If you love having sparkling clean floors and hate mopping, robot mops are pretty elite—and robot vacuum and mop combos? Even better. Keep reading to find out what unique feature makes the Redroad G20 robot vacuum and mop so special.
What’s in the box of the Redroad G20?
The Redroad G20 ships in one box, but comes in three separate parts.
First, there’s the robot device itself. It comes packaged carefully with a cleaning brush and four removable, washable mopping pads. It has a battery capacity of 5400mAh and recharges fully in 5-6 hours.
Then, there’s the vacuum and mop’s dock. This Wi-Fi-enabled dock is used for charging, cleaning, wetting the mop heads, and emptying the G20’s internal dustbin. It comes with a removable 5L clean water tank, a removable 3.8L dirty water tank, and a 2.8L docking station dust bag. The station also has a compartment for extra dust bags, which comes stuffed full with four additional dust bags. The most I’ve ever seen in any other robot vacuum is two, so five in total is fantastic. Most brands recommend changing out these bags on a monthly basis, but I find their lifespan has more to do with your home and lifestyle than time—I use my own robot vacuum almost exclusively and go through only 2-3 dust bags a year. Larger homes and homes with pets will go through dust bags at a faster rate, so five bags will last you anywhere from 5 months to a couple years.
Finally, the G20’s drip tray is included in the box, as is a quick start guide. The drip tray needs to be installed into the docking station before use.
The Redroad G20 is a hefty, self-emptying, self-cleaning device. The base weighs a whopping 10.5kg when empty. It’s about 45cm by 42cm by 45cm large; essentially just under half a cubic metre.
Redroad G20 robot vacuum and mop features
The Redroad G20 is loaded with features to make cleaning as easy and effective as possible. I really can’t emphasize enough how happy I am with how far self-cleaning robot cleaners have come. This vacuum has a suction power of 4000Pa, plus its docking station is self-washing, heated self-drying, self-refilling, and self-emptying. It has you covered both for your vacuum (a self-emptying dustbag) and your mop (which just needs a water refill and change-out in between cleans).
On Redroad’s official website the G20 is listed as using the LDS laser navigation system with dual-line laser obstacle avoidance. This is what the brand has historically used in other products. LiDAR or LDS (Light Detection and Ranging) is common in the cleaning industry and is used to quickly and effectively map geography and, in my opinion, it’s currently the gold standard for effectively and privately mapping your home.
HD smart touch screen
What I think sets this product apart is its touch screen. This is a bright, beautiful 10.1-inch touch screen on the lid of the device itself. It allows you to control every aspect of the mop that you would be able to control in the Redroad R Home app, with the exception of smart scheduling. It’s a hair slow to respond, but is otherwise very customizable, easy to use, and family-friendly. (It comes with a child lock right on the home screen.)
When not in use, the Redroad G20’s smart screen goes completely dark to save power and keep your home nice and peaceful.
The touch screen on the Redroad G20 is something that I hope we see more often in smart products going forward. I love my smart home devices, but they have their limitations—especially in multi-generational families. Maybe you want to be able to schedule your weekly mopping session from your phone, but let’s say you live with an older parent who just can’t keep on top of apps and smartphones. They can interact with the device’s huge, easy-to-use screen instead and clean up crumbs and spills just as easily.
My experience with the Redroad G20
I have also reviewed the Redroad G10, so I can tell you right away that the G20 is a big step up. It still has the same issue of leaving pet hair behind as the previous model, but it otherwise significantly improves the device’s cleaning ability and self-cleaning features. I love the switch from a flat mopping pad to two textured spinners, which lift more dirt from my floors and deliver, in my opinion, a more effective clean.
My hangup over the Redroad G20 robot vacuum is that its hardware is excellent but its software did not, in my experience, work smoothly. When it cleans an area, it does so very proficiently; however, its mapping and connectivity capabilities aren’t as advanced as its cleaning capacity, so it may clean the that same area a half dozen times and gets lots frequently.
Mapping difficulties
When I first quick mapped my apartment, the G20 created a map that was just a giant studio. (I had to re-plot my map.) Another time, I closed my bedroom door during a bedroom-only cleaning; afterward, the G20 introduced a wall block to its map where the door was and I couldn’t find a way to remove it. It wouldn’t go through the “wall” for my next five cleaning sessions (even though the door was now open) and I had to wait for the issue to spontaneously resolve.
Cleaning vs. re-cleaning
Another issue I faced which highlights how the G20’s software and hardware don’t fully line up is excessive re-cleaning. I set this robot to mop my entire apartment, which is just shy of 700 square feet. Almost my entire living room is covered in a giant rug, which does not need to be mopped. Based on other robot cleaners I’ve used, I estimated that this job would take about 20 minutes, as the G20 had already mapped my apartment.
After 25 minutes, my entire apartment had been cleaned. The Redroad G20 did an excellent job of it. My floors were thoroughly washed and felt great under my feet. There were no dusty or sticky spots anywhere (aside from some leftover pet hair) and my entire floor looked smooth and shiny. The edges of my rugs were damp, but the rugs themselves had not been vacuumed or mopped—they had just gotten wet as the robot mop came down over their edges.
But, for some reason, the robot just… kept cleaning after that. I watched it go over one particular section of my home (about a square metre in size) for an hour. It would slowly scoot through the section without lowering its mopping pads at all, then return to its dock to wash its unused mopping pads. Once they were freshened up, it would go right back to that same spot and repeat the process. I could clearly see in the app that the whole apartment had been mopped, but the mop just kept searching for more to clean.
All in all, my whole-home cleaning job was finished in 25 minutes, but the Redroad G20 continued to loop back through my apartment without cleaning any new spots for over two hours. I had to end the cleaning session manually. At that point, the app reported a 90 minute cleaning session but the vacuum had been running for about 150 minutes. The vacuum/mop had used up 65% of its battery.
Why is re-cleaning an issue?
On one hand, I feel like I shouldn’t complain. After all, the product did a great job, and what’s the harm of a little second-checking? But for a home device to run for five times longer than necessary is excessive. It puts extra strain on the product and means that you can’t rely on the product’s scheduling capabilities. For many of us, scheduling is the biggest benefit of a smart device, so it’s not ideal to lose such a major feature!
In the long term, this kind of software issue means that your product is going to wear out much more quickly than it should. For a big-ticket item like a vacuum, that’s a major negative.
How can you work around these issues?
What’s frustrating about a software issue is that it’s so fixable. There’s nothing wrong with the vacuum cleaner hardware itself, nor its base station. Both of these physical components work well and, in fact, I would say they exceed my expectations at every corner.
However, as a user, you can’t fix your own smart devices. (Or, at least, I can’t. Maybe there’s a super tech-savvy reader out there who can hack and code their own robot vacuum cleaner, though!) That means waiting for the brand to push a new app update, software update, or firmware update that corrects the issues you’re having.
There’s a new Redroad firmware update out right now for the R Home app, but here’s the thing: It’s not mounted into the app correctly. So, while I can see it tempting me every time I open the app, I can’t upgrade my device. I’m writing this article in January of 2024, so if you’re interested in this robot cleaner, I recommend just keeping an eye on the R Home app in Google Play or the App Store. Once they patch this issue, I suspect the Redroad G20 will perform significantly better overnight. It has the framework and hardware to be truly excellent; but, of course, my current experiences can’t guarantee any improvements.
In conclusion
The Redroad G20 is a slick, multi-functional robot vacuum and mop that does a great job of getting my floors sparkling clean. It’s beautifully manufactured and designed, and I love that it’s self-cleaning, self-wetting, and self-drying—a major treat if you love having clean floors but don’t like to mop! The G20’s touch screen base is handy and unique, and hopefully, Redroad’s next R Home app update will improve the smart software performance.
The Redroad G20 robot vacuum and mop is available now at Best Buy.
