Hey what’s up, Alex here! This year is a very interesting year for robot
vacuum, we see both Roborock and Ecovacs taking a step back and coming out with cheaper models
while still retaining some of the premium features that are necessary to have. The title that I put for this video is not
a clickbait, I’m serious here. Forget about Ecovacs X1, forget about Roborock
S8 Ultra and even forget about dreame L10s Ultra, which is the best robot vacuum last
year imo. The robot vacuums that I am about to talk
about today are the ones that you should only be considering getting. First is the Roborock Q Revo which addresses
all the issues I have with Roborock in the past. Finally, no more using a piece of cloth to
do mopping, this uses the spinning mop pads which is definitely what I prefer. The base station is also not that bulky that
takes up a lot of floor space, instead they went with the more standard compact looking
design for the Q Revo. Most importantly, it comes with the mop drying
feature by default and not some extra module that you need to purchase separately. Second one is the Ecovacs T20. Appearance wise it doesn’t look that much
different from the X series model as compared to the case for Roborock. Ecovacs position the X series meant for busy
households, ideal for those who value advanced features and customization. On the other hand, the T series is more of
their value series with a couple of new interesting features. Biggest improvement from the X1 is the spinning
mop pads can now be lifted, so you can vacuum and mop in 1 single cleaning cycle
for those houses that have carpets. The biggest game changer of all is going to
be the Dreame L20. The dreame L10s that I covered last year,
is what I will recommend anyone if they are looking for the best, most feature rich robot
vacuum. This year the L20 didn’t disappoint me,
they came up with new innovative features that really make a difference. If automatically providing water supply and
automatically draining away the dirty water, basically operating just like a washing machine,
if this is not the biggest game changer and life savior for robot vacuums, I don’t know
what else is. I know such feature has been around in China
for quite some time already, but the dreame L20 is the first to be available and supported
here in Singapore. Ok, we will now go in depth to look at the
different aspects of these robot vacuums and also do some testing to see how each of them
fare. Let’s start with the base station. The Roborock Q Revo comes with 2 color options
- black or white. The width is significantly smaller but in
terms of depth its actually slightly bigger than their S Series ultra dock. The clean water tank has a capacity of 5 litres,
they have an LED indicator here whereby it will turn red if there is something wrong,
for eg. whenever the clean water tank is empty. I find this front LED indicator super useful. In the middle compartment holds the dust bag,
this is different from their Ultra dock but this is actually a more standard and better
design. Then below is the mop washing area which you
can easily remove and clean it separately. For the Ecovacs T20 comes with only 1 color
option. In terms of size, it has the exact same dimension
as their X series. The clean water tank has the same capacity
as the Q Revo. They don’t have an error LED indicator,
but instead they have a top control button here to easily start or pause your cleaning,
this is actually very convenient in my experience. Same thing, you can find the dust bag in the
middle compartment. For the mop washing area, you can’t remove
it to clean, instead they provide you with a cleaning brush and allow you to dispense
water using the top control button. One big differentiator for this station is
that it is able to heat up the clean water which allows you to mop the floor with hot
water. This means that it will be more effective
cleaning away those oil stains after cooking. Now come the dreame L20, available in 2 color
options - black or white. Here is the dimension. You have 3 top control buttons, a leave or
dock button, a start or pause button and a drying button. These indicators will change to orange if
there is an error. Middle compartment holds the dust bag, then
below for the mop washing area, it’s a combination of the Q Revo and T20 whereby you can either
remove it or dispense water and clean with the provided cleaning brush. Personally, I like to remove the whole thing
to wash, much faster and cleaner this way. You can install a water hookup kit with this
cleaning station, you will then need to change away the water tanks which won’t be removable
anymore. Capacity of the tanks doesn’t matter now.. For my case, I have it placed beside my washing
machine, so it will tap onto the same water source, similarly drain away the dirty water
through the same place. With this setup, you don’t need to manually
refill and pour away the dirty water anymore, which can happen at least once every 2 days. Now I just need to clean the dirty water filter
once per month. And one last thing is you have the option
to install their detergent for auto dispensing. Now I will run a couple of tests to show you
how good is their mop washing and mop drying. To test their mop washing, I will soak each
of their mopping pads inside an equal amount of milo for 15 minutes, then run their mop
washing once and compare the before and after. Here is the result. Next I want to test whether the minimum drying
period of 2 hours is sufficient. The result of this is most probably going
to be different based on the climate of where you stay. Next, let’s have a quick look at the robot
vacuum itself. You can see the Ecovacs T20 doesn’t have
an inlet for water, which means it doesn’t have an internal water tank here while the
Q Revo and dreame L20 both have one. The T20 has an additional side brush and 2
drop sensors. All 3 of them went with the rubber main brush. I realize this has become the standard for
all premium robot vacuum, the least maintenance required because you can easily remove the
entangled hair from the rubber brush. All 3 of their mopping pads used have a different
texture, not sure how much this affects the mopping performance. One interesting feature you can spot here
for the dreame L20 is they have an extendable mop assembly here, this is supposed to extend
out the mopping pad when cleaning edges and corners. Only the dreame L20 comes with a front facing
camera for better object recognition, and of course you can use it like a moving surveillance
camera. There is a pair of flashlights that can be
automatically switch on whenever its at a low light area. For Q Revo and T20, they are just relying
on the lasers and sensors to detect obstacles, which I find is good enough if you are able
