Cheap robot vacuum cleaner Midea M7 with lidar 2022. Today we’ll look at an interesting Midea M7 robot vacuum cleaner with lidar and smart wet cleaning at a fairly low price, but what’s the catch? Let’s figure it out. By the way, there is also a Pro version of this robot vacuum cleaner, which has a movable platform for wet cleaning. Until recently, this feature was only in premium and expensive models of robotic vacuum cleaners. In general, the Midea company has been on the home appliance market for a long time, but they began to engage in smart home relatively recently. Still, you can’t lag behind the trend. However, in pursuit of “smart ideas” they forgot a little about the main thing, namely software. However, first things first.
Buy Midea M7 Robot Vacuum Cleaner on Aliexpress
Unpacking and box
The robot is delivered in two boxes, one of which is transportable. The main box has colorful printing, which is a rarity for this price segment. Despite the quality of the cardboard and the paint application, it looks good. Giving is not a shame. There is also a plastic handle for easy portability. On the front and back of the box, there is an image of the robot vacuum cleaner itself. Despite the color of the robot itself, which is inside the box, the image on it will always be black. It discriminates a little. What’s in the box isn’t on the box.
The main specifications are placed on the side edges of the box. On one of the edges, in the form of small pictures, the main advantages of the robot are applied, of which the function of increasing power on carpets can be noted. On the bottom of the box, there are already two color variations of the robot.
Equipment
The package bundle is relatively poor. The box contains the robot itself, two side brushes, a charging base, a plate with a cloth for wet cleaning, a charging cable with an L-shaped plug, instructions and a small manual for quick setup. There is also an additional HEPA filter, which is nice since they are branded and come in a plastic case. You can’t see him in the photo, but he is.
The base is made of glossy plastic in an interesting black and white color combination. It already has a built-in power supply, which will allow you not to clutter up an extension cord or an outlet. Of the minuses, we can note the complete absence of a management cable and the output of contacts to one side.
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On the bottom of the base there are practical rubber feet, which, as I have noted more than once, do not help keep the robot from sliding out. In order for the base to really stay in place, the rear part must be higher than the front. Note to the Chinese.
The water supply tank has the familiar semicircular shape. We have already seen such a reservoir in the Deebot robot vacuum cleaner. The volume of the water tank is 350 milliliters. Separately, it is worth noting a plastic platform for a rag with a magnetic sensor, thanks to which the robot detects the presence of a reservoir with water and allows you to programmatically start wet cleaning.
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Device and sensors
The robot itself is made of good quality white matte plastic and is equipped with a lidar-button, which, when stressed, will allow the robot to identify low furniture and other objects. The height of the robot together with the lidar is 9.6 centimeters. The top also houses the power button and the return to base button. They are tactilely pleasant to press and have a white backlight.
In addition to the lidar, the front bumper is responsible for navigation, in which as many as four sensors are located. In front there are two obstacle proximity sensors. One of the sensors allows you to detect small objects that are located at the stern of the robot. The second sensor, located above, detects larger objects that are encountered in front of the robot along its path during cleaning.
Also on the sides of the bumper are two more wall proximity sensors. Despite the large number of sensors, the bumper is also framed by a rubber spacer, which will absorb any collisions of the robot with obstacles.
At the back, the robot also has two proximity sensors. Next to them are the holes for the speaker and the exhaust air grill. For comparison, my Xiaomi Roborock S55 robot vacuum cleaner has only one wall proximity sensor. At the same time, in fairness, it should be said that I do not exclude the possibility that some sensors are stubs and do not perform any functions. Since the robot’s algorithm does not provide for its movement backward. At least when choosing manual control in the application, there is no such functionality in the remote control.
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The bottom of the robot is quite familiar, however, there are several positive and negative differences compared to other robot vacuum cleaners. So, for example, two modular wheels with a rubber tread have a very long stroke, which allows the robot to overcome fairly high obstacles up to 2 centimeters and climb onto carpets with high pile. The wheels have a large diameter and are thinner than the wheels of the vast majority of robotic vacuum cleaners. From experience, this does not affect the performance of the device in any way. But the obvious disadvantage, on which the manufacturers apparently saved, are the sensors for determining the height, which are smaller than the sensors in other robotic vacuum cleaners. On flat surfaces this drawback will practically not be reflected in any way and in most cases nothing will threaten the robot. At least put crumbs on the table to sweep it. However, my “signature” test of the robot on the bed showed this flaw. For more details, see in my video review…
The turbo brush does not have silicone inserts and is represented by only two types of nap: hard and soft. It is fastened with a familiar frame, which is removed with a little effort and does not have mechanical latches for fastening. In fact, they also saved a little. Otherwise, all the most standard guide wheels with a small protector, two contacts for charging and four nozzles for spraying water on a rag during wet cleaning. By the way, most Chinese robots have 5 or even 6 nozzles that spray water more abundantly. But, in general, if you set the water supply to the maximum, this is enough for a good wet cleaning.
Under the lid of the robot there is a container for collecting garbage with a volume of 450 milliliters, a button for pairing the robot with a Wi-Fi network, a microUSB diagnostic connector under a rubber plug and a reset button, which is not very much recessed into the body, which allows you to press it with the tip of the cutter of the complete brush. The container has a triple filtration system, represented by a metal mesh, washable sponge pad and a HEPA filter that is practically non-clogging. The container opens downward by pressing the spring-loaded button.
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Software
Now let’s move on to the most important thing, without which even a car will soon be unable to drive, not to mention robotic vacuum cleaners, namely software. All Midea smart home devices are powered by the MSmartLife application, which has a rating of 1.4, which is already starting to be alarming. However, I saw an application for Chinese robotic vacuum cleaners with a similar rating, but there were no problems with them. Here the situation is different. The robot could not update in any way through the application and I constantly had to contact the Chinese, whose engineers were updating the robot using the cloud. During testing, several updates were released, the last of which was never installed. Also, there are many complaints about the application itself, namely, the slow drawing of the map and the positioning of the robot in space, as well as share loading, which negatively affected the usability of the device as a whole.
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The rest of the plugin is a standard application. Almost everything is controlled from the main screen, where you can see the map drawn by the robot, the battery level and the cleaning time. In the lower right corner, you can select the suction power of the vacuum cleaner in four gradations and the intensity of the water supply in three levels. According to the manufacturer, the suction force reaches 4000 Pa. In my personal opinion, this is a marketing ploy, since in reality it is almost impossible to check the suction power of a robot vacuum cleaner, and from the noise it emitted when cleaning at maximum power, it cannot be said that it is somehow different from most robotic vacuum cleaners with suction power 2500 Pa. By the way, I would like to note that the robot is really quiet. And it normally performs its cleaning tasks on a par with competitors.
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Conclusion
Summing up, I can say that I am really offended for the flaws that Media makes, because in its arsenal of smart devices there is a huge amount of household appliances, whose users constantly have to deal with unfinished software, which, as I said earlier, is essentially the defining criterion when choosing a device. That is why I had rather mixed impressions of the Midea M7 robot vacuum cleaner, which is simply stuffed with sensors for perfect positioning in space. However, as I have already noted, without firmware, soon not only will the iron, but the car will not drive. What do you think about this? Write your comments below. Well, that’s all, good luck and good mood to everyone.
