The robot has not become physically larger, but heavier. Compared to Dreame’s latest top model, the L40 Ultra, it has gained 530 grams.

The increased weight can be heard when the X50, like a tank, rises over a doorstep and thumps down on the floor on the other side of the step. Conversely – and now we come to the cat – the robot moves around on a flat floor with an elegance I have rarely seen. The Dreame X50 Ultra Complete glides, stops or reverses just a few millimetres close to and around obstacles.

Furthermore, the X50 can climb doorsteps up to six centimetres high with its special built-in lifting legs and can be voice-controlled without the need for third parties such as Google or Apple.

This makes it all the more disappointing that Dreame’s previously praised features, including the flexible side brush and mop, do not perform better. Most annoying is that precise cleaning of carpets fails due to either a poor sensor or inaccurate mapping.

App and setup

The Dreamehome app is downloaded (as always) by scanning the QR code under the robot’s cover. Then simply connect the Dreame X50 to your wireless network.

Click on the user icon (a smiley face) to access language and voice control. Dreame X50 supports many languages in the app. Voice control of Dreame’s own built-in control function requires a switch to English (or one of the other major languages).

Each task must begin with ‘OK Dreame’ + the relevant command. For example, cleaning the kitchen. All spoken tasks were performed without complaint. The Dreame X50 is an obedient robot.

Behind the base cover is a pre-installed vacuum cleaner bag. It is the same size as the one in the L40 Ultra, but can now hold 100 days’ worth of dirt. In the L40 Ultra, it was 75 days. The X50 Ultra compresses the collected dirt in the robot’s dust container (which, incidentally, is now 100 ml larger) before it is sucked up and into the base’s bag.

Extra bags are included in the cardboard box in which the robot is delivered. The price for several new bags is around £24 for a pack of six.

Next to the bag is the container for the cleaning solution. If a bottle is included in your box (we received a test sample with a one-litre bottle), fill the container with the solution. From here, it is automatically dispensed into the clean water bucket at the top of the base.

If you run out of cleaning solution, you can buy a litre of Dreame cleaning solution for around £24 plus shipping.

The base’s two buckets (or tanks) hold the same amount of water as the L40 Ultra, among others. Their shape does not differ from Dreame’s previous designs. The dark bucket is for dirty water, the light one for clean water. The buckets are sturdy and well-designed. For example, they fit into each other so that you cannot place them incorrectly. Why change a winning concept?

ProLeap System and Retractable Legs

The X50 Ultra Complete marks the debut of Dreame’s ProLeap System. The system works like its competitor Roborock’s AdaptLift, but the X50 can overcome even higher obstacles.

My home has seven wooden doorsteps. Some steps are wide, others are narrow. Some have a sloping incline. Others consist of several pieces of wood at different heights. In short, a nightmare for a robot vacuum cleaner.

Until now, only Roborock Qrevo Curv, thanks to AdaptLift, has been able to get around without giving up. With Roborock, the function adjusts the robot’s three wheels on the underside so that they raise the chassis over obstacles such as doorsteps.

With the X50 Ultra Complete, the lift literally gets an extra boost. The sensor detects and reads obstacles, such as doorsteps, and raises itself on its wheels. In this way, the robot can overcome doorsteps of up to 4.42 centimetres.

If the doorstep is higher or has multiple levels, the X50 activates its retractable legs. Two small legs on wheels extend from the underside of the robot and lift/push the chassis further forward and upward. In practice, the X50 resembles an insect standing on its hind legs.

For the most part, this provides a smooth and elegant way of negotiating doorsteps. However, if there is a large difference in height (up to one centimetre) or a difference in slope from one side of the doorstep to the other, the X50 is unable to read the height difference correctly.

The robot rises completely on its ‘hind legs’ from one side and thumps loudly down on the other side of the doorstep. In the long run, this landing cannot be healthy for the robot’s chassis and internal components.

I only experienced the somewhat hard landing in connection with doorsteps that were steep on one side and somewhat lower on the other. More uniform doorsteps were negotiated easily and without hard bangs against the floor.

Measurement and mapping

The mapping is effective. My two living rooms (approximately 60 m2) were mapped in less than two minutes. The special lifting system makes the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete virtually autonomous. The robot needs no help to get around. Well, sort of.

Until now, I had refrained from mapping my secondary bathroom to spare the test robots. The height difference between the wooden floor in my hallway and the terrazzo floor in the bathroom is over 12 centimetres. Quite a deep chasm for a robot vacuum cleaner.

This time, I left the bathroom door open. The X50’s 3D camera detected the extra room. Near the threshold to the bathroom, I paused the robot and moved it onto the terrazzo floor.

The X50 cheerfully continued both cleaning and mapping. I used the same method with the Dreame L40 Ultra. When the X50 returned to its base, the bathroom was automatically added to the app’s updated map.

The bathroom was only partially mapped, and all new attempts ended with the robot losing its bearings in the middle of the terrazzo floor. In the app, I set my home to be multi-storey and placed the robot back in the bathroom. The room was now mapped as a secondary floor. The X50 Ultra Complete can automatically switch between maps of multiple floors.

It wasn’t that easy all the way. I have realised that my home contains a Bermuda Triangle for robot vacuum cleaners.

Between my dining room and my office is a small hallway. The room and its carpet have confused several robot vacuum cleaners I have tested. This applies to the Roborock Qrevo Curv and now also the Dreame X50.

A rug should not be too close to the doorstep, as this prevents the robot vacuum cleaner’s sensor from correctly measuring the height difference between the step and the flat floor. With the Roborock Curv, AdaptLift was not triggered. Instead, the robot ploughed straight ahead and got tangled up in the rug’s fringes.

To get into my office (and out again), a robot vacuum cleaner has to turn 45 degrees in the small hallway. For the X50, the rug and the angle were such an obstacle that the robot loudly declared that access to the office was ‘inaccessible’.

I removed the rug and tried again. The X50 navigated the two steps, mapped and cleaned my office, and then returned to its base without any detours. I put the rug back in place and sent the X50 off again. The robot wasn’t very keen on it, but it did activate its ProLeap System. A lot of fuss for very little, but it worked.

The X50 is the first robot vacuum cleaner that has managed to map my entire home (except for two large, enclosed storage rooms).

Zone cleaning and flexible brush

The sky’s the limit. The Dreame X50 has difficulty reading surfaces. Among other things, tiles are not registered as tiles, but as a carpet. Carpets are also not placed correctly on the app’s map.

Unlike the L40 Ultra, the X50 cleans carpets as an automatically specified zone. Since the mapping is not accurate, the X50 also cleans in areas outside and around the carpet, which is a waste of time and energy.

Today’s robots in a certain price range would be ashamed if they were not equipped with a flexible mop and a similarly flexible brush. The Dreame X50 has both.

Among others, the Dreame L40 has used its flexible parts to clean into corners, along edges and under low-hanging cabinets. With the X50, success is limited. It works, but it is not nearly as consistent and thorough.

After the annual visit from the chimney sweep, the tiles in front of the fireplace were ready for the X50. Despite two attempts, the tiles remained dusty along the edge of the fireplace. The tiles in my main bathroom also failed the ‘paper test’. A few strokes of toilet paper across the tiles showed that the X50 was far from having picked up all the dirt.

The robot vacuum cleaner, affectionately named Bob during the test, sits in the centre of Dreame’s range and is one of the more affordable fully automatic models. With its large base station that handles both vacuuming and water filling, it offers high functionality – but it also takes up a lot of space. If the floor cleaning function is not needed, a smaller model may be worth considering.

The package includes the robot itself, a base station, two water tanks of 4.5 litres each, two mop heads, a brush and a bottle of floor soap – everything you need to get started.

Bob the robot

The Dreame L10s Ultra Gen 2 is superficially similar to its predecessor and the slightly more expensive Dreame L40 Ultra, which we also tested recently. Both models, including their base stations, are made of shiny white plastic. The base station has a flap at the top that is easy to close and hides the two water containers for clean and dirty water. On the front is a silver-coloured door that covers the vacuum bag where the dirt goes and a removable container for soap.

The robot is equipped with a LIDAR sensor at the top, which, together with an RGB camera on the front, scans and maps the surroundings. Next to the sensor are three buttons, including one to call the robot back to the base station. Under a lid on top of the robot is the internal dust container, which automatically empties into the base station after cleaning.

The manufacturer promises that the device can handle ‘up to 75 days of cleaning without manual intervention’. The base station takes care of everything from vacuuming to water filling and adjusts the mixture of water and detergent itself. The mop heads are washed and dried with hot air in just two hours, leaving them almost completely dry – and with a noise level below 42 dB(A).

The biggest upgrade in the Gen 2 model is the suction power, which has doubled from 5,300 Pa to an impressive 10,000 Pa. At the same time, navigation has become more precise and the mop function has been improved. The base station has also been updated to both empty and wash the mops automatically – making it even easier to maintain.

A city apartment

Dreame L10s Ultra Gen 2 was installed in a 130 m² apartment with no significant doorsteps, except for the back stairs and bathrooms. The apartment houses two children aged 3 and 9, so there was plenty of dirt and challenges for the robot – which it handled with flying colours. Setup was easy and seamless, and the app proved intuitive, although there is room for improvement. After a quick scan of the apartment, the rooms needed to be named and divided to ensure correct mapping. The children’s rooms were initially locked out due to clutter, but during a later cleaning, a room was automatically added when the door was open – a handy feature. If you have multiple floors, extra maps can be added even if the robot has to be manually moved between them.

