Switchbot is back with a new cleaning robot that can take on some of the grubbier tasks in your home. The good news? It improves on some of its predecessor’s weaknesses. The bad though is that it doesn’t solve everything.
Out of the box, the S20 is reassuringly chunky, a solid piece of kit that you feel should be able to clean your floors well, combining a powerful vacuum and a decent mop. It also includes Matter, so you can easily (in theory) connect it to your supported smart home system.
The marketing spiel promises more hygienic cleaning than a manual mop – the roller mop scrapes the dirt off as it rotates so you aren’t smearing it back on the floor – and when it is all done, the S20 heads back to the base station to clean itself off.
Straight away, it got instant brownie points for being easier to set up than the S10. The version that arrived for review had the simple base station, with the water tanks and auto-empty feature all in one neat unit. It even has a small compartment for the floor cleaning solution. There were no extra bits to sort or find space for and, more importantly, no leaks to mop up. And the robot didn’t need to map the location of a separate water station.
READ MORE
Once all that was installed, it was time to start mapping. Again, fairly painless and fuss-free, giving you a floor plan you could edit and rename, making it easy to set up a schedule for cleaning if you need different settings for different rooms. You have a few options, from quiet and standard to strong and max modes for the vacuum, and moist or wet for the mop.
You can also choose to only vacuum, vacuum first and then mop, or vacuum and mop together.
Annoyingly, there is still no option to only mop the floor. You can put the suction on the vacuum to the lowest setting – quiet – and let it pick up anything in its path. While you could add a second pass in to the cleaning schedule, I found the dampness caused by the mop roller meant it didn’t pick up dust and dirt as effectively. If you feel it needs an extra deep clean, set it to vacuum on a higher setting first, and then send it around for the second vacuum and mop session.
Day to day, the cleaner requires very little intervention. Not only does it fill the water tank and change the dirty water, the base station will also automatically dry the roller mop, so there is no lingering smell of damp.
Just remember to empty the dirty water tank regularly, unless you want to find an unpleasant smell hanging around.
The robot wedged itself into fewer tight spots than the last one, which was a relief. The S10 needed to be constantly fished out from the gap between the kitchen chair legs, but the S20 has more advanced AI-enabled obstacle avoidance. If the system detects some sort of obstruction, it will go around rather than trying to power through mindlessly.
You can change the settings on this feature from standard, where it gives everything a very wide berth (unnecessarily so) to agile, where it will try to clean around the obstacle. The latter may cause it to bump into things though, which seems like it defeats the purpose.
The AI object detection didn’t completely solve the problem. While it identified some common culprits – cables, for example, or bag straps – the robot was frequently stymied by smaller items. For example, some kitten toys – mini snowballs, to be precise – frequently gummed up the rotating brush bar. Other things that were fished out of the brush bar over the course of the review: hair clips, a pencil, three crayons and one mini plastic skull from a set of Halloween lights.
On the occasions that it identified a potential hazard and avoided it, the AI system would drop a pin and icon on the map and record a picture, letting you see exactly what the problem was. That was particularly useful when it recorded something incorrectly. No one needs to see pet mess flagged on the map of a floor where no pets venture. Disconcerting doesn’t even come close.
[ SwitchBot Safety Alarm review: It will find your keys and also deter an attackerOpens in new window ]
If the robot consistently encounters obstacles in the same area, it will flag the problem on a map. That gives you two options: remove the obstacle itself, or create a no-go zone around areas where the robot gets stuck. You can also create a no-mop zone in areas where you don’t want or need moisture, and a virtual wall to completely split off areas.
Good
Overall, the S20 is an improvement on its predecessor. The mop is a roller, so it does a decent job of cleaning the floors. The vacuum has decent power too, improving on the 6500 pa of the S10, and it dealt with everything from dust and regular everyday dirt to pet hair effectively.
Bad
No mop-only option, and while AI detection does a good job, the cleaner still occasionally gets stopped in its tracks by small obstacles. Edge cleaning could be better. Still a bit noisy, especially the mop.
Everything else
If you are using the cleaner as part of a wider home set-up, you can get the auto-refill kit to hook up to your home plumbing, similar to the S20 unit.
Verdict
The S20 improves on some of the S10’s shortcomings. Set it and let it get on with things.
eu.switch-bot.com
