Consumer Electronics, Gadgets & Accessories

Airrobo P20 in test: The battle for the price-performance crown?

The range of robot vacuum cleaners seems confusingly large and therefore it is important to look at specifics and details in order to make a decision. Airrobo has been around since 2012 and is thus already one of the established brands. With the new P20 model, they jump into the highly competitive 200€ price range. They claim to offer the best performance in the price range with this model. We put the Airrobo P20 to the test to see if it performs as well as advertised and what special features stand out.

Specifications

Suction power Up to 2,800 Pa
Battery life up to 2 hours
Socket dust container 600 ml
Height 7.8 cm
Climb height Up to 2 cm
Control Buttons, remote control, Airrobo app
Price € 129.99 *

Packaging

  • Simple packaging
  • High plastic content

The packaging of the Airrobo P20 is kept compact and simple. A brown cardboard case with a plastic handle form the exterior. Inside, covered by another layer of cardboard, is the Airrobo P20 in a foam mold. Next to it is a cardboard box with the accessories and the charging station. All parts are also individually wrapped in a plastic foil. Protective foils are found in front of the front sensor and on the charging station of the Airrobo P20, which should be peeled off. Two small white foam pads protect the bumper from transport damage and have to be removed before use. Overall, the packaging is safe, but the plastic content is relatively high.

Scope of delivery

  • Typical scope of delivery with a few spare parts
  • No batteries included for remote control

The scope of delivery of the Airrobo P20 is unsurprising, but solid. In addition to the robot vacuum cleaner, the charging station including power supply unit can of course be found in the box. Edge brushes are not pre-assembled, but are included in duplicate. A filter is installed in the assembled dust container, but one for changing is also next to the manual in the accessory box. A cleaning tool is included, which can be used to clean the filter and also cut hair from the roller brush. Lastly, there is the remote control, which can be used to make the simplest adjustments directly. It should be noted that you still need two AAA batteries for this. Such were nowhere to be found in the scope of delivery of the Airrobo P20 in our test.

Design

  • Good appearance
  • Typical design without any peculiarities

Visually, the Airrobo P20 hardly stands out when you look at the competition. The dimensions, the structure and the edge cleaning brushes on both sides can be found in many models. The roller brush and the movement apparatus also seem standard. Still, what stands out on the Airrobo P20 is the modern “diamond” finish, which doesn’t look obtrusively playful.

Processing quality

  • Good workmanship
  • Bad speaker

The workmanship of the Airrobo P20 is decent: the buttons and the switch are neatly finished. The dust container of the Airrobo P20 also passes the test. This sits securely and does not seem as rickety as some competitor products. In short: The mechanical workmanship is completely okay.

However, the speaker is not very impressive. Sure, speakers are not exactly a crucial feature of robot vacuum cleaners now. But the voice is loud, as long as it is not turned down, but the intelligibility is limited. The speech always seems a bit mumbled.

Special features

  • Mark engine
  • Scraper technology is supposed to improve cleaning

Where the Airrobo P20 is unremarkable by design, it is noticeable in the specs that a motor from Nidec is installed. This is a renowned company that is also known for high-quality fans (which are also electric motors in terms of their core). These can be found in some Dell PCs, Playstation models or Lenovo ThinkPads, for example.

What hardly stands out visually is the Scraper technology. This is a rubber lip that sits at the bottom of the roller brush’s frame. This is there to “scrape off” parts from the floor that would not be picked up by the suction alone. A slight pressure is created by some sort of spring and unevenness can be evened out this way. This could have a good effect on cleaning in addition to the motor.

Commissioning

Before commissioning, we connected the charging station in the Airrobo P20 test – the power cable can only be connected on one side. On the Airrobo P20, the edge brushes marked R and L were plugged in on the bottom, the protective parts were removed, and the protective film on the charging station and the P20 were peeled off.

Now the robot vacuum cleaner was placed on the station with the charging contacts to fully charge the battery first. Despite the main switch on the Airrobo P20 being turned off, a rather loud female voice announced the start of charging. After a few hours of charging, a beep sounded and we turned on the main switch on the side back of the Airrobo P20.

