We are excited to be testing and reviewing the brand new VANiGO A3 robot vacuum. VANiGO is relatively new to the robot vacuum market but they’ve made some pretty significant innovations already. We will show the good and the not so good as the tests we put the robot vacuums through pretty much speak for themselves.
The VANiGO is a robot vacuum cleaner/mop. They include two different removable bins in the box. One is a regular robot vacuum dustbin and the other is a dustbin/water tank and mop. Basically, when you want to mop, you just fill that one up with water or a cleaning solution mix and it slowly saturates into the cleaning pad, making it a pretty effective mop.
One of the most innovative things about the VANiGO robot vacuum is its smart navigation. Pretty much every other robot vacuum in the budget to mid-level price range have a random navigation system where they randomly pinball around to clean your home. Generally speaking, you have to pay about twice as much to get a vacuum with lasers or cameras that allows it to clean in a systematic way. But the VANiGO has a ton of unique navigation features that seem to solve the problem.
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For example, it has enhanced simultaneous localization and mapping. It has the world’s first chip for motion control, a gyro sensor, and apparently, a unique algorithm, so that despite not having the expensive cameras or lasers, the VANiGO navigates as if it did, vacuuming in an efficient systematic pattern. It also makes pretty smart adjustments for obstacles and it remembers what it has and hasn’t cleaned. I honestly don’t know how it does it but it was exactly like testing the super expensive Roomba 980 or Neato botvac connected as far as its navigation. So kudos to VANiGO for creating a smart navigation vacuum in a reasonable price range.
The battery life is pretty good. Their specs show up to two hours in low-power mode for carpets and mopping. In high-power mode, which is best for hard floors, our tests showed about an hour and 10 minutes which is actually better than average for robot vacuums, especially budget robot vacuums.
As far as pickup ability, we tested it on hard floors and carpets in both low and high power. On carpet, we found that it was very effective on low and high power, picking up all the debris of various types and sizes, including pet hair and larger debris. Like most robot vacuums, it’s most effective at getting the debris on the surface of the carpet, not really a deep cleaner. That’s still the domain of the upright vacuums for the time being. Despite that, in our deep clean test where we rub exactly 30 grams of sawdust into the carpet, we found that it scored exactly the same as the top-of-the-line Roomba and Neato vacs by picking up 28 of the 30 grams.
On hard floors, we found that it really needed to be in high-power mode to be effective as the low power setting only produced about 216 feet per minute of airflow compared to 354 feet per minute in high power. And with hard floors, robot vacuums need all the airflow they can get. So I would say that on carpet it did really good while on hard floors it does good as long as you have it in high power mode.
In mopping mode, I found it to be easy and pretty effective. The mop gets evenly saturated but not so much that it leaves too much water. We also liked that because of the smart navigation, you can be sure that it’s cleaning the whole area without going over the same areas again and again. There’s actually a smaller dustbin built into the water tank, so even when you have it in mopping mode, it’s sweeping up dirt and debris before the mop hits it.
One area where the VANiGO surpassed many other robot vacuums was with its edge cleaning ability. It did better than both the Roomba and the Neato with edges and corners due to it having two edge brushes instead of one and the edge brushes are also a bit longer than the standard brushes which gives it a bit of an edge with edge cleaning. The stated bin size is 800 milliliters which is about 200 milliliters more than the Roomba. So we’ll call that a better than average dust capacity.
Another good thing is that it’s one of the lowest profile robot vacuums on the market at 3.2 inches. This is compared to the Roomba 980 which is 3.6 inches. So it can clean under more things than the average robot.
It has several cleaning modes which you can control from the remote control, including a spot cleaning mode where you can put it in the center of a mess and it circles in a double spiral. It has an edge cleaning mode where it only finds and cleans the edges of a given area. Its regular auto clean mode will clean with its smart navigation and then complete that cycle by cleaning the edges.
It also can be controlled much like a remote-control car with the arrows on the remote control which I actually found to be more intuitive than others I’ve tested. You can schedule cleanings on the remote as well. It’s really not a feature but I also find its quirky alerts kind of endearing. It comes with two extra edge brushes, the charger dock, which it will return to automatically, a filter brush, the regular dustbin, a water tank bin, the remote control, and a one-year warranty.
As far as negative things, I would say that the brush roll is pretty standard. It cleans well but it’ll require pretty regular cleaning if you have a lot of pet hair. I would also say that because of its very low profile, it’s not as good at climbing, particularly high barriers. We have a three quarter inch or 19 millimeter board in the obstacle test which it was not able to climb. Their literature says it can climb 15 millimeter right angles and slopes up to 25 degrees. So our test board was just about four millimeters too high.
The final negative thing was that it doesn’t come with any magnetic barrier strips or any other kinds of barriers, which are usually used to keep robots out of certain areas. I personally don’t use them but I’m sure there are situations where it could be an issue.
But all in all, I think the VANiGO robot vacuum is one of the best in the budget to midlevel price range, especially considering that its navigation system is so advanced. Its pickup ability was great for carpets and effective for hard floors if you use high power. It has better than average battery life, dustbin capacity, and edge cleaning, and when you consider that you’re actually getting a mopping robot, too, it makes the VANiGO an excellent buy.
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