Daily vacuuming at 10.00am

Dreame L10s Ultra Gen 2 was programmed for daily vacuuming at 10.00am and consistently delivered impressive results. The app made it easy to prioritise the order of rooms, giving extra attention to the busiest areas.

In the test apartment, daily cleaning took approximately 115 minutes. Dreame claims the robot can run for 200 minutes on the default setting. Because we turned the power up to max, the battery was drained somewhat faster. If it runs out of power, it automatically returns to the base station to recharge. Once recharged, the work continues and the robot returns to the base station, where the automatic emptying of the dirt container starts.

Both dirt emptying and the maximum suction function are a bit noisy. The former is over quickly, while the latter of course goes on for longer. The most powerful suction setting also tends to whip up the dust a bit when it’s running around. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter too much as the robot thoroughly captures it later on its route.

The father in particular was sceptical about the robot vacuum cleaner, but was quickly converted. Today, he is fully convinced that the robot does a fantastic job. With its 10,000 Pa suction power, the Dreame L10s Ultra Gen 2 effectively collects daily dust and dirt. Even if the rotating brush doesn’t reach into the sharpest corners, it leaves your home almost sparkling clean. For example, under the dining table, where the many legs of the chairs require precision. Here, the robot impresses with its ability to manoeuvre elegantly while picking up even the smallest crumbs.

The test apartment had no doorsteps, which made the robot extra efficient. One day, however, the door to the back stairs was accidentally left ajar, prompting Bob to explore new territories. No doormats, doorsteps or stair treads posed a problem. The robot scanned the area, picked up some dirt and then returned safely to the base station.

He can also wash floors

As mentioned, the Dreame L10S Ultra Gen 2’s base station includes two water tanks and a soap dispenser, which is a handy feature as many competitors require customers to buy their own soap. This can be problematic depending on the floor type. Personally, I have plank floors washed with white soap, while the test apartment has oiled herringbone parquet. Therefore, in this test we did not use the supplied soap, but instead filled the base station with the soap normally used for apartment floors. As long as the soap doesn’t foam, it’s not a problem and shouldn’t damage the internal parts – although some manufacturers may claim the opposite.

The result of the floor cleaning is just as impressive as the vacuuming. The two mop heads effectively loosen dried-on food residue, especially from younger children, and leave the floors sparkling clean. However, it’s worth noting that the robot is best at taking care of everyday dirt. If your floors haven’t been washed or vacuumed for months, you should give them a thorough cleaning first so you start from a clean base. The mop heads are automatically wiped off in the base station, but this process takes two to three hours and causes a buzzing sound. Therefore, it’s a good idea to place the base station in a room you’re not in all the time.

Among other things, doorsteps, floor separations and correct mapping can cause problems. We have previously tested the top model Dreame X40 Ultra, where doorsteps caused problems. Other robots such as Roborock Qrevo S and Narwal Freo Z Ultra lose contact with the base station or give up halfway and drive ‘home’ to the base.

The Dreame L40 Ultra is equipped with SideReach Extendable Side Brush and MopExtend RoboSwing Technology. Together, these are called Dual Flex Arm Cleaning Technology.

The names refer to a mop and a small arm with a brush that swings out as needed.

This combination is also found in Roborock’s top model, the S8 MaxV Ultra. Which, incidentally, won our duel against the Dreame X40 Ultra in May 2024.

The smart features are not just sales talk, because you get what Dreame promises. In this case, intelligent cleaning in places that would otherwise be difficult to access for a round robot that is 10.3 cm high.

In addition, the Dreame L40 Ultra is able to pause a task. At first glance, this may not sound revolutionary, but in practice it solves one of the biggest challenges of robot cleaning: Nordic homes with doorsteps.

App and setup

The Dreamehome app is the key to cleaning paradise. Scan the QR code under the robot’s cover to download it and connect the Dreame L40 Ultra to your wireless network.

Click on the user icon (a smiley face) to set the language, share the L40 Ultra with others, and enable voice control, among other things. Dreamehome supports all Nordic languages.

The L40 Ultra automatically dispenses cleaning fluid. Use the included 200 ml bottle to fill the container on the left side of the base station behind the front cover. When the bottle is empty, you can buy a litre of Dreame cleaning fluid for approximately £19.99 plus shipping.

Behind the cover is a pre-installed 3.2-litre vacuum cleaner bag. An extra one is included in the box. According to Dreame, bags should only be changed after 75 days of using the L40 Ultra. A pack of six new vacuum cleaner bags costs €32.

Before cleaning, the mops are automatically moistened with water taken from the stand’s 4.5-litre white container. The app has a scale of 32 steps, from slightly damp to wet. If the mops are not needed for cleaning, the robot clicks them off and leaves them at the bottom of the stand.

When the device is connected to the network and online, click on the “Go to device” link on the front page to start the first mapping. Select the icon with a map and a pen to send the Dreame L40 Ultra on its first task.

First mapping

The Dreame L40 Ultra is just as fast as the top-of-the-range Dreame X40 Ultra. My 60 square metre living rooms were mapped in a matter of minutes. The X40 took a few strange detours during its work, while the L40 performs the task without any detours.

The first mapping also encountered the big, recurring problem for robot vacuum cleaners: door thresholds. The Dreame L10 and L20 hated my 2-3 cm high door thresholds, but obeyed and got over them after a few attempts. The Dreame X40 Ultra refused.

Initially, the robot mapped my two living rooms (without doorsteps between them). Then I opened the doors to the adjacent rooms separated from the living rooms by doorsteps and sent the robot off again. To save time, I asked the robot to clean a smaller area near the adjacent rooms.

One of them was my hallway. From a distance, part of the hallway area was captured and partially drawn on the map. On the app’s map, I clicked on the partially recorded hallway and asked the robot to clean there. The L40 Ultra drove towards the hallway. Near the doorstep, I briefly pressed the “pause” button (the on/off icon) located at the front of the robot’s round cover.

I lifted the robot over the doorstep and placed it on the hallway floor. When I pressed the button again, the L40 Ultra not only continued to complete the mapping of the hallway, but also continued the cleaning I had requested.

The method mapped the entrance hall, kitchen and bedroom with adjoining bathroom. Access to the rooms requires climbing 2-3 centimetre high doorsteps. The robot can clear obstacles of a maximum of 2.2 centimetres, so the L40 managed to pass the step between the bedroom and bathroom on its own.

Lifting and moving a vacuum cleaner robot around is not optimal, but it solves the problem of high doorsteps. In this way, the L40 Ultra went where virtually all other robotic vacuum cleaners have given up.

Cleaning in zones and on time

In the app, you can organise cleaning by room, the entire home or by zones. Dreame states that the L40 Ultra cleans in a pattern with straight, orderly rows. I experienced this with the Dreame L10 Ultra and Dreame L20 Ultra. Both tested in 2023.

The pattern that the L40 shows in real-time on the app’s map is sometimes messy and goes across the robot’s “direction of travel”. At first glance, it didn’t result in poorer cleaning when I checked for myself. For example, when mopping. My wooden floors were cleaned just fine anyway.

If your home has multiple floors, the L40 Ultra can create and store up to four different maps. Here you have to lift and move with the robot. L40 Ultra cannot climb stairs. Choose between the maps depending on which floor you need to clean.

Dreame L40 Ultra is one of the few robots I’ve tested that mapped my home correctly. Walls, rooms and carpets were displayed as they really are on the app’s 2D and 3D maps.

You can schedule and queue tasks. For example, cleaning the dining room and kitchen after dinner. However, I tried to get the L40 Ultra to “serialise” cleaning my carpets, but the app ended up deleting the carpets from the map. Instead, I plotted the carpets as zones, which is imprecise and annoying.

Smart cleaning and extra features

The great new feature of the Dreame L40 Ultra is the combination of a flexible mop and brush arm. One mop automatically swings out and cleans where the round shape of the robot can make it difficult for non-flexible mops to reach. For example, close to a moulding along the floor. The function worked flawlessly along my mouldings.

The brush arm can move up and down by one centimetre and has a reach of four centimetres. I tested the function in the bedroom. The sliding doors on my wardrobe don’t go all the way to the floor, but have a shallow gap between the floor and the bottom edge of the doors. It can be difficult to vacuum here, even with a conventional vacuum cleaner.

The robot recognised the small gap. The brush arm shot out on its own and swept all the way to the base of the wardrobe under the sliding doors.

The robot’s built-in LED light switches on as needed. For example, when cleaning under the bed. The AI camera recognises objects and obstacles with varying degrees of success. So a corner of a cupboard is not a wire, even though L40 claims it is.

Conversely, the L40 Ultra doesn’t knock into things detected by the sensors on the side. Although L40 would love to pass between the legs of a bench (to save a detour), there was no room, so the robot gave up and drove around it.

The L40 Ultra kept repeating this manoeuvre, even though the robot should know better next time. Conversely, it memorises carpets and avoids them on its way to other areas. Travelling on smooth floors is faster than passing over carpets and carpet edges.

Carpets are detected by the sensor on the underside of the robot. If the surface is smooth, you indicate in the app whether it is made of tiles or wood, for example. However, you need a steady finger to select from the map’s many small menus and symbols.

You can use the L40 Ultra’s camera and microphone to follow the movements of any pets and talk to them (which I don’t see much potential for). The camera also photographs obstacles that you approve or ignore in the app.

If you have pets (and lots of pet hair), the Dreame L40 Ultra comes with an additional roller brush, the Anti-Tangle TriCut Brush. The roller’s rubber bristles scrape away dirt, while built-in blades cut the hairs so they’re sucked up when the robot’s dust chamber is next emptied.

