iLife W400

amazon iLife W400 reviews

The affordable iLife W400 floor cleaning robot doesn’t offer many advanced features, but it will clean dirt and stains from your floors without much effort.

The iLife W400 floor cleaning robot doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles of more expensive models, but it’s easy to use, quiet, has good battery life, and at $249.99, you won’t have to pay a lot of money. Like many other mops on the market, it only cleans with water and is not recommended for use with cleaning solutions, which could be a deal-breaker for you in the age of COVID-19. The iRobot Braava Jet m6 has smart navigation, apps, and voice control and can be used with the solution clean. But the W400 is half the price and does a good job of removing dirt, stains, and footprints from your floors.

How W400 Works

The W400 is mostly circular at about 4.5 inches tall and 11.0 inches wide, allowing it to be easily moved around furniture. Its design is more practical than aesthetically appealing, which is fine.

The mop has two buckets, one for clean water and one for dirty water. The clean water tank has a capacity of 0.85 liters, almost three times that of life’s V8. It distributes clean water on your floor from the bottom, so you don’t have to worry about it spraying out the front where it rolls and potentially wetting your furniture. In addition, at the bottom, there is a microfiber roller for scrubbing the floor and a rubber squeegee to wipe off the residue. Dirty water is sucked back into the robot as it rolls along.

The W400 cleans with tap water, and iLife recommends that you not add detergent or any other cleaning liquid. That is pretty standard for mops in this price range. However, in the age of COVID-19, cleaning with only water seems futile. But if you don’t necessarily care about cleaning your floors and want to remove dirt and stains, the W400 proves tap waterworks.

There are four cleaning modes, including Path mode for cleaning large spaces up to about 400 square feet, Area mode for cleaning smaller rooms up to 270 square feet, Spot mode for stubborn dirt, and Edge mode for borders and corners. In Path mode, the robot follows a methodical cleaning route. When it hits a wall, it turns 90 degrees, moves forward a little, turns another 90 degrees, and so on, forming straight lines like when mowing grass.

Prepare to clean

Setting up the W400 is very simple. You plug the charging dock into the wall, fill the tank with clean water, click it into place, and then place the robot on its charger. You must place the charging base in a flat, safe place, away from water and open electrical outlets.

To prepare to clear your space, you need to move any fragile items or things that could get caught in the robot while the robot is moving. I made sure to remove the dog Bradley’s toys from the floor and pull the chair away from my dining table, just like running a robotic vacuum cleaner. Also, remember to sweep the floor or wipe off debris before running the mop.

Before starting the cleaning job, you must remove the robot from the charger and place it where you want to start mopping. You can start cleaning by pressing the buttons on the top of the W400 or the included remote control. As mentioned, it does not feature app support or voice control.

How it works

In testing, the W400 was cleaned for up to 130 minutes per charge. It’s a solid result, beating the Ecovacs Deebot R95 and iLife V8, both of which clocked 90 minutes but falling short of the Braava Jet m6, Roborock S5, and iRobot Braava 380t, all of which lasted 150 minutes or more. After using up all the juice, the mop takes about 3.5 hours to recharge.

The W400 is pretty quiet and didn’t bother me much. It has the same mass as a microwave oven. You can still chat or watch TV while cleaning.

It wears off and leaves wet stains on floors and tiles more than completely flat surfaces like laminate. On tiles, wet spots are like little puddles and not a uniform coating like when you wipe by hand.

When it comes to a carpet, the W400 usually turns in the other direction. It rolled over a low and slightly wet doormat, but it didn’t roll on my living room rug.

A couple of times during testing, the robot got caught in the transition strip where my tiled kitchen floor meets the wooden floor in my dining room and living room. In some cases, it can pass through the transition strip on its own but leave a puddle after it moves.

I tend to use helicopter robot vacuums and mops and save them from hard work. That’s a personal problem I’m dealing. If I sit back and let the robot do its thing, it can usually detach itself, as is the case with the W400.

However, I spent a considerable amount of time in the mentioned above between my kitchen and dining room on one occasion. I felt that was wasting battery, so I decided to help it. If it needs your help to get out of the jam, the robot will beep, just like when it is stuck in the same position.

After experiencing difficulties during the test run, the W400 said it “completed the cleaning job” after only 22 minutes of doing the job when it was not finished. I repositioned it in an area it hadn’t covered, pressed the start button, and it worked again.

About 75 minutes later, it told me to check the tank for clean water, which turned out to be nothing. When I refilled the clean water tank, I noticed how brown the water in the dirty tank was and was impressed by how much dirt it cleared up that I couldn’t see.

That is the dirty water that came out of the iLife W400 the first time it went through my floors. I was impressed.

The olive-gray tile in my kitchen hides dirt much better than the lighter laminate in my dining room and living room, so I can’t wait to see how the robot works on the next tile. When I tested its work on laminate, I was impressed. After one cleaning, both the laminate and tile look and feel significantly cleaner.

where can you get a iLife W400 online

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Maintenance

Like any cleaning robot, the W400 requires some maintenance. During one cleaning, you will have to refill the clean water tank and empty the dirty water into the tank once or twice. When cleaning is done, you have to manually put the W400 back on the charger, unlike the more expensive Braava Jet m6, which can automatically return to the base station.

Between each use, you must clean the W400, which includes rinsing and emptying the dirty water tank, refilling the clean water tank, and cleaning or replacing the microfiber roller and rubber wiper. Luckily, that’s pretty quick and easy to do and less labor-intensive than mopping your floors manually. If you have a pet, you don’t want to skip these steps. The W400 picked up many of my dog’s hair, although I run my robotic vacuum every day and clean with a Dyson vacuum as needed.

Conclusion

The W400’s two-tank design is very hygienic, ensuring dirty water is sucked back into the robot and only clean water is dumped on your floor. It doesn’t disinfect when cleaning, but it does a good job of removing dirt and stains. It sometimes requires help dismantling, especially when moving from one floor type to another. Still, it has good battery life, allowing it to cover large spaces, and it can often move around furniture with ease, making it a solid choice for a no-frills robot mop that will get the job done.

If you live in a small apartment or need a mop for the kitchen and bathroom, you might want to check out the iRobot Braava Jet 240, which is $50 cheaper and cleans efficiently and quietly. If you want the best mopping robot money can buy, the Braava Jet m6 offers more advanced navigation and sweeping beyond the mop, but it costs twice as much.

Advantages

Remove dirt and remove stains

Good battery

Easy to install and use

quiet

Defect

Sometimes having trouble converting between floor types

Do not automatically dock at the end

Lack of apps and voice control

Use water, not cleaning solution