Trifo Ollie Robot Vacuum Review

Worth When Reviewed

$349.99

Finest Costs As we speak: Trifo Ollie

$299.99

Trifo is a budget-friendly robotic vacuum model, based in the US. It sells a number of robotic vacuum fashions, of which the Ollie is a mid vary possibility. For those who’re within the US, you should buy Extremely (with a mopping perform) or Pet variations of those fashions. In Europe, you may go for Normal or Pet.

Pet fashions include a pet hair extractor accent, air freshener capsules and a laser pointer that clips on to the robotic’s aspect.

We’re reviewing the Ollie Pet.

Design and look

• Low profile at 8.5cm
• Highly effective 4,000PA suction
• Two-hour battery life

The Ollie Pet has a particular plectrum-shaped gold lid. In actual fact, it’s not a plectrum in any respect, however a Clover or Trifolium leaf, from the plant which impressed the model’s title.

In response to the Trifo web site, Clover is a helpful plant and the Trifo vacuums are helpful robotic vacuum cleaners – okay, the analogy isn’t completely clear to us both, however we appreciated the truth that it isn’t a featureless dinner plate like so a lot of its rivals.

At round 8.5cm from the bottom, the Ollie is extraordinarily low profile, making it a good selection for individuals who have furnishings with a low clearance top. Nonetheless, we’d advise you to measure up before you purchase. If it’s an in depth name, it might be higher to have a robotic vacuum that may’t get below your couch, quite than one which will get caught each time.

Elevate up the Clover-leaf lid and you may entry the robotic’s 600ml bin. It’s not a nasty measurement in any respect, however you’ll nonetheless must empty it someplace between each different day to as soon as per week, relying on how a lot mud and hair it’s picked up.

The Ollie Pet has highly effective 4,000PA suction, which is nice for any robotic vacuum, not to mention one at this worth level. You need to use it on carpets of as much as 2cm depth however keep in mind that it’s going to solely decide up floor particles and hair. You’ll nonetheless must get an peculiar vacuum cleaner out to deep clear your deep pile. On arduous flooring it’s wonderful and can take over all of your common vacuuming.

The Ollie Pet has a most battery lifetime of two hours and it wants as much as three hours to totally cost. This operating time ought to be ample for many properties.

Within the field, together with the robotic vacuum and a handbook, you’ll additionally get a compact black charging dock and a white energy cable – a perplexing alternative as a black cable would have been extra aesthetically pleasing. The dock is sufficiently small to be hidden away behind a settee.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

As that is the Pet mannequin, you’ll additionally get the pet hair extractor, which is a cleansing head that can be utilized instead of the usual rotating brush.

All it is advisable to do is swap the usual one out for the pet-friendly one and the robotic vacuum might be optimised for eradicating pet hair. It permits the Ollie to profit from its suction and implies that there’s no want to chop hair from the comb roll.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

This in itself is a very good cause for pet house owners to purchase the Ollie. But it surely’s not an ideal repair when you have carpets – you’ll nonetheless must vacuum them for a correct clear.

Nevertheless, the nicest factor we will say about the remainder of the pet-friendly add-ons are that they’re pointless. There’s a laser pointer that attaches to the robotic vacuum in your pets to play with, which superficially looks like a enjoyable concept, earlier than revealing itself to be fairly a nasty one.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

First off, do you actually need to prepare your pet to pounce on the robotic vacuum? That’s absolutely going to finish badly for one or the opposite.

And laser pointers can injury your pet’s eyes, so we actually wouldn’t advise clipping one to a robotic vacuum and letting your pet go off and play with it – particularly because the pointer is simple to knock off.

Even stranger is the truth that the laser pointer attachment comes with some powerfully lemon-scented cartridges and a slot to clip one in. For those who needed to perfume your room, it might appear to make extra sense for this to be in or close to the vacuum’s dustbin, or at the very least someplace inside the vacuum’s air move system.

However at the very least this fashion you may relegate the entire attachment to the storage field, the place it may be safely forgotten.

The way it performs

• Noisy (70dB) robotic vacuum
• Mapping refused to finish throughout our testing interval
• Erratic navigation

On paper, the Ollie Pet has all the pieces you’d need from a robotic vacuum at an inexpensive worth level, making it a tempting alternative. However throughout our testing, it was a barely totally different matter.

The primary points materialised throughout set-up. Connecting was a bit extra of a trouble than with rivals, at the very least in our expertise. As you’d anticipate, you obtain the free to make use of Trifo app (obtainable for iOS and Android) and go from there.

The app itself is just designed and straightforward to make use of, with simply the data and features you want. You possibly can schedule cleansing, see how lengthy earlier than it is advisable to exchange the brushes and filter, edit your map and see a show of the cleansing time and battery life.

The Ollie can be Alexa-compatible – so you may choose to begin cleansing with a voice command.

The ultimate step within the set-up entails the robotic utilizing its digicam to learn a QR code from the telephone display screen – which isn’t as simple as utilizing your telephone display screen to seize a QR code on a robotic. It concerned a good bit of crawling round on the ground and a few makes an attempt earlier than the robotic was in a position to learn it.

As soon as it was able to go, one factor turned abundantly clear. It is a noisy robotic. Trifo says it’s as loud as 70dB when it’s at work, which is similar quantity as a washer.

However the noise doesn’t cease when it’s docked and charging. Even then it makes a high-pitched whine that’s irritatingly audible in a quiet room.

As quickly because it was charged, it was able to go. Throughout its first clear, it’ll additionally make a map, which you’ll then be capable of save and edit, including no-go zones.

Sadly, after sending it out to wash twice, we couldn’t save the map. And the map itself had gone badly unsuitable, with overlapping partitions. We contacted Trifo, who requested us to delete the map and begin once more.

However even after an entire reset and the creation of an correct map, the enhancing perform nonetheless didn’t work.

Foundry

We additionally discovered that the Lidar navigation was idiosyncratic at greatest. Generally it labored completely, and the robotic stopped a centimetre in need of a chunk of furnishings, turned and vacuumed neatly alongside it. At different occasions, it appeared to navigate by headbutting into numerous items of furnishings and ricocheting off.

On one event, it drove right into a wall in a piece of the room it had already mapped, paused, backed up and did it once more. We filmed it repeatedly smacking into the wall for round a minute earlier than we needed to intervene. By the way, we despatched a 30-second video clip of this to Trifo once we contacted them in regards to the mapping points, however they didn’t deal with this facet of the issue.

As an extra characteristic, the Trifo Ollie has an onboard digicam, so you may view the reside feed to test in in your pets and your house if you’re away. By this level, you received’t be stunned to listen to that we had issues with this perform as properly, though when the digicam labored, the picture high quality was good.

Worth and availability

The Trifo Ollie is obtainable within the US from Amazon and Walmart, and in Europe direct from Trifo. It’s competitively priced for its cleansing energy and have set – particularly in case you purchase it when it’s on sale, which appears to happen usually.

Verdict

In some respects, the Trifo Ollie is superb worth. In actual fact, when you have pets and also you pay lower than it’s MSRP/ RRP, we think about you’d be greater than happy with its cleansing efficiency. It does a superb job on pet hair, in addition to common mud and filth. The truth that you received’t must take away hair from its curler makes it even higher for pet house owners.

However throughout our take a look at, we discovered the navigation to be fairly actually hit or miss and the remainder of the good options erratic, making it arduous to advocate.

For those who’d prefer to see extra robotic vacuum choices, take a look at our round-up of one of the best robotic vacuums we’ve examined.