Emptying from the robot to the base station dust bag is automatic unless you choose to do it via the app. If the base’s sump gets dirty, the app has instructions on how to clean it with the included hand brush. The base station can release clean, warm water into the tub and then suck it up to the dirty water container.

The selection of coffee grinders, on the other hand, is huge – too huge, in my opinion – and it can be difficult to make the right choice. Avoid the usual pitfalls, such as choosing a grinder with rotating blades instead of grinding discs. Make sure there are enough grind settings and that the grinder is capable of grinding very fine espresso powder. The ground coffee powder must not stick to the bowl due to static electricity, and no powder residue must remain on the journey through the grinder (retention). The noise level may be worth considering, as well as the volume capacity and how easy the grinder is to maintain. In short, you should avoid the cheapest coffee grinders, but it does not have to be very expensive.

Look for the ECBC label

If you don’t want to do the detective work yourself, you can look for the ECBC (European Coffee Brewing Centre) quality label. The work has been done for you, and grinders that have scored satisfactorily on all criteria are allowed to display the label. So far, very few grinders on the market have been approved, and one of them is Grindersupreme. With a price tag of around €180, it is in the premium class, but still much cheaper than most other ECBC-certified grinders.

Stylish and compact

Grindersupreme from ELNOR/Sabor is a compact and elegant coffee grinder. With a height of only 29 cm and a width of 12 cm, it takes up less space on the kitchen counter than most competitors. The build quality seems solid with a combination of brushed metal and black plastic.

The bean container on top can hold approx. 210 grams of coffee beans and is transparent, so you can easily see how much is left. Below is a clear graduation disc with 34 settings. It feels reassuringly solid when you turn it, without being hard.

The front features a simple control panel with a selection of cup numbers (1-10), a 25-second timer and a separate start/stop button. The included collection container for the ground coffee has a capacity of 100 grams.

Please note that the number of cups is based on an average strength coffee with a capacity of approx. 150 ml. If you have a larger cup or prefer stronger coffee, you may need to adjust the ‘number of cups’ setting.

Perfectly ground powder

For the test, I use my trusty Moccamaster coffee machine, which is designed to make regular coffee. However, I prefer to use espresso beans, as I love the taste of a strong, full-bodied lungo. I highly recommend Lavazza Espresso Gran Crema beans.

I set the grinder to the finest setting, and the powder has almost the consistency of wheat flour. It’s absolutely perfect. The grinder repeats the success every time, and there is nothing left in the grinder once it has been poured into the coffee filter. This is because the container is antistatic. By weighing the contents both before and after grinding, I find that there is no waste. Retention is minimised so that no old coffee dust is left anywhere in the system. This prevents old coffee dust from contaminating the next grind and ensures that you get the amount of coffee you expect.

Against a tough competitor

I used the more expensive Wilfa Uniform Black for comparison. We named it the best coffee product of the year in 2024/25 because it is simply fantastic. Uniform Black also has ECBC approval. It has more settings (41 vs. 34), and the party trick is that the lid also functions as a scale. It communicates with an app via Bluetooth, which is neat.

Grindersupreme is easier to set and is more reliable at the finest settings. Wilfa set to 1 simply cannot push the beans through the grinder. It took me a while to figure it out. The manual says to temporarily set it to a coarser setting, e.g. 20, and then down to the finest again. It still doesn’t work. But when I turn it up to fineness level 3, the Wilfa works flawlessly.

The Grindersupreme is more compact and lighter (2.5 kg compared to Wilfa’s 4.3 kg), so it takes up less space on the kitchen counter. However, the biggest selling point is that the Grindersupreme costs much less and delivers at least as good results – often better – on the parameters that matter most.

Things to consider

Unlike some more expensive competitors, Grindersupreme does not have a built-in scale, so you will need to use your own kitchen scale if you want to be precise. But as I said to a colleague during the test, a standard kitchen scale costs less than €40. How much more would you be willing to pay to have it integrated into the grinder?

The time setting of 25 seconds is fixed, but you can of course stop the machine manually whenever you want. A slightly more advanced timer with multiple presets would have been handy, but again – it’s hard to complain when the price is so advantageous. More buttons would also spoil the minimalist, elegant look.

Solid quality in the cup

The most important question remains: How does the coffee taste?

I grind for both filter brewing and press coffee. I didn’t have access to a manual espresso machine during the test period, so I didn’t try that. But the result was still impressively consistent. The grinder produces even particles that provide good extraction regardless of the brewing method. The difference from my old cheap grinder was striking – the sweetness of the filter coffee came through clearly, while the espresso had a rich and frothy finish.

To be honest, I got equally good results with the Wilfa grinder. Which is also ECBC certified. This indicates that you can trust this stamp. I myself have a much cheaper Wilfa grinder, where the powder sticks to the bowl and more powder remains in the grinder and contaminates the next brew. So the grinder matters, that’s for sure.

Grindersupreme delivers a quality that is definitely worth the price. No waste on the way through the machine, and the antistatic coating means that you use all the ground coffee. And it tastes great.

At the end of March this year, they launched Doorbell, which can be used as is, but when combined with other Ajax products, it gains more features and a wider range of applications. For example, when connected to an Ajax NVR (or alternatively, by paying a monthly fee for Ajax cloud storage), you can save video clips and use it as a surveillance camera with AI to recognise people, pets and vehicles.

The Ajax Doorbell’s primary communication channel is Wi-Fi, with a stated range of up to 500 metres without obstacles and up to 30 metres through concrete walls. If the Doorbell is part of an Ajax system, it remains connected to the Ajax hub even if the Wi-Fi connection is interrupted, thanks to the backup communication channels – the Jeweller and Wings radio protocols. Both are proprietary protocols designed to detect interference and jamming, with built-in frequency hopping for enhanced protection. So there is both a belt and suspenders approach – if the doorbell is part of a larger system, that is…

The manufacturer recommends professional installation of all system units by Ajax’s official partners and installers.

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The installation of the Ajax doorbell went smoothly, even though it was a tight fit to find space for the cables. (Photo: Ola Larsson)

Installation

The Ajax Doorbell comes with various screws, mounting adapters for angling left/right 25 degrees and up/down 10 degrees, Bellkit (for connecting to an existing doorbell) and a sticker with the text This space is under surveillance.

The product was easy to install, although it was a bit tight to find space for the cables (I used the existing power supply for my Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell, and since it was a temporary rather than a permanent installation, I used a connector that I had to cut in half to make room for it). After downloading the Ajax Security System app and creating an account, the two-part password (six digits each) arrived via SMS and email, and then it was just a matter of adding the doorbell to the app by scanning the QR code on the back of the doorbell (so I had to release it, scan, then reattach the wires and screw it back on), and everything worked perfectly right away.

After a few minutes, a message appeared in the app saying that there was an update for the device’s firmware, and five minutes later, a message appeared saying that the firmware had been updated. Exactly how you want these things to be done.

A smart detail is the built-in 600 mAh battery, which provides up to two hours of operation in the event of a power failure and has another function. If the doorbell’s temperature drops below the optimal level, automatic battery heating is activated to maintain stable operation of the device.

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The Ajax Security System programme for PC has the same features as the mobile app. (Photo: Ola Larsson)

Operation

When someone rings the doorbell, a signal sounds, and you receive a notification and can see who is at the door and talk to the visitor – it works as usual. My impression is that Ajax Doorbell responds very quickly; it takes less than half a second from when the doorbell rings to when the notification arrives on your mobile phone. And when you click on the notification, the app also opens very quickly (it takes less than a second).

The menu in the app seems logical, and in Remote Control there is a mode called Panic, which causes an alarm to sound on your mobile phone, but not on the doorbell.

I noticed quite quickly that the clock was two hours wrong (i.e. a different time zone), and I tried to change it in the app, but couldn’t find anywhere to do so. If you click on the settings icon when you are in Ajax Doorbell, you get the message:

‘The system is activated. Cannot access settings when space is enabled’. Strange and annoying.

I also downloaded the Ajax software to my PC and installed it in the hope that there might be more settings there so I could adjust the clock. But it was not possible to do more in that program than you can do in the app on your mobile phone, so I had to live with the clock being two hours wrong. It is likely that you will be able to adjust the clock if you have several Ajax products installed (by professional installers) in a seamless system.

On the plus side, the Ajax Doorbell is available in four colours: white (RAL 9003), grey (RAL 7004), graphite (RAL 7024) and black (RAL 9005).

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Ajax Doorbell took this photo at 11:37 p.m. – not 9:37 p.m., as one might think...

The WiZ HDMI Sync Box is mood lighting for your TV viewing. The small box takes colours and light from the image on the screen and transforms it into mood lighting in the living room. It is a good example of how smart technology can enhance our experience of films, sports and games. The WiZ box is also a “poor man’s version” of Philips Hue’s more or less equivalent, but also several times more expensive, HDMI Sync Box. This, in turn, is inspired by the Ambilight technology from Philips TVs, where LEDs on the back of the television illuminate the wall behind it.

As WiZ is part of Signify, which also owns Philips Hue, we can guess that they have not had to pay a fortune for the development or licensing of the technology for interpreting the HDMI signal.

How much does it cost?

The WiZ HDMI Sync Box can be used with most smart lighting products from WiZ, and it can also be used on its own, as the LED strip needed for backlighting the TV is included in the box. WiZ especially recommends combining the box with their Gradient Light Bars or Gradient Floor Light.

• The HDMI sync box with LED strip for 55″ to 65″ TVs costs €90.
• The same, but with an LED strip for 75″ to 85″ TVs, costs €110.
• Gradient Light Bars cost €60 for a set.
• And Gradient Floor Lights cost €90 each.
• In this review we look at the box and the Gradient Light Bars.

