I tested the affordable Tapo RV30 Max Plusrobot vacuum cleaner and I was impressed

The Tapo RV30 Max Plus is a simple robot vacuum cleaner with a compact base station and a small price tag.

Simple features on a robot vacuum cleaner used to mean that they only had a charging base. High-end models could empty themselves into a larger dust bag back at base. But today the top models also have a large base station with reservoirs for clean and dirty water, and mops are cleaned and dried, so maintenance is minimised.sion

Meanwhile, even budget robot vacuum cleaners like this can empty themselves into a larger dust bag at the base station. If they’re only vacuuming, they can go months unattended. Your home helper became less hassle.

The Tapo RV30 Max Plus’s 5,300Pa suction is an improvement on the 4,200Pa of its predecessor the Tapo RV30 Plus. And it’s a bit heavier. But otherwise specs are similar.

The mop is a simple cloth attached with Velcro to the underside of the cleaner.

The base station is compact and stylish. The base station doesn’t contain clean or dirty water tanks: you need to fill the vac’s reservoir and wash and dry the mop cloth manually. But the base station is home to a 3-litre dust bag for automatic emptying. That should last two months between changes.

It costs a little more than the Ultenic T20 Pro but it performed a bit better on test.

Unpacking and setup went fine. Unlike the Ultenic, it comes with just one of everything you need, no spares. But it charged and mapped well.

It mapped the ground floor accurately but hallucinated small extra rooms on the patio, that it could see through the window. I wish! Don’t we all dream of magically having more rooms?

You can map where carpets are and elect to avoid them, vacuum and mop, or only vacuum… but for the latter you need to remove the mop cloth, it doesn’t seem to lift for carpets.

I sprinkled my trademark talc on the wooden floor and then told the Tapo to clean the kitchen.

It didn’t take a direct route, it was waylaid by dining chair legs, but then it efficiently cleaned the perimeter and started to go up and down the middle in long lines. The runs overlapped, so everywhere was covered.

Performance on the baby powder was good, not great. You could see the circle marks where its brush had swept but the floor was left pretty clean. It didn’t miss anywhere.

I was actually impressed. Vacuums two or three times the price perform much the same on the baby powder.

I was also pleased when the app let me add a new map for upstairs. This was something that I couldn’t get the Ultenic T20 Pro to do.

The Tapo cleaned well and clearly has a drop sensor, because it didn’t fall down the stairs.

And vacuuming on the first floor was very thorough. Rather than just vacuuming along in parallel lines, I could see from the map that the Tapo had done perpendicular ones too, covering everywhere twice.

Testing took a turn for the disappointing though when it came to thresholds. The Tapo is supposed to be able to cope with a step of up to 22mm. But the lip as you go from my hall to bathroom is 20mm and it repeatedly couldn’t cope.

It tried backing up and having a fast run-up – almost! It tried turning around and then sneakily re-attempting. Sly but no joy. After a couple of minutes it stopped and asked for help (verbally, not a push notification, though I could see on the map that it had stopped)

I lifted it slightly into the bathroom. Imagine my dismay when it promptly turned around and drove back down the threshold into the hall. Gah!

But the most frustrating thing was that, each time I restarted it in the hall, it would make a beeline for the bathroom and then give up. I hadn’t set a room cleaning order, so I struggle to understand why it wouldn’t just clean the other rooms. In fact, it could clean a room, pop back for a try, clean another room, pop back again.

In the end, I lifted the Tapo into the bathroom proper and it cleaned it fully, without bailing. I was impressed with how well it fitted under furniture. It then went back to the hall and moved on to each of the other rooms.

It tends to nudge objects, not just stop short, so you can hear it bumping around as it cleans. It sounded like someone (clumsy) was upstairs, I couldn’t forget about it. Loud bashing my teenager’s weights, for example.

I set the Tapo mapping the top floor. It expects to start from its base station but you can carry it upstairs. There’s no headlight but it fared ok mopping the loft bedroom at dusk.

But I could tell from the app that it never made it up the (again 20mm) lip into the bathroom. At least it didn’t get stuck at the threshold.

However the app did show me that vacuuming had been very thorough. Again it had criss-crossed the room, vacuuming everywhere twice. Though when it saw a full-length mirror, it saw through the looking glass and imagined there was another room. The Tapo has a good imagination.

It did an impressively thorough job. And when it was finished, I could see that it had returned to its starting place on that floor. And, bless it, on the map in the app Zzzzz was emerging because it was sleeping!

Verdict: This can’t compete with high-end robot vacuum cleaners like the Narwal Flow or Dreame Matrix 10. Its mop is much more simplistic, and on test it couldn’t make it up the short 20mm step into either of my bathrooms.

However, it’s a great robot vacuum cleaner for the price. So if you’re more interested in vacuuming than mopping, and if you don’t have steps into rooms, it’s well worth considering.

Caramel Quin Contributor

About

Caramel is an award-winning journalist, engineering graduate and professional nerd who tests a wide range of consumer technology. She was on the team that launched Stuff in 1996. She also worked on the magazine’s 1999 US launch. Caramel has been freelance ever since. She prides herself on real-world testing and understanding geek speak, translating it into plain English. Her pet hates are jargon, pointless products and over-complicated instruction manuals.