had been for the last six months and creeped under the low sofas effortlessly.

The E25 declared the room was clean after a very speedy 33 minutes, showing full details on the app including a diagram of the room boundaries and obstacles, area of floor covered and battery per cent remaining.

Given that the logical navigation shortens the actual cleaning time, Max power is likely to be a great choice for all but huge floor areas. If you have mixed hard floors and carpet or rugs, the Carpet Boost mode sees the E25 run at normal power on hard floors and step up to Max when it detects carpet pile.

Like most robot cleaners, the results aren’t as good as a proper vacuum cleaner on the initial run alone. The key is to get the robot established into a routine so it’s cleaning much more regularly than you would personally. Setting it to run three times a week or more will keep looking things ship-shape all week long.

After three cleans, the X-shapes had almost been cleared, but the E25 did struggle with the talc spot closer to the wall. It really didn’t address much dirt up to 10cm or so out from the wall. The side brush caught dog hair balls, but very little in the way of heavier, smaller debris – and nothing at all on carpet. That isn’t unusual with circular body robot vacuums – and, overall, we were impressed with the E25 vacuuming abilities, particularly over time.

In our large conservatory with textured ceramic tiles on the floor, we set the E25 about vacuuming with the water-filled mopping tank and cloth attached.

Since it uses just water, we weren’t expecting the sort of results produced by steam mops. It didn’t make too much of an impression on seriously muddy footprints, but it did dampen the surface and give it a light wipe following on behind the vacuum clean. Very little water was used, but given the state of the mop cloth after a couple of runs around the conservatory, the E25 was wiping away a fair bit of dust that the vacuum wasn’t addressing.

As with the Roborock S5, the E25 uses a gravity-fed water system, so you can’t adjust how much water is being used. The Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo 930 gives you more control over water usage and does a better mopping job.

Roborock E25 – How does it cope with corners and obstacles?

Given the fairly low price, the Roborock’s navigation is top-notch. It whizzes around the room with quite some speed, and this certainly didn’t compromise its performance. When approaching large obstacles, such as walls and doors, the sensors worked a treat and the E25 stops within millimetres and navigates away or around. It slotted under low chairs and sofas and we had no problems with it detecting obstructions or cliff edges such as steps.

Taking its circular shape into consideration, the Roborock dealt with edges and corners okay on hard floors, thanks to the side brush. Some debris remained closer to the side of walls and a second brush on the right corner of the E25’s body may have helped here. The side brush wasn’t effective on carpet at all, so it didn’t really clean anywhere near edges and corners.

Roborock E25 – How does it cope with pet hair?

The Roborock’s Max power mode makes it one of the most effective robots for cleaning pet hair. Across our living room rug, larger tufts of dog hairs were pulled in with ease, with just a few of the deeper stragglers left behind. These tended to get picked up on subsequent outings. A grand result for a robot vacuum on carpet, and it worked even better on hard floors.

Over the laminate flooring in the kitchen and hallway, the Roborock pulled in pet hairs with ease, sucking or sweeping in the tumbleweed. None were left behind apart from a few that had been blown right into the room corners where the side brush couldn’t reach. Another great result, despite the budget price.

Why buy the Roborock E25?

With solid cleaning results across both carpets and hard floors, six different modes and a handy light-mopping mop function, the Roborock E25 is a strong contender in our eyes. You get better cleaning and mopping if you spend more on one of our other Best robot vacuum cleaners, but you’ll find it hard to top the quality of cleaning at this price.

Logical navigation affords quicker clean times, which means the cleaner can use more power for sucking up debris before it needs recharging. The Mi App was a minefield to get set-up, but once fully connected is intuitive, effective and pretty. Edge and corner cleaning were a slight letdown but, considering the price, this robot vacuum offers plenty.

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