After first launching in China last year, DJI has finally brought their Romo series of robot vacuum cleaners to Australia, launching in-store from today.
Priced at $2,299, the DJI Romo P is the flagship of the DJI ROMO series, a premium robot vacuum cleaner which blends DJI design with all the features you can want from a robot vacuum.
The ROMO P includes flagship level LiDAR sensing with dual fisheye vision sensors allowing it to recognise and avoid objects like cables and more. It also includes their drone mapping expertise to build the most reliable and efficient path through your home.
The vacuum features up to 25,000pa of suction power, letting it remove debris, dust and even hair more easily – with extendablemop and brush arms to reach hard to get to places, and dual anti-tangle rollers ready to clean larger pieces, while remaining tangle free from any hair on the floor.
The unit comes with a gorgeous looking base station with a transparent shell giving you an inside look at what’s happening. The base station includes self-cleaning for the robot, with high pressure jets cleaning the mop pads as well as storing dirt in the dust bin
The whole unit is controlled by the DJI Home app, letting you set custom cleaning modes including setting a pet area to give a little more attention to when cleaning.
I’ve been using the DJI Romo P for a couple of weeks now and here’s how it went.
From the moment you first see it, the DJI Romo P looks different. The transparent design looks futuristic with the dust bag and everything else on display – a real throwback to the 90s tech aesthetic, and frankly, I’m here for it.
The clear design on the base station shows off the dust bag and cleaning solution ports, and while the Base Station includes a UV light to control bacteria in the dust bag – I’ve never seen it even with the clear panel in front.
The generously sized clean and dirty water tanks face the rear – so you don’t have to worry about seeing that mess through the window either. They also have large, nicely molded plastic handles that are chunky and easy to hold with a very solid feel.
The top of the robot is also transparent and you can see the dust bag though none of the other inner workings of the robot like the water tank, but even still it’s quite a cool design. There’s no Sensor tower on top of the DJI Romo P so it can slip easily under furniture with gaps just 10cm tall, making it easy for it to get under lounges and most cabinets.
Instead the unit has a ‘Hybrid Vision System’, packing dual fisheye vision sensors and LiDAR in, which enables the robot to recognise and avoid objects as small as charging cables or playing cards.
How the clear acrylic goes over time is a big question, as is the stark white base of the unit as Robot Vacuum base station tends to end up with a few dirty water stains over time – so how the DJI handles over the long term is also up in the air.
The DJI Romo P comes with almost everything you need to get started.
The base station comes with a 2.4L vacuum bag pre-installed, and there’s a 260ml dust bin in the robot which you can remove and empty manually, or let it just return to the base to empty when it’s full.
About the only thing you need to do is attach the base plate to the front, top up the clean water tank and insert the Cleaning Solution and Floor Deoderiser into the slots and you’re ready to go.
The robot already has the removable brushes and mop pads pre-installed on the base, both of which can be easily popped off – with the mop pads velcroed to their plates so you can wash them independently of the cleaning process.
The last step of the physical setup is to put the robot inside its base station and plug the power cable into the rear of the base station.
Once powered up, it’s a matter of firing up the app and following the bouncing ball.
While you will get everything you need to get going – there are the ongoing consumables to consider, as well as some accessories you can try.
On the consumables front, you can grab a DJI ROMO Accessory Kit for 9 AUD which includes all the spare brushes, rollers, filters, dust bags and mop brushes you’ll need for a while.
You can also buy all these separately:
The only things other than these will be the ongoing cost of the Cleaning Solution which comes in a 400ml bottle for . The DJI ROMO P can also use the Floor Deodoriser which will set you back AUD for the 200ml bottle.
One accessory that may be a necessity if you have higher thresholds in your home is the DJI ROMO Auxiliary Ramp available for AUD.
The robot can easily manage thresholds up to 4cm on its own – and it handles the inch high thresholds to my bathroom/toilet, laundry and ensuite with ease. If the robot experiences any issues however, then this ramp can help.
The ramp sticks to the threshold with an adhesive backing and has a modular ‘snap-on’ design that lets you add more height in 10cm increments to match the length of the threshold.
The DJI Home app is available for Android and iOS – though with a caveat for Android users that the app is not available through Google Play, instead you’ll need to side-load it after downloading the APK directly from the DJI servers.