Only what is necessary

The WiZ version of the HDMI box is somewhat smaller than the Philips Hue version. However, the small black plastic box has all the minimum requirements, namely an HDMI input (the Philips Hue HDMI Sync Box has four) and an output to transmit the signal. On the front, there is toggle switch to turn it on and off.

The WiZ HDMI Sync Box supports HDMI 2.0 with signals up to 4K at 60 Hz with HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. It reads the video signal directly from HDMI and converts it into a dynamic lighting experience. So far, so good, but here we come to a built-in limitation in the system. Both with WiZ and Philips Hue. It only works on external video sources. The signal must pass through the box to be interpreted as mood lighting.

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If you can't afford a giant TV, the sync box is the best way to create atmosphere throughout your living room. (Photo: WiZ)

Don’t do the following…

However, in some cases, it is possible to cheat and still pull a video signal from the television to power the box. This can be done via the ARC/eARC HDMI output, which is designed to transfer sound to a home cinema receiver or soundbar. The disadvantage, however, is that the sound is not transmitted through the WiZ box, so the external sound system becomes silent. In that case, you have to choose between good sound or beautiful light. Signify’s press department emphasises that the box is not intended to be used in this way; it is only intended for use with external video sources.

Installation and setup, WiZ HDMI Sync Box

The box comes with a three-part RGBIC LED strip. There are two versions, one for TVs from 55″ to 65″ and one for TVs from 75″ to 85″. Four preset lighting effects – Cinematic, Vibrant, Relaxation and Rhythmic – give the user a varied selection of moods. From dramatic colour changes to more subdued transitions, depending on the mood and experience you want. For films, Cinematic provides the most impressive effect.

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All your WiZ light sources can become part of the entertainment. (Photo: WiZ)

The WiZ HDMI Sync Box can also entertain when the TV is turned off. Using the built-in microphone, it can pick up music and synchronise the lights accordingly. If you enjoy your music through music videos, you can choose what gives you the most interesting experience.

The LED strip is attached to the back of the TV. The strip is divided into three pieces and is self-adhesive on the back, making it relatively easy to attach it along the two sides and the top. A bag of self-adhesive extra fasteners is also included to make it even more securely attached. It is optional whether you start from the left or the right, as you can choose the direction of the strip in the app.

WiZ Gradient Light Bars

If you want to extend the atmosphere even further into your living room than the LEDs on the back of the screen can manage, the HDMI box can be synchronised with other WiZ light sources. We were supplied with a set of WiZ Gradient Light Bars, which, true to their name, are elongated light sources that can shine in several colours at the same time. Like the LED strip, the bars are designed to shine backwards towards the wall.

The light bars are made of plastic and are surprisingly light – weighing just 550 grams in total. The two bars are attached to a single cable, as is the tiny remote control. It all seems inexpensive, and it is; in fact, two light bars with multicoloured light cost less than one coloured smart bulb from sister company Philips Hue.

The light bars have a stated lifespan of 15,000 hours – or 15 years at just under three hours of daily use. WiZ does not provide any information about brightness or construction, but the bars consist of four light zones that can each light up in their own colour.

Feet and mounting kits are included so that the bars can be placed on a TV stand or on the back of the television.

Tricky setup

The setup is as easy as other smart lights from WiZ. Simply connect the bars and let the app find them. They will then appear as a light source that can be assigned to a room.

However, getting them to work with the HDMI Sync box was not quite as easy. Initially, with the HDMI box already installed, the soundbars could not access the app’s virtual entertainment room at all.

The problem turned out to be related to the user interface in the WiZ app. Once the TV room has been created, changes to it, including adding new light sources and their placement in the room, must be managed in a completely different place in the app, namely under ‘Library’ instead of under ‘Rooms.’

During the process, we spoke with an expert at Signify, who promised that the cumbersome access to TV room management would be resolved in an upcoming update to the app…

Light everywhere

Setting up mood lighting in your home cinema is considerably more difficult than fitting a smart bulb into a lamp socket. Or, for that matter, using “ordinary” smart LED strips. But it’s definitely worth the effort!

You can easily play games or watch films without an extra light show, but the experience is enhanced when the living room joins in the fun.

The LED strip on the WiZ HDMI Sync Box provides an experience that is just as impressive as the ‘real’ Ambilight from Philips TVs. And the light bars enhance the experience even more.

The ability to let the sound control the light is also excellent. However, since a large proportion of smart light sources from all manufacturers already have the same function, it is not nearly as groundbreaking.

In addition to following the action on the TV screen, the light sources in the TV room can still be used in line with other light sources from WiZ. Among other things, you can choose from a large number of scenes with mood lighting – animated or static.

Installation and mapping

Automatic mapping works best on straightforward lawns. On the test lawn, with its various nooks and crannies and an open path to the driveway, it took so many attempts that I eventually gave up and drew the track manually. It takes a little time, but provides good control. During the test, I noticed that the Dreame is easier to manoeuvre than a Husqvarna, which had a remote control. It turns more intuitively, more like a radio-controlled car, whereas the Husqvarna turns more unpredictably. The modular design means that all parts are replaceable, resulting in a longer service life and a more sustainable life cycle. The Dual Map feature allows you to store two separate garden maps – ideal for properties with separate lawn areas or for those who have both a home and a holiday home.

Dreame Roboticmower A2 in operation

The cutting pattern can be freely selected between straight, angled and checkerboard patterns, as well as a rotating pattern to avoid stripes. However, you cannot choose a random pattern, which is supposedly best for biodiversity and the overall health of the lawn. The robot works systematically in straight lines back and forth, giving a very neat appearance. After two passes back and forth over the area, I noticed almost no missed grass edges, and it finishes elegantly with an edge trim. However, it does not go all the way to lawn edges that are adjacent to a slab or house wall, in which case you will need to use a manual edge trimmer afterwards. This is the same for all robotic lawnmowers. The cutting height can be adjusted electronically between 30-70 mm via the app.

With a noise level of only 55 dB, the Dreame A2 is one of the quietest robot lawn mowers on the market. The lawn mower can handle slopes of up to 50 per cent thanks to powerful wheel motors. But even though it handled slight slopes well, it still had problems on my own lawn with a slope of no more than 45 degrees. The app is functional and provides a good overview, but it has one limitation: you have to pause the mower or put it back in the charging station before you can change the settings.

With the new Wilfa Volo Automatic, they are now venturing into the market for fully automatic espresso machines.

The Volo is incredibly simple and priced at the low end of the market. It has no app control or touch screen. There are five built-in options: espresso, lungo, latte macchiato, cappuccino and hot water, each with its own dedicated button. The only modifiable variable is the amount of coffee/milk and the grinder setting.

The bean hopper holds a modest 150 grams and the milk container holds 2.4 dl. On the other hand, the machine is both quiet and small. The discreet rectangle can fit into any decor and won’t overshadow the morning radio.

Volo takes 30 seconds to heat up and requires absolutely no input from the user. Switch on the machine. Press the coffee you want. You’re done. If there is no water in the container or the grounds tray is full, a discreet light will illuminate.

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(Photo: Lasse Torp Hansen)

Strong coffee

There aren’t many settings to get confused about with the Volo. The grinder can (and should) be set all the way down for the most intense espresso. The standard size of an espresso is incredibly small, so it’s recommended to set it a little higher so the coffee doesn’t become unnecessarily acidic. 25-30 grams of liquid out was enough for both coffees that the machine was tested with this time.

The Coop365 Organic Dark Roast supermarket coffee doesn’t have much good to say about it, but Volo still got a surprisingly pleasant espresso out of it. Not undrinkably bitter, plenty of texture and a strong coffee flavour that works best in a cappuccino. Not bad for a supermarket coffee. The more expensive Ricco’s White Magic from Costa Rica had the same chocolatey texture and a more complex nutty sweetness, with far less bitterness and acidity. A coffee that in Volo can easily be enjoyed as pure espresso.

The espresso quality is not quite up to the Delonghi Dinamica, but is a solid step above the Philips 5500.

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Both with and without milk, Volo delivered good results (Photo: Lasse Torp Hansen)

Simple milk system

There are only two recipes with milk and the milk texture itself cannot be adjusted. Volo delivers the best milk in the cappuccino recipe, which produces a mousse-like foam on top and a pleasant and well-textured milk at the bottom. The Volo (like almost all fully automatic machines) can’t quite handle the texture required for a latte. If you choose the latte macchiato option, you’ll still get pleasantly creamy milk, but a little less interesting and airy than in cappuccino. On the other hand, both recipes deliver the (for some) desired “layering” that looks great on Instagram.

Although Volo can make two espressos at once, it can only muster a single milk recipe at a time. A cappuccino takes 1 minute and 30 seconds.

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Both with and without milk, Volo delivered good results (Photo: Lasse Torp Hansen)

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On the left the included doorbell and on the right the Google Nest Mini (which you need to buy as an accessory if you want a doorbell for the Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell) (Photo: Ola Larsson)

Installation

SwannBuddy4K comes with most of the accessories you need, including a doorbell and a large number of security stickers – but no angled installation adapter if you want to mount the doorbell in a different way than straight out from the wall. As the camera is very wide angled, it is unlikely to be needed, and if it is, it is possible to buy as an accessory.

Installation of the product went very smoothly – the doorbell speaks English and instructs the user along the way. Pairing the bell, which has six ringing tones, including Für Elise and a barking dog, was quick. The QR code in the user guide led to the ‘Swann Security’ app and it was downloaded. After about five minutes, when it still looked like the app was downloading, yours truly cancelled the process and searched for the app again. It was installed and it was just a matter of launching it?

