Passport specifications, scope of delivery and price

Appearance and function

The Redmond RV-R250 robot vacuum cleaner is packaged in a small, colorfully designed corrugated cardboard box. On the outer planes of the box there are images of the robot itself, as well as its main features and characteristics. The inscriptions are mainly in Russian and English. Styrofoam molds and plastic bags are used to protect and distribute the contents. The box is equipped with a plastic handle, so it will not be difficult to bring the purchase home.

Spare parts and consumables in the delivery set are represented by a replaceable filter and a second set of side brushes (the user installs the first set immediately).

The user manual is a multi-page brochure. The manual is in Russian and also in two languages of countries close to Russia. The quality of the text and printing performance is high. A PDF version of the manual can be downloaded from the company’s website.

The body of the robot is made of black plastic, mostly with a matte finish. Only the bumper at the top has a mirror-smooth surface. The robot is predominantly dark in color, which complicates its search in the dark nooks and crannies of the apartment.

On the top panel, closer to the back, there is a single button with which the work is started for cleaning and stopped.

The button is made of translucent plastic and is illuminated from below by a multi-color status indicator.

In addition, the robot informs the user about some changes in its state by means of a sound signal. You can’t turn off the sound alert.

In plan, the vacuum cleaner has an almost perfectly round shape (width 281 mm, length 278 mm – hereinafter the results of our measurements are given in the text). Height – 78 mm. The mass of the robot is 1.55 kg.

The bottom edges in the rear hemisphere are beveled, which helps the robot to overcome obstacles. And the pronounced rim on the bottom of the bumper, on the contrary, will not allow the robot to climb onto something on which it can get stuck. Also, some angularity at the top reduces the likelihood that the vacuum cleaner will get stuck under obstacles with little clearance.

On the right side closer to the back there is a power connector for direct battery charging.

The entire front half of the body, going to the sides, is enveloped by a spring-loaded bumper with a small stroke. The shift of the bumper triggers the opto-mechanical obstacle sensor. The distance from the floor to the lower point of the bumper is 13 mm, which means that the robot can potentially drive onto a step of this height. To protect furniture from the front, a strip of medium-hard rubber is glued to the bumper in its lower part.

There is nothing interesting behind.

On the bottom there is a front swivel support roller, two side brushes, a slot through which the dust collector suction pipe protrudes slightly, a rubber scraper skirt to help collect debris, two drive wheels on spring-loaded gear motor blocks and a battery compartment cover. Closer to the edge of the front and sides are three IR height difference sensors, thanks to which the robot vacuum cleaner can avoid falling down stairs.

The axes of the driving wheels are slightly shifted back relative to the diameter of the circumference of the body, so the robot cannot make a U-turn on the spot without changing the boundaries of the area it occupies. Drive wheels with a diameter of 62 mm are equipped with tires made of elastic (albeit too rigid) plastic with barely pronounced lugs. The range of vertical movement of the driving wheels is about 4 mm, which is not much, but still improves the ability of the robot to overcome obstacles. The drive wheels and side brushes cannot be turned by hand, which can make it difficult to remove the robot from under low furnishings, under which it will get stuck tightly, and to clean the brushes.

When cleaning, the front brushes rake up the debris to the center, and then the debris is sucked into the dust collector through a short wide nozzle.

This robot is a vacuum cleaner in the classical sense, since the dust is sucked directly from the surface being cleaned, the side brushes play an auxiliary role and do not move dirt directly into the dust collector. Elastic gaskets on the cover of the dust collector and on the inlet grille of the fan compartment reduce parasitic air suction past the filter and dust collector.

The side brushes have long, relatively soft bristles, the tufts of which emerge from short elastic leads. As practice has shown, these beams retain their shape well. The right and left brushes differ in the rotation of the leashes, and so that the user knows which one to install where, there are embossed letters L and R on the brushes and on the bottom. Installing and removing the side brushes does not require any tool, which is very convenient.

To remove the dust collector, you must first pick up the edge of the cover from above and fold it up and down. Four finger grooves make it easy to pull the dust box up.

The inlet of the dust collector is covered from the inside by a transparent plastic curtain, so that the debris does not fall out at the wrong time. Cleaning the dust container is very simple and convenient: first, the top cover is removed, then the frame with a fibrous filter and the debris is shaken out of the container.

It is convenient to empty the dust container and clean the filter with a conventional vacuum cleaner with a crevice nozzle. Note that there is no fan in the dust collector itself, so the dust collector and filter can be washed under water, the main thing is to dry everything well afterwards.

A set of a special nozzle and a napkin allows you to dry or wet wiping smooth floors simultaneously with garbage collection.

To do this, a wiping nozzle is fixed on the bottom of the robot, on which a terry cloth is attached with Velcro.

The cloth can be pre-moistened. If the floor is heavily soiled, it is recommended to first carry out the usual dry cleaning and only then wet.

This robot is equipped with a nickel-metal hydride battery with a capacity of 850 mAh and a nominal voltage of 14.4 V. Judging by the dimensions, the battery is made up of 12 AA cells.

The robot can only be charged directly from an external power adapter. The length of the cable from the power adapter is 148 cm.

The Redmond RV-R165 robot vacuum cleaner has one single cleaning mode and, without user intervention, cleans until the battery is almost completely discharged.

Testing

Below are the results of testing according to our methodology, which is described in detail in a separate article .

The video below was filmed from one point with full coverage of the area being cleaned, while processing part of the video sequence was accelerated ten times, the first 10 minutes of cleaning:

The cleaning quality is not very high. However, in the first 10 minutes, the robot collected so much rice that it had already begun to get enough sleep back. After 30 minutes of work, even far from walls and other obstacles, there is a relatively large amount of debris:

Cleaning in the test room until the battery runs out showed that the robot does not waste time and gradually improves the quality of cleaning to a completely acceptable level:

There is little garbage in the corners and in the cramped pen:

When retracting, the robot moves straight until it collides with an obstacle, after which it always turns to the right, but, apparently, at least at a random angle. Such monotony in movement clearly does not improve the quality of cleaning. On the positive side, we note that quite a lot of light debris is collected on the filter, which indirectly indicates a relatively high suction power.

The robot takes approximately 250 minutes to recharge. Consumption schedule from the network:

During cleaning, the noise level is 64 dBA. The robot is relatively loud, but the nature of the noise it makes is not very annoying. For comparison, the noise level in these conditions of a conventional (not the quietest) vacuum cleaner is approximately 76.5 dBA.

findings

The Redmond RV-R165 robot vacuum cleaner has a simple design, the same control and the same movement pattern. This caused far from the highest results in our tests, but the model debris that we use for robots that can only suck is a difficult task. Here’s something easier – they do better with this, as does this robot, judging by the amount of light debris caught by the filter, and this is immediately after cleaning the floor several times with several robots from previous tests. The advantages of the Redmond RV-R165 robot include convenient attachment of side brushes, a relatively low body and the ability to dry / wet wiping smooth floors. The disadvantages stem from the simplicity of this unit of harvesting equipment and do not need to be listed.