Control with the remote

  • Manual control a bit rough
  • Many functions directly on the remote control

With the remote control, the Airrobo P20 can be controlled without much effort or smartphone app. In addition to the simple functions of starting and sending back to the charging station, there are also various radio cleaning and manual control here. The latter was found to be fully functional in our Airrobo P20 test, but a bit rough in parts. You quickly turn the robot vacuum cleaner too far. Then there is a button for selecting the language (which, however, works better via the app) and the radio icon for app setup.

Cleaning tactics

  • Tactical cleaning
  • Additional modes available via remote control or app
  • Good obstacle clearance

In our test, we had the Airrobo P20 do a few runs. Overall, this robot vacuum cleaner takes a very targeted approach: One row at a time, and at the end, it goes over the edges again. Then, of course, there are other modes, such as “spiral cleaning”. Here, the Airrobo P20 makes ever larger circles, and at a certain point it makes the circles smaller again until it stops in the middle again. So this is a very intensive spot cleaning.

Remote control of the AirRobo P20
The remote control is kept simple, but offers most of the functions with the push of a button

A few peculiarities stood out during the rides: When the Airrobo P20 drives toward a wall, it stops short of it and doesn’t drive rigorously up to it, as is the case with some other models. Nevertheless, the rotation and the edge brushes allow cleaning right up to the edge. Furniture feet and table legs are approached rather rustically, but also bypassed tactically with suction. Where the Tesvor X500, a similarly priced, older competitor model, tends to get stuck under a chair and takes a long time to find the right angle to extend, this is no problem with the Airrobo P20. Speaking of angles, the Airrobo P20 also drives off walls well and does not drift off or towards them.

Overcoming obstacles

What also stands out, that is the good climbing ability. Obstacles, such as carpet edges or doorsteps, are thus no problem for the Airrobo P20. Even other obstacles, which were completely ignored by most vacuum cleaner robots, he mastered. These include, for example, the base of the cat scratching post or even the path onto the carpet, which the Trifo Ollie had problems with depending on the angle of approach.

Fall protection is also provided. Stairs or other steep inclines are thus recognized as obstacles and the Airrobo P20 does not fall down. For example, we placed it on a dresser and cleaned it. No problem – it didn’t fall.

AirRobo P20 stops at the edge
The Airrobo P20 has sensors all around it that detect when it is approaching a precipice. This protects it from falling down stairs

The only thing the Airrobo P20 didn’t find so easy was finding the charging station at the end of the cleaning process. It may be that the placement here was not optimal, but hardly anyone has the opportunity at home to set up the robot vacuum cleaner with the clearances specified in the instructions. Thus, the search sometimes took quite a long time and even the approach was occasionally at the wrong angle. Ultimately, however, it always worked out in the end, despite the long duration.

Connect to the Airrobo app

  • Account required
  • Android and Apple
  • Setup is simple

To explore the full functionality of the Airrobo P20, we installed the appropriate app for the test. First, you have to log in to the Airrobo app with a free account. Unfortunately, this seems to be the standard for all such apps. Then, you have to activate Bluetooth as well as WLAN and are also stubbornly asked to activate the location. Now you can press the button for wireless connection on the remote control. The Airrobo P20 appears in the app. One can now connect via Bluetooth and thus transmit the network access data. And that’s it – you can now turn off the Bluetooth function on the smartphone again.

By the way, Apple and Android are supported, but officially there is no support for tablets. No connection can be established with Alexa or Google; control via voice or smart home routine is therefore not possible.

Using the Airrobo app

  • Simply kept
  • Only a few additional options compared to the remote control
  • Timer function

When testing the app for the Airrobo P20, it is noticeable that it is kept relatively simple. First, the firmware of the P20 has been updated. Most of the device control can already be done with the remote control. Additional functions are especially the setting of a timer. For example, you can set it to run when everyone is out of the house so that it doesn’t disturb anyone. In addition, you can change the volume of the voice here. One function that you have with the app in addition to the remote control is “Find robot”. This is good if the robot vacuum cleaner got stuck somewhere and you are looking for it. When you press this option, the P20 says “I’m here!”.