One bug in the protocol is that when adding a device, you can choose between “front door”, “back door”, ‘garage’ and other presets, and if you choose “front door” (as I did), it doesn’t work. However, if you manually enter ‘front door’, it works fine. Nordic special letters like Æ, Ø and Å don’t seem to be smart choices…

One firmware update was installed automatically, but when I scrolled through the menus, there was another one that I had to install manually.

In use

SwannBuddy4K does its job as a smart doorbell impeccably, and it does more than that. If you don’t want to talk to the person outside the door, you can click on a series of pre-recorded messages that the in-built voice assistant then says to the visitor – for example “I can’t come to the door right now” or “The police are on their way. Please leave immediately”!

The app is very easy to understand and it’s easy to scroll between recorded and live activities – and to adjust different modes to set how the camera should react in “home”, “night” and “away”. In ‘night’ and ‘away’ you can activate SwannShield, an AI-powered voice assistant that handles over 100 languages, eight different dialects and three different voice tones.

You can easily set the detection zone to reduce the number of false ‘alarms’ and protect the privacy of passers-by. If/when this is set, unlike other models on the market, the red areas are the active areas.

As for the rechargeable battery, it went from 100 to 50 per cent in a week, which is not particularly impressive – as it would mean having to recharge every two weeks. At the same time, it should be mentioned that the test week probably involved more active use (with many energy-intensive calls and AI calls) than a ‘normal’ week, so you probably only need to charge the battery once a month or every two months for normal use. And if you want to avoid charging, you can install the doorbell to a traditional doorbell power supply (12-24V AC).

As a side note, the Swannbuddy4K delivers its notifications to the mobile phone at lightning speed – a few seconds faster than yours truly’s Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell, which in turn starts its video recordings about four seconds earlier compared to when the Swannbuddy4K starts recording.

AI – voice assistant/doorman

Swann describes SwannShield as a security-based voice assistant that can interact with people in a natural way, receive deliveries, see and note unknown visitors and greet friends and family – all while giving the impression that there is a real person on site with an active presence.

Currently SwannShield is ‘Beta’ and it works – although it may not always interact in the way that would be desirable…

Some examples:

I pressed the button to ring the doorbell.

‘Hello, what´s up?’
I have a package (when I was addressed in English, I answered in English, but it works with native language too)
‘Please put the package on the stairs’
‘Thank you very much, have a nice day’

My seven-year-old son pressed the button.

‘Hello, can I help you?’*
I want to come in
‘You’re probably in the wrong house, try the one on the right’
Now let me in
‘You’re probably in the wrong house, try the one on the left’
Ahh, stop, let me in
‘Please leave, we’re not interested’

My four-year-old daughter pressed the button:
“Hello, how are you?”*
Hey, daddy Ola, it’s talking.
“Ola is not home right now. I’m in the kitchen cooking, so I can’t come to the door.”
Do you want to come to the playground with me?

* During the test, SwannBuddy 4K was automatically updated and the welcome phrase was changed from English – if the visitor answers in another language, the doorbell will switch to that language.

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On the left you can see how SwannBuddy4K records video in the dark, in standard mode and with maximum zoom. On the right is the same recording made by the Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell. (Photo: SwannBuddy4K and Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell)

The company’s latest model, the Electrolux 800 Ultimate, comes with an All-in-One emptying station that charges the vacuum cleaner and automatically empties the 0.4 litre dust container in the stick vacuum into a 3.5 litre Anti-Allergy s-bag (which is claimed to have up to eight weeks of dust capacity). Convenient and dust-free.

What’s in the box

The vacuum cleaner comes with a metal telescopic tube (which can be adjusted to a length of 95-112 cm), the PowerPro Multi-surface motor nozzle (with built-in LED lighting and BrushrollClean function), two additional nozzles for sensitive surfaces (one small and one even smaller) and a small nozzle with hose that can be attached to the emptying station – which is also a vacuum cleaner – for cleaning the other nozzles and parts of the stick vacuum cleaner. Also included is an extra filter for the pole vacuum and an extra s-bag for the included emptying station, which has a connector for charging an extra battery (not included but available as an accessory).

Practical use

On the stick vacuum cleaner there are two buttons, power and +/-. One button is used to start and stop, while the other adjusts the suction power by switching between the four different suction settings Auto, Low, High and Boost. There is also a battery indicator that shows the capacity of the battery (4,000 mAh), where three squares = 75-100 percent, two = 50-75 percent, one = 25-50 percent and one flashing = 0-25 percent.

The motor nozzle works well on both hard floors and carpets, but a lot of hair gets stuck on the rotating roller brush. There is a pedal on the motor nozzle that can be pressed to cut off hair that has become tangled around the brush (something that sounds very loud while the vacuum cleaner itself is relatively quiet) and this function is called BrushrollClean. However, we found that the function didn’t work that well and only removed some of the hair around the brush. However, it was quite easy to remove the remaining hair manually.

Electrolux states the operating time as max. 90 minutes (only with the handset in Low mode) and min. 6 minutes (with the motor nozzle and in Boost mode). In our test, the battery lasted approximately 45 minutes in normal use (with motor nozzle and in Auto mode) and just over 12 minutes with motor nozzle and in Boost mode – which is more than twice as long as Electrolux itself states. One explanation for this could be that we almost exclusively used the vacuum cleaner on a hard parquet floor, which probably increases the running time compared to use on carpets.

Stick vacuum cleaner or not

Yours truly got an Electrolux stick vacuum cleaner 20 years ago and after using it a few times, I gave it to my brother who still has it in his conservatory. It really was, as Electrolux itself says, a complement to a conventional vacuum cleaner. It worked well for removing breadcrumbs and the like, but wasn’t nearly as good as a regular vacuum cleaner.

Today’s stick vacuums are much better and some people have replaced their conventional vacuum cleaner. We noticed this last year when we borrowed an acquaintance’s apartment in Berlin for a few days. When we needed to clean the apartment before travelling home, we only found a stick vacuum cleaner and it was a challenge to clean the entire apartment with it on one charge…

Of course it’s convenient to get rid of wires, but even for simpler cleaning, a conventional vacuum cleaner is sometimes an advantage. For example, if I need to clean the kitchen after a dinner with three adults and four children (we had family over for Easter), the Electrolux 800 Ultimate works perfectly. It comes out clean and tidy.

But it takes at least twice as long as with my conventional vacuum cleaner. This is partly because the motorised nozzle of the stick vacuum cleaner is 25 cm wide (the rotating brush is 20 cm wide), while the nozzle on my conventional vacuum cleaner is 40 cm wide. But the fact that it takes much longer is mainly because the stick vacuum cleaner has to be driven (like a vehicle) back and forth and turn all the time, whereas with a regular vacuum cleaner you can sweep and turn as you like, with the nozzle facing the floor.

And when you’re done, it feels like the stick vacuum weighs 3.2 kilos, while the nozzle, telescopic tube and handle of a conventional vacuum cleaner weigh less than 1 kilo – and since my kitchen is less than 10 square metres, I basically don’t need to move the vacuum cleaner itself.

What’s in the box

Let’s face it – this isn’t a neat little device that you can tuck discreetly away in a corner. That’s because it’s basically two units, but with a common motor unit. So you get a huge base station where you can put the mop, a holder where you can place the wand with nozzle, as well as holders for the dust nozzle, the crevice tool for hard-to-reach places and the cleaning brush. The base station acts as both a charging station and a cleaning station for the mop.

Practical use

This is the first Electrolux model we’ve seen that actually has a small colour screen instead of a simple display and light indicators. The screen shows the remaining capacity and power level, but above all it shows different symbols when you need to take action. Very educational. A regular power button is complemented by a spray button for the mop and a button to regulate the suction power, which can be set to auto, high and boost.

The motor unit has a larger battery than we’re used to, which is necessary for the mop, but it also makes it a bit heavier. This is something to consider if you have to clean for a long time and your arm gets tired easily. But it also provides a very long battery life, which we measured at just over 40 minutes at high power. Impressive!

Cleaning the machine

As usual, Electrolux accessories have clear buttons to disconnect the accessory. In this case, however, it’s mainly a matter of moving the motor between the wand and the mop. We appreciate that Electrolux’s rods are metal, whereas many competitors – even the most expensive ones – seem to have switched to plastic.

To remove the dust container, simply press the button at the bottom and pull it out. The filter insert requires loosening a small lever before pulling it out, which is an unnecessary hassle. But you’ll quickly appreciate it when you realise that the machine separates larger particles like gravel and finer ones like dust. When the nozzle on a stick vacuum cleaner rattles, we often think it will cause a blockage somewhere. Not with this solution! Why haven’t we seen this before? We also like the fact that you can rinse the filters under the tap to make them last longer.

The dirty water is collected in a surprisingly large container in the centre of the mop. We didn’t really understand its purpose until it was time to empty it. It is triggered by a simple button and then you pull an insert out of the tube. It turned out that it consisted of a filter system that separates larger particles from the dirty water. Compared to previous mop solutions we’ve tried, this is nothing short of brilliant! You can just pour the dirty water down the drain like you do with the mop bucket, while you can throw the larger debris in the bin and not worry about it clogging the drain.

Vacuuming

The motor nozzle works really well on hard floors, where our revealing laser barely found an overlooked dust particle. The built-in light is absolutely useless at showing the dirt. However, the nozzle does have a problem with getting stuck in our smooth-woven carpets, a problem that so many other vacuum cleaners we’ve tested also have. On such occasions, we wish it was possible to switch off the rotating brush. On the positive side, long hairs don’t get caught in the brush, which both long-haired people and pet owners will be happy about. The dust nozzle and crevice tool are very low-tech and do their job as expected.

