Roidmi X300 review: It’s good, but not £600 good

Roidmi is a Xiaomi tech brand that specialises in vacuums – both the robot and human-driven kinds. We’ve tested a number of its cordless stick vacuums over the years and have always found them to be handy, reliable cleaners that are well-priced for their feature set.

In this review, we’re taking a look at Roidmi’s latest flagship cordless, the X300, to see if it’s worth its luxury price point.

Design and build

• Four cleaning heads overall (two are motorised)
• Removable battery
• Magnetic charging dock

I enjoy testing vacuum cleaners (and perhaps that’s something for me to question in my spare time). I was particularly looking forward to trying out the X300. My previous experience of Roidmi vacuums was that they pack in a lot for their price point, so I was interested to see what this flagship cleaner could do.

The X300 is a gunmetal and black cordless vacuum, with a reasonably sized 0.65 litre clear dustbin. Its design is simple, streamlined – and extremely familiar, if you’ve ever seen a cordless vacuum before.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not well made. It’s just that the RRP raised expectations sky high.

However, the X300 comes with a set of extremely well-designed cleaning attachments – they’re some of the best we’ve seen.

In the box, you’ll get the main vacuum cleaner body, shiny metal wand and the main electric floor cleaning head.

There are three additional cleaning tools you can swap in: a motorised mattress brush that’s also very effective on upholstery; a wide nozzle brush, which is good for shelves and skirting boards; and a crevice tool that lights up at the end in the manner of a Harry Potter wand.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

See also  Tapo C325WB review

This is probably my favourite accessory overall. Having a way to illuminate narrow channels like gaps behind pieces of furniture – and light up dustballs and pet hair so they’re easy to spot – makes those irritating little cleaning jobs much easier and more satisfying.

However, there are some other add-ons you might expect at this price point, like an extendable wand and a jointed tool that lets you vacuum under a sofa without stooping (you’ll find one of the latter in the new Shark Stratos). But sadly, they’re not here.

The wand and accessories click together pleasingly. Initially, some of the connections are a bit stiff but they become easier to attach and pull apart as you use the vacuum.

The X300 also comes with a magnetic charging wall dock (although you can just plug the vacuum straight in if you don’t want to use it) and an easy-to-remove battery.

But, you’ll need to pay extra for a second battery if you want to be able to swap one out and double the running time.

At the time of writing, spare batteries weren’t among the accessories on sale direct from Roidmi. In fact, we could only find a spare battery for the X300 on sale from AliExpress, priced at around $158/ £129.

Still, the battery life is excellent. According to Roidmi, you’ll get 90 minutes of vacuuming time in eco mode, 40 in standard and 20 in boost mode. This easily beats the Dyson V15 Detect, which has a maximum running time of 60 minutes.

As we tended to cycle through the modes, depending on the type of cleaning we were doing, we can’t confirm this exactly, and the display can be misleading – but we’ll come back to this.

Performance

• Three power levels
• Unreliable battery life display
• 90 mins max runtime

There are two buttons to control the X300 – and thankfully, no trigger. They’re comfortably located right where your thumb sits, above the vacuum’s grip. One is the On/Off button, the other cycles through the three power modes: eco, standard and boost.

The power button is a bit tricky. Press it too lightly or for too long, and it’s very possible that nothing will happen. Even when you get it right, it still won’t switch on instantly. First, the Roidmi logo will scroll across the mini display – and then finally, it starts up.

Once it’s on, however, vacuuming is a breeze. The X300 is light at 2.7kg – the Dyson V15 Detect weighs 3.08kg.

For hard flooring, using eco mode will be more than enough, but you’ll need to step up to standard mode, or even boost, for carpets and rugs. There’s one issue here though: as you vacuum, the main cleaning head can easily tip back, losing contact with the floor. You’ll need to push it back down with your foot, which is annoying.

The main cleaning head has two automatic features: surface detection and LED illumination, both of which are responsive to the environment and definitely improve the cleaning experience. It has good pick-up of hair and dust and doesn’t scatter larger debris.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

The suction feels pretty powerful, driven by the X300’s redesigned brushless motor. Roidmi says that it’s 33% stronger than its previous generation vacuum, the X30 Pro.

Roidmi gives the suction as 207W, which doesn’t really tell us much at all, unless it’s referring to AW (air watts). Previous Roidmi vacuums have measured their suction in AW and if this is the case, 207AW would be competitive: Dyson’s V15 Detect has 240AW suction. We’ve asked for clarification here and will update the review if we find out more.

It also has a colour OLED display. As you vacuum, you’ll see the amount of time left until the battery needs to be recharged.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

The problem is that this can be a bit misleading. If you use a Dyson, you’ll see that when you swap between modes, the timer switches to show the maximum running time left in each one.

That’s not the case here. The time is displayed as if you were using it in eco mode all the time – the difference is that when you switch to boost mode, the display ticks down through the minutes as though they were seconds. This makes the timer feature all but useless, except in eco mode.

The display also shows the approximate number of calories you’ve expended while vacuuming. This is worse than pointless: it just highlights how much annoying housework you can do while only burning a single calorie.

Smart features

Tech brands have a tendency to needlessly attach smart features to products to justify a price point and grab a little data while they’re at it. The X300 is definitely guilty of this.

Yes, you will be able to see the remaining life in your filters if you use the Roidmi app, but the rest of the features are less than useful: adjusting the OLED screen brightness, and seeing the cumulative cleaning time and cleaning area. If you buy the X300, we would suggest you don’t bother with the smart features.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

Price and availability

The X300 is not yet available in the US.

In the UK, pricing and availability on Roidmi’s vacuums can be inconsistent. For example, when we reviewed the X30 Pro, the X300’s predecessor, it was priced at around £320. You can still buy it at a similar price from Amazon, but if you purchase direct from Roidmi it’ll cost you £549.

Similarly, the X300 is available from Roidmi for £599, while its current Amazon price is £269.95, although we’d expect that to jump around a bit. If you can get it for around this price, then it’s a good buy for its power and feature set.

Verdict

The Roidmi X300 is a good vacuum cleaner with some excellent features, including its long battery life, headlights and illuminated crevice tool. However, it has some flaws, including its misleading timer display.

The overall problem is its extravagant RRP and the expectations it raises. The X300 lacks the polish, power and superior design you’d expect from a cordless at this price point, competing with the likes of the Miele Triflex, Samsung Bespoke Jet or the Dyson V15 Detect.

Have a look at our round-up of the best vacuum cleaners we’ve tested to find out our recommendations and see the pros and cons of popular models.

Specs

• Weight: 2.7kg
• Operating volume: 73dB
• Max run time: 90 minutes
• Power settings: 3
• Wattage: 585W