【【【Foreword: Industry "technology flow" brand, now has new ideas】】
Many years ago, when we first came into contact with products such as "sweeping robots", the first impression we left was not too good. At that time, what we saw was a pink "monster" that randomly rammed around the room, and the lack of navigation ability made the early sweeping robot miss large areas when cleaning, and the weak suction made it impossible to remove dust between the gaps in the floor.
Fortunately, soon after we ushered in a much more reliable product, it was from that time on, "a good sweeping robot must have lidar, must be able to carry out indoor mapping" has also become the bottom line of our three easy life evaluation sweeping robot. At that time, the R&D and manufacturers behind that model also began to receive our attention."
The rare "technology flow" in the life electrical appliance industry, this is our earliest understanding of stone technology. And looking at the products they've launched in recent years, the company does deserve the name. Whether it is popularizing lidar in its sweeping robot product line, or upgrading the iterative obstacle avoidance algorithm year after year, or creating the first multi-cone cyclone dust collection bucket in the industry, the first double-brush double motor scrubbing machine design, and the first ultrasonic lifting and mopping unit, Stone Technology is using its own technical strength to step by step to raise the technical threshold of the entire industry, and constantly bring consumers a more convenient product experience.
In November 2021, Stone Technology and T V Rheinland released the "White Paper on Allergy Care for Household Appliances" at the 4th Ciie Expo, proposing for the first time a standardized test method for household cleaning appliances in the ability to "remove indoor allergens". Just four months later, the new product that fully embodies this design idea came to the evaluation room of our Three Easy Life. That's right, that's what we're going to test today, the Stone Sweeping Robot T8.
【【【Product analysis: Cleaning ability has been greatly upgraded, dust collection design has changed】】】
Friends who are familiar with the products of Stone Technology may know that the T series can be said to be the "backbone" of its sweeping robot product line. This means that as the latest generation of the T series, the T8 naturally inherits most of the well-received family features.
Top lidar
Side ultrasonic radar
Bottom distance sensor
For example, on its fuselage, you can see the familiar Lidar lidar module, side ultrasonic radar, bottom distance sensor, which together with the gyroscope, accelerometer and other up to 14 different sensing devices inside the fuselage, form the T8's environmental perception unit. This means that it first of all in the most basic navigation, obstacle avoidance, path planning related hardware configuration, still reached the current industry high-end sweeping robot level.
Secondly, in terms of basic design and operation logic, T8 also inherits the three physical buttons of family characteristics. Corresponding to the child lock / selection sweep, power button / start sweep, and recharge / dust collection 6 most commonly used functions.
Yes, T8 can also choose the dust charging base that many friends want this time. However, this part of the content we will put later, you may wish to follow us first to see the "internal power" upgrade of T8 itself.
First of all, in the roller brush part at the bottom of the fuselage, the T8 uses a newly designed omnidirectional floating brush module. It "presses" the brush to the ground through a "four-link" elastic suspension structure, so that the effective contact area between the rubber brush and the floor can be greatly improved, and the smaller volume of dust can be better removed when cleaning. At the same time, compared with the traditional brush, the rubber brush itself is less likely to wind the hair, coupled with the tool-free disassembly design, it is also very convenient to clean.
Secondly, compared with the stone's previous sweeping robot products, the T8 has also undergone a significant evolution in the design of air ducts and fans. The new "ultra-short streamlined" air duct air inlet area has increased to 5 times the previous one, coupled with the 4200Pa wind pressure design, which also means that the T8 has made a huge progress in the key "suction" indicator compared to the 2500Pa of the previous generation.
Of course, you may have found that, perhaps in response to the change of the air duct, T8 has integrated the water tank and the dust box. This design makes the volume of the dust box and water tank of the T8 increased to 470ml and 350ml respectively, which also means that the user can clean the dust box once every longer, or let the T8 clean a larger area at one time. Obviously, for friends who are afraid of trouble, this is obviously a very meaningful improvement.
Finally, let's take a look at the T8's newly designed optional dust collection base. Obviously, compared with the dust collection base on the previous generation of products, the shape has undergone earth-shaking changes, and there are no obvious traces of dust collection buckets and cyclone devices in the appearance.
Why is that? Open the top cover of the new dust collection base to find the answer. Because the T8 uses a completely different dust and gas separation design, the dust collection bucket is eliminated and a more mainstream soft dust filter bag is used instead. According to the official information, this design uses two fans for vacuuming, and the dust collection suction force can reach 27,000Pa, which is enough to forcefully "empty" the various dead ends in the dust box.
At the same time, compared with the previous generation of dust buckets, the dust filter bag not only has a larger capacity, enough to hold about two months of dust and garbage, but also has better sealing and antibacterial properties, that is, the design of replacement and abandonment is also more hygienic, eliminating the need to clean the dust bucket after long-term use. For friends who do not have the time and energy to take care of housework, it is undoubtedly a relief.
【【Software experience: familiar control logic, more humanized details】】
Friends who are familiar with stone sweeping robots know that their products have always been compatible with both Mijia and Roborock APP for intelligent control. And since the main features and experiences in these two apps are very different, we used Roborock to demonstrate it to you.