Mopping

Something more high-tech is the mopping machine. It uses two counter-rotating brush rollers, a solution we’ve seen before with the Dyson WashG1. It’s an effective solution and we appreciated that Electrolux left a significantly drier floor. Something that usually causes problems is large dried-on stains. Not much actually happened when we dragged the machine back and forth over one. But then we remembered the spray button on the handle. A few presses and the stain was soaked in water with detergent. We tilted the handle up so that the machine stood on its own, switching off the motor. A little later, we came back and washed the stain again and the result was a sparkling clean floor. And knowing that we wouldn’t have to deal with the mess later on almost made us long for the next time the cat got sick!

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A rinse with water and detergent will also remove dried-on stains. (Photo: Jonas Ekelund)

When you put the machine back in place, you simply press a button and the cleaning process begins. The brush rollers are washed with clean water for two minutes, followed by a five-minute spin and finally a 70 degree drying to ensure there are no bacteria or odour problems. The rollers can of course be removed and cleaned manually if needed.

Simplicity over complexity

The KF8 is the largest (and most expensive) machine in the series. Like its smaller siblings, the construction is metal with a plastic top. The design is minimalistic and modern, but doesn’t feel premium in the same way as the Jura Z10, for example.

The KF8 has the features you’d expect from a fully automatic espresso machine: temperature setting (important if you want to make modern, light-roasted coffee), dual outlets for both coffee and milk so you can make two recipes simultaneously, multiple profiles for different recipes and an easy to empty bean hopper. The latter is rarely seen on anything other than Sage machines, but should definitely be an industry standard so you can easily switch between different beans. There are even wheels underneath the machine so it can be easily moved around the kitchen counter. Again, something we primarily know from Sage Oracle.

It differs from the KitchenAid KF7 in a few ways. The screen is larger (5‘ instead of 3.5’) and it is optimised for plant milk. When KitchenAid says the KF8 has 40 recipes, they mean that it has the same 20 recipes as the KF7 + a plant milk variation for each. The smaller KF6 has a 2.4’ (non-touch) screen, fewer recipes and single rather than dual outlets.

The screen on the KF8 is among the best on the market, if not the best. Although you can find bigger ones, it’s hard to find clearer displays. The image is razor sharp and the screen is very bright. Even very expensive espresso machines surprisingly often have low-quality screens, so this is a positive surprise.

KitchenAid doesn’t want to target coffee nerds, but those who are curious about coffee. Therefore, the user experience is very simple. The amount of coffee, temperature and texture (the ratio of water to coffee) can be changed before the coffee is prepared and then saved or added to one of six profiles. There aren’t a lot of unnecessary variables to tweak and the focus is on simplicity rather than precision. A coffee nerd would probably prefer raw numbers to words like ‘body’ and ‘strength’. KF8 is incredibly easy to navigate. It’s far more logical than the Jura Z10 and far less technically intimidating than the Siemens EQ900.

Top quality coffee

The heart of an espresso machine is the grinder, and the KitchenAid KF8 has it spot on.

Even the cheap beans from the local discount store taste delicious, even as pure espresso. The bitterness is minimal and the texture is creamy and luxurious. The grinder has eliminated most of the imperfections and you can easily drink cheap, dark-roasted coffee and still feel like you’re getting a luxury experience. Not bad. The grinder measures up to the best fully automatic ones in the industry, such as the Jura Z10.

Even the expensive, fairly light roasted beans come into their own in the KF8, in this case an anaerobically fermented bean (my favourite) from Honduras. The beans tasted caramel sweet with a nice acidity and citrus flavour. A good and complex espresso that didn’t require much from the machine other than setting it to the highest temperature. The KF8 doesn’t have more features than cheaper machines, but it’s easy to get good coffee out of it, which certainly compensates. And it’s even very quiet when grinding and brewing! An espresso is ready in 45 seconds and a cappuccino in 1 minute and 23 seconds.

Great milk, annoying cleaning

The included milk jug holds a full 0.8 litres. However, it’s the type of jug where the lid doesn’t fit properly on top. A trend I neither understand nor appreciate. There is no way to customise how much or how little foam you get in your coffee. You have to choose either frothed (as in a cappuccino) or steamed (as in a latte). However, both are extremely satisfying, both with regular milk and plant milk. The texture of the latte in particular is among the best on the market and is soft and pleasant with a good consistency. As with almost all fully automatic machines, we’re not quite on par with a latte frothed in a coffee shop, but we’re closer than most other machines on the market.

The same is true with cappuccino foam, which is mousse-like without being crunchy. If the goal of buying a fully automatic machine is delicious recipes with milk, it doesn’t get any easier or better than with the KF8. I don’t really miss further customisation of the milk texture when the presets are as good as they are here.

On the other hand, the most annoying quality of the machine is that the milk system cleaning sequence (which takes about 1 minute) requires you to go through the same educational 3-step menu every single time.

Even the contents of our most stuffed laundry basket can easily fit inside, and there’s still room for more clothes. Perfect if you have a couple of teenagers in the house or a lot of kids to look after. Or a large wardrobe and a laundry day every three weeks. You can probably think of more examples yourself.

The point is: This machine is for those who want to get a whole load of laundry done in one go.

Nifty gadgetry

We’ve tested quite a few tumble dryers in our household, and there are some things we’ve really come to appreciate. One of them is automatic dispensing of detergent. Check. This machine from Electrolux has that.

Another feature we like is that the machine weighs the clothes and adjusts the amount of detergent accordingly. And is happy to let us know if we can add more. Check. The Electrolux does that too.

Then there’s Wi-Fi. Check. A well-functioning app. Check.

And then there are nice touches like steam washing and anti-crease function. Check and check.

It’s time to dig a little deeper.

With and without the app

The first few times we test the machine without connecting the app, and it’s quite an intuitive panel Electrolux has equipped the machine with. However, as the display is digital, we can’t select programmes from a visible list, but have to scroll through the list at a slow pace to choose the right one.

However, the machine is smart enough to suggest our favourite wash by default, which we appreciate. It’s also pretty obvious how to switch automatic dosing on and off, so you can add, for example, the delicates detergent to the drawer yourself.

Since we chose to connect the app to get its features, it takes less than three minutes from downloading the app until the machine is on the house network and connected to the mobile phone. It’s great when manufacturers get this process right.

In the app, we find an assistant that wants to help us choose the right programme. However, it’s a bit of a silly test to go through and we end up ditching it for our regular coloured wash. But for people who have never washed clothes before, it probably makes sense.

To start a wash, you have to fill the machine, close the door and then switch on the remote on the washing machine. It seems silly to stand next to the machine and start it on your mobile, but on the other hand, it’s the only way to make sure you know there’s no pet inside the machine when you start it.

On the mobile, we can see how much time is left and exactly what part of the process it’s doing. And this is where we get our first big shock.

Lightning fast or wash all day

We’ve thrown a load of towels, tea towels and dishcloths into the machine and started a ‘cotton wash’ at 60 degrees. And we wanted extra dry.

The machine estimates that this project will take over eight hours. This seems like an inordinate amount of time and definitely the slowest wash-dry cycle we’ve ever experienced.

During the wash, the time is adjusted slightly, but it still takes over eight hours before we can pull clean, dry and fragrant towels out of the machine. That’s a really long time to have a machine running with just one wash.

On the other hand, it’s fair to say that the machine is also equipped with several quick programmes. One where clothes are steamed in just 25 minutes, a regular wash in 20 minutes and a combined wash and dry cycle for a maximum of one kilo of clothes, which is completed in just one hour.

We throw a set of trousers, blouse and underwear into the machine and follow along on the app. During the wash, the time is adjusted upwards by two minutes, but when the time is up, we can take clean clothes out of the machine. The trousers, which were synthetic, are dry enough for us to put them on, but the blouse, which is a heavy cotton fabric, is still too damp. But with this machine in the house, you can actually forget about washing and still get (some of) the clothes you want to wear.

There’s no Wi-Fi, no advanced drawers with almost magical properties or a built-in speaker to tell you how many eggs are left in the carton.

Here are a few doors, some shelves and drawers. And then there’s the stainless steel back panel, which ensures that the cold is evenly distributed in the fridge and that the temperature is quickly re-established once the door has been opened.

The fridge freezer works and delivers what you would expect from such a fridge. So basically, it’s a good choice for those who need an extremely tall fridge-freezer with a full 202 cm and a lot of litres.

And yet.

Space problems

The freezer consists of three drawers and with its 103 litres should be able to hold just about anything. So we stock up on frozen vegetables, bags of French fries and frozen pizzas.

But two of the pizzas are apparently marginally over standard size and we simply can’t fit them in the freezer. Necessity teaches the hungry woman to find a solution, so we pull the pizzas out of the cardboard boxes and now they can just about slide into the drawer. But who stores frozen pizzas without boxes in the freezer? Electrolux, you could have just given us those missing centimetres.

Design

From the outside, the fridge is quite handsome in a masculine way with its charcoal grey steel surface (the manufacturer calls it black, but it’s actually dark grey). Inside, we are greeted by white and grey steel. Here, things look like on most other refrigerators these days.

Two drawers, one for vegetables and one for cold cuts and cheese, which Electrolux calls Extra Chill, and otherwise shelves. While other manufacturers fill the cabinet with special devices for bottles and small mini drawers for snacks, Electrolux gives us two drawers and shelves for the rest. On the other hand, the door holds even more shelves, right up to the top, which is a full 205 cm above the floor. In other words: Truly a spacious fridge.