A note on side-loading, while it’s generally safe from the manufacturer themselves – side-loading an APK can be an unfriendly process for users. There’s multiple permissions you’ll have to allow – essentially leading to it feeling quite technical for users wanting to just set up a vacuum cleaner.
Once the app is installed, the DJI Romo P is incredibly easy to add – in part thanks to the dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz Wifi included on the device which finds and connects to your Wifi network without fuss. DJI has also been setting up devices in apps for years, and that history shows here with a very easy guided installation process to add your new robot vacuum.
The app will get you to run through a Firmware update for the robot – if there’s one available, which there was for me. Then prompt you to start the home mapping process, giving tips like ensuring there’s adequate light, no clutter to avoid and doors to all rooms are open.
The mapping process identifies all the areas in your home, including the type of flooring – which it nailed with complete accuracy. The DJI Romo P was also able to accurately discard the outdoor areas that sometimes remain in other apps when mapping.
The DJI Home app is as complete feature-wise as you’d want for a robot vacuum. You can modify the map created, renaming rooms, splitting or joining areas, specifying a ‘Pet Area’ which will give more focused cleaning options and even blocking off areas – I do this with my office – and specify carpets.
Naming areas like the Toilet and Bathroom, or specifying pet areas gets special cleaning, or the option to select Mop Kitchen and Toilet alone and more.
I particularly like their ‘Base Station’ section which allows you to quickly empty the robot dust bag, clean the mop pads or run a drying session while the robot is docked. The robot does all this automatically, however you will occasionally need to do this and having it easy to find is a big plus.
About the only thing missing is Voice Activation which it kept telling me wasn’t available in my language (English) and to stay tuned – so it may be a wait before you can add this to your Google Home or Amazon Alexa smart home
The DJI Romo P comes with a 5,000mAh battery which DJI says will offer over 3 hours of use. The base station charges the robot when not in use, with DJI saying a 2.5 hour charging time.
The advertised 2.5 hour charging time is hard to gauge as the robot will head back to the base station as soon as it feels it’s necessary to charge.
The unit came fully charged, so it was simply a matter of plugging it in. That full battery enabled the robot to do the initial mapping, then clean the entirety of my 125m2 house (according to the map) on the standard mop/vacuum mode on single charge. Deep Cleaning of the entire house was done on a single charge – but put a serious dent in the battery.
The DJI Romo P does an excellent job at mapping and navigation around the house, and on the cleaning side the mopping and vacuuming are up there with other flagship level robot vacuums.
The app lets you set the cleaning level from Quiet mode through to Max mode, and how well it cleans depends on how much of the potential 25,000pa of sucking power you choose to bring to bear on your floors – and on the mopping front you can likewise set the water flow from a quick low-level wipe to a full high level mop.
The robot emptying the on-board dust bag is usually quite a loud process for robot vacuums, however the ROMO P uses a 3-stage sound suppression system in the base station which filters up to 80% of the noise – so a combination of quiet mode on the vacuum and this makes it pretty easy on the ears overall.
Our longer pile carpet can be a challenge for some robot vacuum cleaners, but the results are excellent, with the clean, ordered lines showing where the robot had been easy to follow and test the cleanliness.
Even the hard floors, a mix of tile and composite material, looked good. Even a young puppy and the sports mad teenage son was unable to leave a mess that Roman (as named again by said son) couldn’t clean up.
Overall, the cleanliness of the final clean was excellent, with the wife just as impressed with the cleaning.
On the navigation front, the ROMO P is kind of brilliant. It fit under my lounges with ease, and navigated up and down thresholds with ease. It also had excellent obstacle avoidance, identifying and skirting around toys left on the floor, errant socks and even puppy mess.
As their debut into the robot vacuum space, DJI is onto a winner here.
The navigation and mapping technology from their drones have translated to home mapping and route traversal through the home extremely well, offering efficient paths and cleaning on carpets and hard floors.
The transparent look mixed with DJI design looks stunning, and the build quality seems to carry the same attention to detail as the rest of the DJI line – which is to say excellent.
DJI’s software design is also on show here, with an easy setup process that leads into an easy to use app with all the options you want easy to find.
The premium price tag will make some baulk, however if you really want to get the best clean this is definitely an option to consider.
Pre-orders for the DJI ROMO series are live today from store.dji.com/au and authorised retail partners.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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