Maintenance and cleaning

Between uses, the dust bin of the Airrobo P20 should always be emptied. For the other wear parts, the edge brush, the main brush and the filter, there is an estimate in the settings of the app when these should be changed. However, the times here are not quite understandable, since they decrease at different rates. A second set of edge brushes and a second filter are included; the main brush has a longer predicted lifetime.

To remove the dust container, press the mechanism at the back. You also have to keep this pressed to open the dust container, but this still requires some strength in the fingers on the P20. The filter can be accessed via a flap at the top of the dust container.

The tool is also included for cleaning the filter and loosening the hair on the main brush. This has a small knife that you can use to cut the hair from the main brush.

Performance

  • Good suction
  • Good carpet cleaning

Having been rather unremarkable in the Airrobo P20 test so far, we come to the most intensely advertised point: cleaning performance. Here Airrobo suggests a few scenarios to test for the test, but such “benchmarks “are rather moderate meaningful for practical use. Our test of the Airrobo P20 is characterized by cats, long hair carriers and crispbread. In short: a typical household.

The living room cleaning by the Airrobo P20 was very satisfactory in our test. All the places that the robot vacuum cleaner could reach were well cleaned. Both in the room and on the edges. A challenge for robot vacuum cleaners is always cat litter. Like other robot vacuums, the Airrobo P20 likes to shoot individual chunks around. But unlike some other models, it sucks up the litter it runs over quite reliably.

Carpets are another challenge. They often look the same afterwards as they did before. Not so with the Airrobo P20! In fact, in our test, it got an above-average amount of dirt out of the carpet. Whether the scraper makes the difference here? Sure, getting hair out of a carpet is a tough task, and even the P20 doesn’t manage it optimally. But superficial dirt was loosened quite well from the carpet.

Comparative performance

  • Suspends dust
  • Soaks up more dirt than compared models in the price range

By the way, the Airrobo P20 blows the air relatively compactly in one direction and thus swirls up dust even in places it can’t reach (between furniture, for example). This sounds undesirable at first, but quite often this dust then landed in such a way that it was then sucked up in the further course. To what extent this is coincidence or planned is hard to say. In any case, it is a behavior not really often observed in other vacuum cleaner robots.

In terms of cleaning performance, the Airrobo P20 beats the already mentioned Tesvor X500 from the same price range and the slightly more expensive Trifo Ollie. Thus, after one cleaning cycle, the dust container, which holds 600 ml in all three devices, is fullest in the Airrobo P20.

Loudness

  • Ratioulsy quiet
  • Gently ramps up the power

The Airrobo P20 can be set to three levels: Quiet, Standard and Strong. The quiet mode is actually very restrained. Standard gets noticeably louder and Strong is still a touch louder, but it’s not a huge step up. Practically speaking, this makes Quiet and Strong modes preferable depending on the situation. Compared to the Trifo Ollie, however, the Airrobo is very quiet overall. And the quiet mode is also quieter than the Tesvor X500.

The general behavior is also very pleasant. Thus, the sound of the Airrobo P20 in the test does not scare even the cats when it starts. Instead, it starts quietly and then slowly turns up the suction power until it reaches the set working speed.

Conclusion

The Airrobo P20 is a simply designed vacuum cleaner, whose focus is not on great feature variety, but on a very high cleaning performance at a fairly low price. Therefore, this model is perfect for those users who are simply looking for a straightforward robot vacuum cleaner that offers decent performance without digging too deep into their wallets.

AirRobo P20 Test Silver Award

Airrobo P20

Workmanship
Usability
Performance
Value for money

88/100

The Airrobo P20 is an affordable robot vacuum cleaner without any standout features, but with a very high cleaning performance.

Simon Lüthje

I am co-founder of this blog and am very interested in everything that has to do with technology, but I also like to play games. I was born in Hamburg, but now I live in Bad Segeberg.

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The range of robot vacuum cleaners seems confusingly large and therefore it is important to look at specifics and details in order to make a decision. Airrobo has been around since 2012 and is thus already one of the established brands. With the new P20 model, they jump into the highly competitive 200€ price range. … (Weiterlesen...)

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