During the test period, we got a little annoyed with one of the shelves that can be split in half in the centre to make room for taller items on the shelf below. It’s a nice feature, but in this fridge the flexible shelf seems strangely unstable. And when it’s not split in two, we constantly bump into it, causing it to split down the middle and have to reassemble. It’s probably something you get used to.

Shelf life We’ve already talked about the stainless steel back plate, which means food lasts longer than it did when refrigerators were only made of white plastic. We also find that the food stays fresh for a long time while we test the fridge.

In the Greenzone drawer, Electrolux has inserted a barrier that ensures stable humidity in the drawer, and we can see that it works. We leave a bag of spinach in the drawer for almost two weeks and when we take it out, the spinach looks pretty much the same as when we put it in the drawer. That’s impressive.

The rest of the fridge is equipped with 360 Cooling, which we understand means that there are small air holes that ensure cooling in all corners. The technology is activated when the door is closed and also ensures a quick cooling of the food you have just placed in the fridge. This is an example of the kind of invisible technology that manufacturers have developed in recent years that actually reduces food waste.

The freezer

Another of these invisible technologies is Electrolux’s TwinTech Nofrost technology, which ensures that the air in the freezer and the air in the fridge do not mix and that the right humidity is maintained in both parts of the cabinet. All we can say is that this is a technology that is very difficult to verify.

On the other hand, we test the Extra freeze function, which must be activated four hours before you want to freeze something quickly in the top drawer of the freezer. (It automatically switches off after 24 hours). A small light flashes and this is the only indication that the function is on.

We bake a plate of buns and place them in the top drawer. And sure enough, the buns seem frozen when we check them after an hour or so.

The technology is obviously intended for more perishable foods such as meat, fish and ready meals, and for those, it’s nice to have on hand.

Installation

The previous model was upright like a periscope and was intended to sit on a shelf. The Advance is more traditionally designed with a tubular, horizontal camera that sits on a base. Fortunately, it’s quite heavy, so you can still stand the camera up if you prefer. Otherwise, just screw the base to a wall or ceiling if you prefer.

However, the camera is not battery-powered, but requires a power supply, which is easiest with the included AC adapter. Alternatively, you can buy an adapter and power it via a PoE Ethernet cable, which is also recommended if your wireless network is unreliable. An adapter is also available so you can plug it directly into the wall socket as if it were a wall light.

Then simply download the Netatmo Security app and choose to add the camera and you will be guided through the installation. If you also want to add the camera to Apple Home, there is a QR code in the box that you need to scan. This installation also went smoothly. If in doubt, Netatmo has excellent step-by-step guides.

Practical use

Netatmo’s cameras are among the few that handle AI recognition of video directly in the camera instead of uploading it to a cloud service (another is Aqara). This means it’s lightning fast and you don’t have to worry about unauthorised people observing the video. Or that someone disconnects the internet connection to prevent recording. Since the video is stored locally on a memory card, disconnecting the internet connection does not prevent recording.

In the app, you can set what happens if the camera detects movement, if it recognises an animal or person, and especially if it sees an unfamiliar face. You can set different reactions depending on whether you are at home or not. However, you cannot unmask the field of view. However, it does have an unusual privacy feature, again like Aqara, and that is that it can put a physical shield in front of the lens. This makes it impossible for the camera to film you without your knowledge.

If you get a notification in the app that someone has been spotted, you can now also talk to them, whether it’s a child who has come home or a builder. You can also connect the camera to Netatmo’s indoor siren to scare away intruders, either automatically or manually. Unfortunately, the camera is not compatible with Netatmo’s intelligent door and window sensors. To use them, you need the Netatmo Smart Indoor Camera.

Video quality

The old Smart Indoor Camera was good in many ways, but the rather low resolution of the video actually made it a bit difficult to recognise people. Even if the AI said it was the cat sitter, you had to look carefully before joining in. That’s not the case with Advance. The increased resolution and, we assume, better image sensor makes for a crystal clear video. In fact, we can’t even complain about the night video with IR, where most of it appears clear, albeit in black and white.

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And the quality is as good as you'd expect with IR light in the dark (Screenshot: Jonas Ekelund)

Costs

When it comes to security cameras, you usually need to consider whether the purchase price is the full cost. You usually have to pay a monthly fee if you want to store recorded videos, without which the camera is worthless. Sometimes there are also additional fees for AI features like facial recognition. But Netatmo doesn’t even offer subscriptions, so there are definitely no hidden costs. Video is recorded on an included memory card. However, the camera can upload the videos to Dropbox, an FTP server or Homekit Secure Video if desired. This requires an iCloud+ subscription from Apple.

Accesories

In addition to the large motorised floor attachment, the box includes a narrow crevice brush for tight spaces like radiators, a small brush for dusting small surfaces and a large brush for larger, delicate surfaces. And actually a motorised nozzle with rotating brush for furniture. This is a must if you have pets that shed hair on sofas and beds, and was actually something that was missing from the more expensive model. It also comes with a charger and a simple wall mount. A downgrade from the more expensive model’s excellent floor stand.

You can also purchase a range of accessories if you find something missing. These include the rotating mop attachment that was the centrepiece of the Hygenic 800 and the mop bucket that it was missing. You can also buy a special car cleaning kit, a smart dusting cloth and even the missing floor stand.

Practical use

At just the right distance from the handle are the two control buttons. One is simply the power button and the other controls the suction power. It can be set to low, medium or maximum, but this cheaper model lacks an auto mode that automatically adjusts the suction power to the surface. The machine is among the lighter ones we tested, so it was no problem to clean with it even for extended periods. According to the manufacturer, this means 40 minutes at the lowest power, while we measured 8.5 minutes at the highest power. Electrolux is actually quite honest about its runtime. Most of us probably run at the medium level anyway, and then you end up somewhere around 25 minutes, which is reasonable.The motorised attachments have a large, clear button to release them and the same goes for the handle when you want to use it as a hand vacuum. When you want to release the floor attachment, there’s even a foot pedal so you don’t have to bend down. The smaller tools can be pushed and pulled without much effort.

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Easy to disassemble and empty the dust container and clean the filters. (Photo: Jonas Ekelund)

To remove the dust container, simply press a button and pull it out. Then point the underside into the dust container and open the lid and most of it falls straight down. There are no annoying nooks and crannies where dust gets stuck, so it’s easy to get it out. The two filters are easy to pull off and can fortunately be cleaned under the tap. However, one should be replaced once a year and the other twice a year.

Vacuum cleaning

We were pleasantly surprised by the motorised mouthpiece. They usually have trouble being effective on both hard floors and carpets. But there was hardly a speck of dust left on the floor and the carpet was as good as new, even though we left the cats there a little extra before the test. As one of the few mouthpieces we tested, it didn’t get stuck in our short-haired carpet either. If there’s one complaint, it’s that many of the hairs actually get stuck in the brush. This is where many competitors have solutions to minimise tangles. Fortunately, it’s just a two-handed operation to loosen the brush and remove the hairs manually. The LED light is better than nothing, but it doesn’t illuminate dust as effectively as Dyson’s laser.

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A clean track through the dust with very little left behind. Medium suction power. (Photo: Jonas Ekelund)

Even the furniture nozzle had issues with tangled hairs, which is almost a little strange as it was designed to remove hair from upholstered furniture. It’s quite effective, but not as good as Dyson’s super nozzle. Fortunately, you can also detach the brush and rake the hairs off. The small dust nozzle is relatively effective, while the large one is probably better for crumbs than dust.

Unpacking and setting up

When I need to add water, I just take the lid off the humidifier and take out an insert that looks like a bucket with a handle. It’s super easy to go to the faucet, fill up to the line that says to fill and no more, and put it back in the humidifier.

The Wilfa Dew humidifier HU1A-430C has a large touch display on the front and if for some reason you don’t want to download the app, it’s possible to operate the humidifier without it.

The WiLife app

The accompanying app is easy to understand and simple to use. However, the language in the app is not impressive and while I don’t think it’s a big issue, it might be worth the manufacturer taking a second look at it.

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The WiLife app is easy to use and you can do a lot of settings here. (Screenshot from app)

In the app, I can set the desired humidity, adjust the amount of steam and start a timer. What I do not find, however, is a schedule. According to the manufacturer, I should also be able to see when it’s time to add water in the app – but that’s not the same as being able to read the current water level. This is something I miss.

How to use and control it

I read that the humidifier should be able to handle rooms up to 70 square meters, and since our entire apartment is 77 square meters, I put it on a sideboard in the kitchen and think that should be enough. The kitchen and living room are connected in a fairly open floor plan and to control the humidity, I place my Airthings View Plus in the living room at a distance of about 7 meters from the humidifier itself.

A humidifier is not a self-sustaining product, it requires some manual intervention. The manufacturer is clear when he informs me as a user that the water tank must be cleaned every three days. If you don’t do this, microorganisms can build up in the water, which are then discharged into the air. Fortunately, the humidifier is easy to clean. Just lift the lid, take out the water tank and wash it. It’s super easy!

The Wilfa Dew humidifier HU1A-430C also has a UV function to kill bacteria in the air for disinfection and it can also deliver hot steam. According to the manufacturer, hot steam spreads faster than cold steam. I’m not sure if the UV function and hot steam are really true, but that’s what the manufacturer says.

I can’t find information on how long the runtime is, but when I tested it myself, it lasted for about 24 hours.

