Mi Vacuum Mop P review and tips on how to use a Robot vacuum cleaner:
What you'll like: Convenience during lockdown. No need to spend time on daily cleaning of the house
Will not ask for salary hike every year or salary advance. Also no tantrums and no absentia due to XYZ reason
The Mi one is VFM. At pre-launch it was Rs. 18,000 and now it is Rs. 25,000, which is still the lowest laser guided model with mopping function
Mopping function is good to have as it can do the daily wiping that remove finer dust
Cleans better than maid doing the "walk around the house pretending to sweep away dust"
App has tons of features and even allows multiple maps for multi-floor houses (new update)
Mopping is just a wipe and will not remove any stains
Battery life for large houses will not be sufficient to cover the entire house in a single pass
Dust compartment is rather small. Can easily get filled up if house is larger with more dust
A house with less furniture is best suited. The more furniture, the more time it takes and more spots missed
Needs some effort before cleaning; removing rugs, mats and rearranging some furniture so that it doesn't get stuck
So, everyone is buying a robot vacuum cleaner thinking they can easily replace the maid during the lockdown. I did too and ordered the Mi Vacuum Mop P around 5 months ago. I also have a Dyson V8 Absolute and figured this would be ideal for daily cleaning and the Dyson could be used when I have more time on the weekends. But there are many things that online reviews don't tell you and most of these you find out only after buying one.
Here's a review and tips and tricks to use the Vacuum Mop P. This will apply to most robot vacuum cleaners as well.
Cleaning wise, there is no complaint at all. It does a good job of picking up the dust and the house is as clean as it would be with the maid. The Dyson can do a better job as its suction power is higher, but for daily cleaning, the Mi vacuum cleaner is perfect. It truly is a boon during these lockdown days in which we have discontinued maids, but it is not a replacement (especially when it comes to mopping). I can confidently say vacuuming is better than the maid cleaning.
However, to get the house as clean as possible even with the robot, needs some effort. It is not a hands-off procedure in which you can schedule a daily cleanup and not monitor it.
First time use:
This is where you need a lot of patience and some work needs to be done before hand. When you start the robot for the first time, it will run around the whole house in a very unfriendly manner bumping into anything and everything. It also gets lost a lot and you will wonder why it keeps going back into one room even after cleaning that room. It's super confused the first time and meanders around the house like it's completely lost. It's so slow and confused as well as bumping about that you would think that they put Nikita Mazepin in control of the robot. Before turning it on, this is what you need to do:
1. Close all bathroom doors, else it will enter the bathroom and start vacuuming.
2. Close all balcony / garden doors as well as main house door. If you forget this, you will realise that the robot is either at your neighbour's house or has mowed the lawn as well.
3. Arrange the chairs in such a way that the robot has enough space to clean under them. This is especially true for the dining area. I usually draw the chairs out and arrange them close to each other - place the legs of the chair next to the adjacent chair.
4. If you are using the mop mode, remove all rugs and bathroom mats outside the doors.
5. Move all chappals and shoes out of the cleaning area.
Once you've taken care of the above, the robot will go around your house fully in a very confusing way. Don't interrupt it in the middle. Wait for the machine to finish, no matter how long it takes, and go back to its dock. Once it has gone back to its dock, the app will show you the map of the house. Now this next part is where the optimization happens.
Depending on the brand, the app might be smart enough to make out rooms using the doors. It will recommend what it thinks are your bedrooms. Alternately, you need to use the app to divide sections and draw rooms. This will ensure the robot finishes the room before going to the next. If you don't create these rooms, it might take the corridor or the space outside the room as one zone and be very inefficient in cleaning, going in and out of the room.
There might be some places you don't want the robot to go. In my house I have glass doors opening into the balcony and garden. The robot is able to see through the glass and map the garden as well. It will keep trying to break down the glass door since it can't detect glass. This is where you need to use the virtual wall feature and draw virtual walls where you don't want it to enter.
Finally you should have something that looks like this image below. You can see I have named my robot "Ironman" and he uses his superpowers to keep the house clean 
The area in the red zone is the garden and balcony. I have a virtual wall as well as a restricted area setup to ensure that the vacuum cleaner doesn't disobey the third law of robots and goes against humans.
You can also see the red lines which are the virtual walls.
Here's a quick video of the mop in action. Note that the edges are don in first pass of the room. Once it does the borders/edges of the room it goes in between in an S pattern.
If you are using the mop function you can program S mode or Y mode. Y mode is like a traditional mopping action by hand and takes longer time but works better. S mode is quicker but not as thorough as Y mode.
I have worked out a pattern to use it. I run it dry in vacuum mode only once daily then every alternate day, run it in the Y pattern mop mode.
Once you have taken care of the initial setup, for daily cleaning you still need to do the following that I mentioned:
1. Remove all rugs, carpets and floor mats if you are using mop function. If the mat if made of cloth then you need to remove this as it will get stuck.
2. I still close all bathroom doors and balcony doors, even though I have virtual walls.
3. Rearrange the dining chairs so there is room for the robot to clean below the table and it can slot in below each chair.
Pictures:
Ironman charging its arc reactor ready for the next attack of dirt monsters. After cleaning, it makes its way back to the dock. You need to ensure that there is enough width for it to backup into the dock:
On the top is the laser guided navigation system. When running, you can see this spinning like a radar system on a ship:
Under the hood is the dust compartment. You get 2 of these. One dry and one wet and dry which has a small tank for water:
A look at the dust compartment with the filter. This opens out for emptying the dust and cleaning:
A look at the underbody. It's 2WD with drive sent to the 2 larger wheels which also have a torsion beam suspension. The front wheel is free rolling:
You can remove the roller brush for cleaning:
This cleaning tool has a brush and a small blade to cut the hair that usually gets tangled up on the roller above:
Front parking sensors that make it reverse as soon as it bumps into something. The front bumpers are also spring loaded so that the bump is softened:
With the mop attachment. The mop cloth is attached with Velcro to the plastic tab that clips onto the bottom. You need to remove the cloth, wash it and fix it back:
The wet and dry container with the rubber cap for pouring water. It takes barely half a tea cup of water, maybe lesser:
