Xiaomi

The electronics company behind the robots

Xiaomi is a Chinese electronics company for which robot vacuums are one line among phones, smart home devices and even cars. Wikipedia describes it as a multinational technology company headquartered in Beijing, founded on 6 April 2010 by Lei Jun together with six associates, among them co-founder Lin Bin. According to Wikipedia it is best known for its consumer electronics, software and electric vehicles, and it was the third-largest smartphone seller in the world as of 2025. For 2024 Wikipedia lists revenue of CN¥365.906 billion, operating income of CN¥24.503 billion, net income of CN¥23.578 billion and 43,688 full-time employees. Its phone brands include Redmi and POCO.

The robot vacuums sit inside that wider smart home business. Wikipedia notes that in May 2018 Xiaomi began selling smart home products in the United States through Amazon. The review site Vacuum Wars calls Xiaomi "one of Asia's most prominent tech brands, known globally for its wide range of smart home devices and consumer electronics," and adds that its robot vacuums remain less familiar to many Western audiences. TechRadar puts it more directly: the brand is less present in the USA than it is in Europe and the UK.

The range, through three reviews

Three independent reviews give a clear picture of how the range steps up, from a budget self-cleaning robot to an upper mid-range model with an AI camera.

Xiaomi X20+. TechRadar reviewed it as a budget vacuum and mop with a full self-cleaning dock and reported a UK price of £299 direct from Xiaomi, with Amazon Netherlands at €433 and Amazon Belgium at €399 at the time of the review. It navigates with LiDAR, which TechRadar says gives it a linear, predictable pattern, and uses an obstacle avoidance system called S-Cross that spotted larger items such as toys and shoes. Two cloth mops at the rear spin at 180rpm and lift 7mm when the robot detects carpet. The dock empties the robot's bin into a 2.5-liter dust bag that, according to Xiaomi as quoted by TechRadar, lasts up to 75 days, then washes the mops and dries them with hot air. The station also has a self-cleaning option that floods its base so the owner can brush it out, after which it pumps the dirty water into its tank. TechRadar lists four suction levels (silent, standard, strong and turbo) and three water levels, and measured about 66dB from ten feet away.

Xiaomi X20 Max. Vacuum Wars, which bought its own unit, places the X20 Max at the upper end of the middle of the market. Its official suction rating is 8,000 Pa, with a dual spinning-pad mop that lifts 10 mm, one pad that extends toward walls and corners, and a dock that washes the pads with hot water and dries them with hot air. It navigates with 3D structured light and LDS lidar, supports multi-level maps and resumes a clean after recharging. The battery is 5,200 mAh, which Xiaomi says runs up to 120 minutes, and the robot is 97 mm tall.

Xiaomi Robot Vacuum 5 Pro. Notebookcheck calls it a solid upper mid-range vacuum and mop robot and reports a recommended retail price of around £800 announced by Xiaomi, with the robot sold directly by Xiaomi and through Amazon.co.uk among others. It lists 20,000 Pa of suction, an AI triple camera made up of an RGB camera, infrared cameras and a 3D infrared dot projector designed to detect more than 200 objects, plus dToF laser radar and LED night lights for dark rooms. The LDS tower retracts to bring the height to 8.8 cm. The mops extend for edges and lift 15 mm on carpet, the brushes carry an anti-tangle cutting mechanism, and the all-in-one station empties the robot into a 2.5 l dust bag, washes the mops at 80°C and dries them, with 4 l fresh and dirty water tanks. There is no tank for cleaning agent, so it mops with water only.

The steps between them are about sensing and dock capacity. The X20+ brings a self-emptying, mop-washing dock at a budget price; the X20 Max pairs an 8,000 Pa rating with an extending mop pad and structured-light obstacle avoidance; the 5 Pro moves to an AI camera, a retracting laser tower and a 20,000 Pa rating.

The app

Xiaomi's robots run through its smart home app, which TechRadar calls the Mi Home app and Notebookcheck the Xiaomi Home app, the central hub for the company's connected devices. TechRadar describes a live map showing the robot's position and cleaned areas, zones to focus on or avoid, room dividers, no-go zones and virtual walls, day-by-day schedules, suction and mode changes, and a virtual joystick for steering the robot by hand. Notebookcheck adds that the 5 Pro splits the map into rooms automatically, lets owners place furniture and floor types on the map, set how many square meters to clean before the mops are washed, adjust obstacle detection sensitivity in stages, and drive the robot remotely using its cameras behind a security PIN. Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa work for voice control; Notebookcheck notes that Matter is not supported.

What the reviewers found

The testing is mixed, and the reviews are worth reading side by side. On carpet the X20 Max was a standout for Vacuum Wars, removing 91% of embedded sand against a 75.4% average, its 4th highest score ever, and finishing its test floor plan in 36 minutes. Its weak spot was mopping: it left 3.5 grams of water behind, scored 2.44 against a 2.73 average, and 60% of test hairs wrapped around its brush. Vacuum Wars also reported owner complaints on Reddit and Amazon of water pump failures after weeks or months, with dirty water pooling in the dock and repeated "high water level" errors, while noting the sample was small (15 Amazon reviews at the time) and that it had found no official statement from Xiaomi on a design change or extended warranty.

Notebookcheck found the 5 Pro excellent on hard floors, with mops that covered slightly more than 240 square meters on a full tank, but said carpets needed the maximum power setting and multiple passes. It refused to go under a bed with 12 cm of clearance, missed small Lego bricks and a cable, and its battery lasted around 90 minutes in the test with about four hours to recharge. Noise was 38 to 44 dB(A) while cleaning, up to 61 dB(A) when the station emptied the bin. Notebookcheck also found spare parts hard to identify in the Xiaomi Store and not linked from the app.

TechRadar's two weeks with the X20+ were far smoother: strong vacuuming on hard floors, clean handling of thin rug edges, and only a shoelace caught in the side brush. It did warn that valances on sofas and beds may be read as barriers, that the mops sometimes stayed down on very thin rugs, and that the cleaning base may be too big for some homes.

Who it suits

Xiaomi suits buyers who want a self-cleaning dock without paying flagship prices, and the X20+ is the clearest example of that. Households already using Xiaomi's app for other smart home devices get one more device in the same place. The X20 Max, on Vacuum Wars' results, fits carpet-heavy homes more than mop-heavy ones, and the 5 Pro fits homes with mostly hard floors and clutter where a camera helps. Buyers in the US should expect a thinner selection than in Europe and the UK, and anyone who relies on easy spare parts should check the Xiaomi Store before buying.