to make your house robot vacuum friendly. Time to run some tests to see how well they
perform, as usual I am going to put some common items lying on the floor in a typical household
- toys, USB cable, ikea floor rug and socks. Of course the Dreame L20 is definitely better
because it has a front facing camera which is able to spot items, that are even very
low lying on the floor, this is typically very difficult for just pure lasers and sensors to detect. For the Q Revo Reactive AI, it just couldn’t
spot the cables and got stuck with it, for the rest of the items it didn’t seem to
avoid touching them as well. The true detect used by the T20 feels slightly
better from what I observed, how the robot will behave whenever an obstacle is detected. In terms of navigation, although all three
are using LIDAR but Ecovacs always use dToF while both Roborock and Dreame is using LDS. Based on my observation, I will say LDS feels
better and smarter than dToF. One issue I found with the dreame L20 is when
its cleaning edges. I will expect the robot to travel smoothly
in a straight line against the edge of the wall, but some time, somehow, it will keep
doing this in and out motion behavior. It feels like it detects the wall as an obstacle,
tries to avoid it by going around it, then sees the wall again and then tries to do the
same thing again. Besides observation from the normal day to day
cleaning, I am also interested to do some testing to see the results. I will be using the default suction
power and mop settings since I think that’s what most people will do. First is doing a carpet vacuum test with suction
boost whereby I will place some hair strands and food crumbs. Next I want to see how good are they at cleaning
edges and corners. I will purposely place some hair strands right
at the edges and using powder to simulate dust.Next is mopping on tiles, I want to see
how good are they able to clean the grout lines. For this, I will put some blue color liquid
solution onto the grout lines. Lastly, a very popular question that people
like to ask. Whether there will be leftover water streaks
on those glossy marble tiles. The Roborock Q Revo didn’t perform very
well for carpet, even with 2 runs it is still unable to pick up some short hair. For edge cleaning, very standard kind of gap
it misses, nothing too stand out. For mopping, the Q Revo is more towards the
dry side. There is a slider setting to adjust the water
flow, I suggest to test them out and pick the number you prefer. With that, using the lowest setting will be
the best for marble flooring. The Ecovacs T20 performed the best for carpet,
managed to pick up all hair and food crumbs within 1 cycle, there is a special setting
for edge cleaning, slightly better with it so I will recommend to turn that on. However for mopping, even with the lowest
setting, it is still quite wet, chances of leaving water streaks behind is pretty high. The dreame L20 overall has the most balance
vacuum and mopping performance. The extendable mop feature is definitely a
huge plus point being able to clean the edges almost perfectly, provided it didn’t encounter
the issue I mentioned just now. For mopping, it has the most even spread of
water and pressure to the floor. However, all 3 robot vacuums are still not
really able to clean the grout lines which is understandable Noise level is something that might bother you especially if you are working from home. This will be taken with the same mic volume
and no post edit on the audio level.
Here is a list of the most commonly asked features I gathered in my comments section,
so I think I might as well compile a list for your quick reference, you can pause the
video here if you want. If you look under customized cleaning setting,
for Roborock I realize you can only set number of clean cycles when you choose rooms or zones,
not full. So for example, when I want to do a full cleaning
run, I can’t set to clean the kitchen and living room twice and the rest of the rooms
just once, there are only settings for the suction power and water flow. If I am wrong about this then let me know
in the comments below. Another one that I find quite useful is able
to set carpet cleaning first. This means that for household with high pile
carpets, you don’t even need to worry that the mop lifting is not high enough because
the robot will settle all the carpet first before washing the mop pads. For dreame case, the mopping pads can be docked
at the cleaning station so not an issue at all For Roborock Q Revo
the pros are There is a status LED on the docking station
which is very useful The docking station is also very compact Overall much stable and efficient Cons are:
Weak obstacle detection No controls on the docking station and
Unable to customize number of cleaning cycles For Ecovacs T20,
the pros are: Hot water mopping
Obstacle detection And there is a Yiko voice assistant for non smart homes Cons are: Unstable app, some times you will have mapping issues
No internal water tank on the vacuum Unable to remove mop washing area
which is a little bit inconvenient For Dreame L20,
the pros are: Station is able to hookup a waterkit
Auto detergent Mop is extendable for better edge and corners mopping The Cons are: Navigation not travelling straight at times
The limited smart home integrations And in terms of price of course
its going to be more pricey Once again, the dreame L20 is most likely
going to take my top spot for the best robot vacuum in 2023. There are still a few more months to go before
the end of this year but I highly doubt there will be something better coming up. If this is within your budget and you are
able to hookup the waterkit for the station, I will 100% recommend you to try this, its
really setup and forget, the amount of convenience you get from this is really beyond what you can imagine. I will definitely be using the dreame L20 for my
own house. But if this is not an option, then both the
Roborock Q Revo and Ecovacs T20 are fantastic choices with their own pros and cons. The hot water mopping from Ecovacs T20 is
good for families that cook everyday, while the Q Revo is just a very good solid all rounder. Both of them come with all the necessary cleaning
features, I will say good enough for most of the households and at a much cheaper price
compared to their flagship models. If you already have good experience with any
of these brands, then just stick back with the same. Likewise, if you have a particular bad experience
with anyone of them then just take this chance to try out the other. If all things equal, I will give the slight edge to
the Q Revo, overall a safer choice for its stability. That’s all from me. Links to all 3 robot vacuums in the video
description, use them to support the channel. Thanks for watching and I will see you in
the next one BYE!