After placing the sweeping robot on the dust collector for charging, it will automatically turn on the machine, and at this time, it can be scanned and added using the APP.
After the addition is complete, the first thing we notice is the "smart hosting" function provided in the APP. To put it simply, it can combine the T8's automatic drawing and automatic room recognition capabilities, and the user writes a fixed cleaning process in advance (such as sweeping the floor for room 1 first, and then mopping the floor for room 2), and then it can start with one click, or even run automatically at regular intervals, further simplifying the operation that users need to participate in.
Secondly, for most of the sweeping robots on the market when they first start, the drawing speed is slow and must be "cleaned while building a map", T8 provides a rapid drawing function. After activation, T8 will directly "walk" around the whole house quickly, and quickly use lidar to complete the whole house map. According to our actual measurements, the T8's drawing speed is about 10 times higher than that of the previous generation, which also means that when it is first enabled, it no longer has to worry about it "scratching the blind".
Thanks to the iteration of Stone Technology's self-developed RR MASON 9.0 algorithm, T8 is now able to display a more intuitive and interesting 3D map in the APP. Users can zoom and rotate it to more intuitively see the effect of the T8 whole house plan.
Not only that, but it is now possible to manually edit the whole house map recognized by T8 in more detail. For example, you can tell the robot which floor material is used in different rooms, or you can identify the location, size, and orientation of the furniture in a map. This information will make the sweeping robot more "smart" until it can intelligently select the best cleaning sequence and cleaning mode.
Of course, in addition to the various improvement points mentioned above, the T8 also retains many of the convenient and interesting features that have been iconic in the past. For example, you can manually specify the "force" of each dust collection, or you can tell the robot whether there are pets in the home, so as to enable a special obstacle avoidance strategy. In addition, the colorful voice packs are actually a lot of fun. After all, a more intimate interactive experience than a monotonous mechanical synthesis will obviously increase the user's motivation to use the robot.
【【Sweeping effect: the large suction force is really reliable, and the mopping effect is satisfactory】】】
Finally, let's talk about the specific performance of the T8 in the actual cleaning. First of all, in terms of the most basic obstacle avoidance and route planning, this is the strength of stone technology's sweeping robot, and T8 will naturally not disappoint.
In fact, the T8 can not only achieve accurate obstacle avoidance this time, but we also noticed that it also strengthens the cleaning effect on the corners of the wall and the edge of the furniture. Especially when sweeping along the wall, the edge brush will not only always be close to the wall, but also the speed is significantly faster than in the open area. After consulting the data, we found that this is a new design called "intelligent dynamic speed regulation", which is intended to avoid the brush from flying garbage when cleaning in a straight line, and at the same time, it can more effectively sweep away the dust in the gaps and corners when cleaning along the wall.
Secondly, we also tested the T8's vacuuming ability in the test. It can be seen that even in the face of dense and high-density simulated dust, the T8 has a good performance, basically after a single pass can suck almost all the dust off the path. Obviously, the upgraded 4200Pa large suction design has played a big role here.
Of course, as we mentioned earlier, the dust base of the T8 has a more "terrible" 27000Pa suction power, so its "power" is naturally more significant. It can be seen that after the end of the automatic dust collection, the dust box has become almost as smooth as new, and the performance is quite impressive.
At this time, open the upper cover of the dust collection seat and gently pump it to extract the dust bag. And here is another noteworthy detail, T8's dust bag self-sealing part uses all-plastic baffles and handles, rather than the kraft paper material commonly used by other brands on the market. And this is not only "stronger", but also effectively avoids the possibility of "tragedy" when holding a dust bag in a wet hand, which is obviously a very careful design.
In addition to sweeping, the T8 has also been enhanced for mopping this time. Its water tank can now support up to 30 levels of water output regulation, and with the mapping and map editing functions, it is possible to specify a different amount of water for each different room in advance, so as to avoid the trouble of mopping too wet.
In terms of actual mopping efficiency, although the T8 adopts a design that relies on self-weight "pressure" on the ground, from the stains on the final mop, the effect is actually much better than we initially expected. We speculate that this may be related to its more sophisticated pump design, or to the surface structure of the mop itself. But in any case, for users, this means that they can save a little more.
【【【Summary: Young "goalkeepers" in the high-end sweeping robot market】】
Overall, as the latest member of the Stone T series, the T8's progress this time is very significant. Greater suction has brought about a direct rise in cleaning capacity, catching up with the level of the top high-priced products on the market, and the new dust collection design will play a new realm of "peace of mind", from then on users do not need to clean the dust box again, nor do they need to brush the dust bucket every once every once in a while, as long as they throw the automatic dust bag once every two months, everything is done.
More importantly, as such a "large suction" and dust collection ability have excellent performance of the sweeping robot products, stone T8 also has a very cost-effective pricing, stone T8 first price of 2299 yuan, stone T8 intelligent dust collection version of the first price of 2999 yuan. Obviously, this product is aimed at young people who want to pursue a higher quality of life, get rid of heavy housework, and enjoy life. Of course, at the same time, in the body of stone T8, we can actually see that stone technology has more pursuits for cutting-edge vacuuming technology in the industry, AI map planning technology, etc. - but this is another topic.