ILife T10s robot vacuum review: Powerful dust collection, but not in Europe

Sep 17, 2023

If you would like a robot vacuum cleaner but feel that most of them are out of your price range, take a look at the ILife T10s robot vacuum.

If you would like a robot vacuum cleaner but feel that most of them are out of your price range, take a look at the Ilife T10S multipurpose sweeping and mopping robot vacuum with the added bonus of an auto-empty station.

ILife has been making floor-sweeping robots since 2016 and introduced its dedicated floor-washing Shinebot robot in 2018. Now, in 2023, it has budget-conscious robot vacuums, like the ILife 10s, that can sweep and mop the floor at the same time. It will also return to its base and empty its onboard dustbin into a large capacity dust bag, so you do not need to empty it so often.

ILife has a range of robot vacuums starting from an affordable $113 for a single-function vacuum. The ILife T10S robot vacuum is more expensive, but that's expected for a sweeping and mopping vacuum with an auto-empty station. However, it's much cheaper than a lot of the competition at just around $400 on Amazon.

About this review: This review was written after testing an ILife T10s two-in-one robot vacuum and mop with the auto-empty station for one month. ILife did not have any input in this article.

The Ilife T10S robot vacuum is a multi-function 2-in-1 robot vacuum with a mop pad and onboard dustbin that can sweep the floor and mop at the same time. It also has an auto empty station which will hold over 30 days of dust.

The ILife T10s is available from the ILife Mall on its website and from Amazon. The ILife T10s is a mid-priced vacuum, priced at around $400, but there are regular discounts on both ILife and Amazon.

The ILife T10s looks smooth and stylish with an iridescent blue color and a Lidar mapping radar on top with an orange rotating sensor. It also has a home button and a power button flush with the lid. There is also a blue electric LED that indicates when the unit is connected to Wi-Fi.

Underneath the ILife T10s are two rotating side brushes that sweep up debris, along with a roller brush and sweeter in the middle that collects dust and debris. The onboard dustbin unit is combined with a water tank and is extracted from the rear of the robot vacuum unit. There are two spare brushes in the box and a crevice-cleaning tool. There is also a spare mopping pad and filter in the accessories pack in the box.

To use the robot vacuum, press the power button on the top of the unit for three seconds to power the robot vacuum on or off. It'll scan the room using SLAM technology (Simultaneous Location and Mapping), and get going. If you want to install the mop pad, attach the cloth pad to the plastic baseplate and click the plate to secure it. There is a silicone plug on the top of the combined dustbin and water tank. To fill it up, just lift the tab and fill the tank before securing it to the vacuum.

In use, the ILife T10S robot vacuum is quiet at 65dB. At medium power, the robot will clean continually for almost two hours. If the battery gets low, the indicators on the top of the ILife T10s will flicker red and the robot will return to its base to recharge before returning to its last known location. It avoids objects well and navigates away from the furniture. However, it will collect items such as USB cables and drag them around.

When the ILife T10S crosses from hard flooring to carpet, the fan will increase to give an increase in suction power and noise. When it crosses back to the hard floor the T10s becomes much quieter as the fan slows down.

The onboard dustbin holds a good amount of dust. This is the dustbin after only one sweep of the area showing how much dust and pet fur it can collect.

The ILife app, called ILIFEHOME, has been upgraded several times since it was introduced in 2018, and it's super easy to use. Scan the QR code in the manual or download the Tuya smart app from the app store. Once you have created an account on the app, it's easy to add a device with the plus sign in the corner. Make sure that the Wi-Fi is broadcasting on 2.4GHz and enter the password.

To connect the ILife T10s to the Wi-Fi network, the robot needs to broadcast. Press the power and home icons on the top of the T10s for three seconds and wait for the voice prompt of AP mode to confirm that the robot has entered connection mode. Select the SmartLife hotspot device and wait for the device to connect. The process took several attempts before it successfully connected the app to the T10s.

The ILife 10s must complete a full sweep of the area before you can customize the settings on the app, and the maps it creates are detailed and accurate. You can label different rooms and specify how many times you want them to be cleaned during a pass, and how much water you want to deliver to the hard floor.

You can label different areas in the app and clean custom areas in the house at different times of the day or clean heavily trafficked areas more often. You can set schedules to clean the entire space automatically or specify a named area to clean. Voice activation works well, and you can invoke the robot to start cleaning or return to its charging station. You can also set up no-go zones and specify different schedules for each room or zone

The app maintains a record of how worn the consumables are and how many hours these can be used before it recommends that they are changed. This is a useful feature if you forget to maintain your appliances regularly.

In use, the robot will clean the carpet in straight parallel lines, marking the carpet pile with neat stripes. As we previously mentioned, it'll also boost suction to the max on carpet and return to normal when it encounters hard flooring again.

When the mopping pad is fitted, the robot sweeps hard floors in a Y shape, making sure that no parts of the hard floor are missed. It will drag the mop across the carpet if the mopping pad is installed and wet the carpet, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if you have pets. I didn't remove it and found that the damp mop pad swept up stray pet hairs on the carpet that were missed by the side brushes and the central roller.

It's a reliable workhorse that will do the job and keep your floors swept and mopped and give you the app control you need.

The auto-empty station worked as intended. Best of all, it had a large capacity dust bag, meaning I didn't have to empty the onboard dustbin daily.

Unfortunately, I ran into an issue with the base station's design. The base station is labeled with 110-240V and when the ILife T10s returned to the base station, the voice prompt announced that it was charging and then that it was emptying the onboard dustbin. The fan on the base station is very fast, loud, and strong. Unfortunately, if you live in a region that uses 240V, the suction is so powerful that it sucks the silicone flexible docking seal inside the unit, stopping the fan within three seconds and causing the unit to show an error message that the unit is blocked (shown below). I had to fit a step-down transformer to simulate operation in a 110V country such as the U.S., which was able to get it to run at normal speed.

I think ILife will have to do some work to strengthen the silicone seal to prevent this from happening in 220-240V regions of the world.

You should buy an ILife T10s if:

You should not buy an Ilife T10s if:

All in all, the ILife T10s performed well. I liked the precision lines when it vacuumed, and I appreciated the extra suction when it crossed onto the carpet. The app is useful, allowing me to specify the zones where I need to have sweeping or mopping twice, and I can set a schedule to clean multiple times per day. However, the fact I had to use a step-down transformer to stop the soft silicone seal from disappearing into the base station every time the auto-empty station was used feels like a big oversight for many customers.

However, if you want a mid-priced multi-function sweeping and mopping robot with an auto empty station and a good app the ILife T10S is a good affordable option for you if you do not want to spend thousands on a top-of-the-range model which will only have a few extra features. It's a reliable workhorse that will do the job and keep your floors swept and mopped and give you the app control you need.

The Ilife T10S robot vacuum is a multi-function 2-in-1 robot vacuum with a mop pad and onboard dustbin that can sweep the floor and mop at the same time. It also has an auto empty station which will hold over 30 days of dust.