The humidifier also has an aroma box that I can drip some water-soluble aroma oil into to fill my home with fragrance. Of course, it’s not for everyone, but I still think it would have been nice if Wilfa had included a small sample of the aroma oil. It could also have generated additional sales.

After running the humidifier for a few hours, I compare it to my reference Airthings and conclude that Wilfa does an excellent job.

But with new technology comes new concerns. Stories of hacked baby monitors, where strangers have scared children through the speaker, have made many parents think twice before installing a camera in the nursery. So it’s reassuring to see that Omajin – a new and affordable brand from the established Netatmo – has made security and stability a top priority.

Smart technology that works

Whereas some baby monitors have both a transmitter with a camera and a separate receiver with a screen, the Omajin Baby Monitor relies on the smartphone as a receiver.
The camera has Full HD resolution, but if the connection is too poor, the image will be scaled down to 720p to maintain stability. A motorized camera head physically follows movements in the room, so the monitor always gives a clear picture of what’s happening in the nursery.

The moderate resolution is actually an advantage in many ways. The video stream only requires 125 KB/s of bandwidth (about 1 Mbit/s), which is a fraction of what a Netflix movie needs. Even with lousy cellular coverage, the camera can work as it only requires 200 Kbit/s to give you a picture of the situation. This means you can actually see what’s happening in the room when you need to, instead of staring at a stuttering screen.

Stable and secure connection

My previous experiences with smart baby monitors have been mixed. A few years ago, I tested a Philips uGrow system that constantly lost its Wi-Fi connection. It was close to being unusable. With Omajin, this is a thing of the past. The camera remains stably connected to the network and if it drops out for more than 30 minutes, you are notified in the app.

Security is ensured through encrypted data transfer and strict network connection requirements. For example, the monitor will not work on open WiFi networks. With the included 64 GB SD card, recordings can be stored locally instead of in the cloud, which is both safer and significantly cheaper. Cloud storage is still offered as an additional service, but in my opinion it’s superfluous.

From baby to toddler

Even though my youngest child is now 6 years old, I’ve put the monitor in the boys’ room to good use. It picks up both sounds and movements if he’s restless at night. The camera tracking function automatically follows him as he moves around the room and the image quality is more than good enough to see what’s going on – even in the dark with the automatic night mode.

The smart scheduling system means you don’t have to worry about notifications when your child is usually awake and active in the room. For example, you can set the monitor to standby between 06:00 and 19:00. This feature was admittedly not intuitive to find in the menu system, but once set up, it works well.

Lullabies and night light

The monitor also has built-in lullabies and a comfortable night light with adjustable RGB colors. The lullabies work well for babies who are used to simple music boxes. As kids get a little older and more accustomed to sophisticated music, they’ll probably need a different kind of music to fall asleep. But since this is a baby monitor after all, the choice of melody and sound feels right.

Room for improvement

The notification system is, in my opinion, the Omajin Baby Monitor’s biggest weakness. When the camera detects motion or sound, only a simple text message appears on the phone’s lock screen. Only when you unlock the phone and tap the notification can you see images of the event. Here I would have liked the option to automatically play live audio and video when something happens – especially when you’re in your own bedroom at night, or you’re on a short visit to a neighbor and want the peace of mind of knowing that you can quickly and clearly see and hear when something happens.

Fortunately, this is something that should be easy to fix with a software and app update, and it’s not a deal breaker for me.

But the Karu 12G isn’t just for pizza nerds or aesthetes. It’s incredibly easy to get the most out of, and using wood doesn’t have to be any more complicated than using electricity or gas.

Oozing quality

The Karu 12G will do it all. The gas adapter must be purchased separately, but then you also have an oven that takes all types of fuel in addition to electricity. And in a well-designed and space-optimised size. The build quality is top notch, which is to be expected from Ooni, which has more than 10 years of experience building pizza ovens. It was the same experience when we last tested an oven from the Scottish manufacturer.

The construction consists of a powder-coated steel shell with a glass door and folding feet at the bottom. Wood or coal is placed at the back of the elongated oven and can be accessed via a door at the top. There is no room for a large fire in the stove, so if you want a roaring fire and 500°C, you’ll have to make sure to refill the firewood often.

The oven has room for a 12’ pizza and is the little brother to the larger Karu 16, which has almost identical features. The oven has a built-in thermometer on the side, which can be used to keep an eye on the heating. However, it is still recommended to use an infrared thermometer to take the surface temperature of the stone itself.

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(Photo: Lasse Torp Hansen)

Not intimidating to use

Cooking doesn’t get more analogue than in the Ooni Karu 12G. Light a fire in the dedicated metal basket at the back of the oven and wait for the fire to heat up the pizza stone. Done. You can adjust the chimney to let more or less air through, but otherwise the temperature depends on what wood you use, how much you use and how often you add new wood to the fire.

The stove accommodates small sticks of less than 15 cm, which means they burn out quickly, but also light up fast. In the test, it took about 27 minutes from ignition until the stove reached 430°C. There’s no need to worry about the fire going out. Even a few embers quickly ignite the small sticks, but if you want to reach 500°C, it takes more practice to build the most efficient fire.

The fear with a wood-burning stove is that the temperature will get out of control, so it’s very reassuring that it stabilises naturally at around 420-460°C if you feed the blazing fire continuously. So there’s no need to be afraid of the Ooni Karu 12G. It’s no more intimidating than other pizza ovens. If you use it often, the gas adapter is the way to faster heating and stability, but it is by no means a necessity.

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Be careful not to overfill the tray, as the wood will fall onto the pizza stone. (Photo: Lasse Torp Hansen).

Sublime pizza quality

At temperatures around 450°C, the pizza from the Ooni Karu 12G is unrivalled. The wood gives a mild smoky flavour to the dough and the fire at the back doesn’t burn the ingredients on top. The crust puffs up as it should and the pizzas achieve the perfect caramelised yet fresh taste that you know and love from good pizzerias.

You should always rotate the pizza a few times so that it bakes evenly on each side. This is also a good time to check its progress. After about 2-3 minutes, the pizza will be crispy and filled with those coveted black ‘leopard spots’ you like to see under the bottom. Of course, it’s harder to maintain a specific temperature with wood than with gas or electricity, but the Karu 12G is surprisingly stable around 420-450°C and the stone holds heat well. If you want to go higher, you have to fight a little harder for it.

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Remember to turn the pizza every 30 minutes so that it bakes fairly evenly. (Photo: Lasse Torp Hansen).

Conclusion

Overall, the Ooni Karu 12G delivered the best pizza we experienced in the test. And the hassle was only marginally greater, and infinitely more charming, than any other pizza oven I’ve tested.

Getting the pizza in and out of the Karu 12G was easy. Whether this is due to the quality of the pizza stone or just luck with the dough can’t be said for sure.

The Karu 12G was tested at the same temperatures as the Chef Matteo, but delivered far more uniform bases and more compliant top heat that cooked the ingredients on top without burning them. The build quality also seems much higher.

If you’re making pizza outdoors for the fun of it, it’s hard to match the experience that the Ooni Karu 12G delivers. Cooking outside simply doesn’t get more charming than this.

Construction and maintenance

The basket has a sturdy handle, which can be handy if you need to carry the basket to the sink. But it also makes the appliance even wider than it needs to be. The Dual Blaze TwinFry has a single large basket with a partition in the centre. But unlike Wilfa, there are two separate roasting racks at the bottom, so the divider goes all the way down and creates separate chambers.

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(Photo: Cosori)

The Twinfry part of the name is easy to understand, while the Dual Blaze means that it also has heating elements at the bottom of the appliance. This is claimed to make cooking more efficient, but we don’t really understand how, as the bottom elements only heat the bottom of the basket. It is said that you need to clean the elements, but not how, although a regular dishwashing brush worked well for us. Both the basket and the grill are supposed to be dishwasher safe, which we appreciate.

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The heaters at the bottom and top are visible. (Photo: Jonas Ekelund, L&B Home)

Handling

The large touch panel allows you to select the basket and adjust temperature and time. Thanks to the fact that they have written in plain text what the buttons do, you don’t have to guess what cryptic symbols mean. However, the panel is angled upwards, making it difficult for children to use. Instead of having quick programmes for different types of food, you choose between different types of cooking. Air fry, roast, bake, grill, reheat and dry. We actually prefer this, as the quick programmes are often wrong anyway.

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Keep track of your cooking with the handy app. (Screenshot: L&B Home)

Even easier to use, Cosori has an app for its airfryer. This means you can sit on the sofa and see how much cooking time is left. But above all, thanks to the app, you can reprogramme the presets, which makes them much more useful than in other appliances. The app also has some recipes, but unfortunately they are in English and feel very American. However, there are good tables for many common foods.

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After a bumpy start, the temperature eventually stabilised at a good level (Graphic: Jonas Ekelund, L&B Home)

How to cook

The default setting in airfryer mode is 200 degrees for 20 minutes, but as mentioned, you can change it yourself. One basket reached 180 degrees in 2 minutes and 40 seconds, which is fast, but then continued to rise to 190 degrees before starting to oscillate between this and 176 degrees. The other basket reached 175 degrees after 3 minutes 20 seconds and stayed there for a few minutes. After a while, however, both curves stabilised just above 180 degrees, so they still get a pass. In everyday use, it feels predictable, so we had no problems getting bacon, sausages and egg dishes exactly how we wanted them.

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We had no problems getting the food the way we wanted it. (Photo: Jonas Ekelund, L&B Home)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTwhJENjwU0

Conclusion

The Cosori Dual Blaze TwinFry feels like a well thought out appliance. The basket is sturdy and the two halves properly separated and everything is dishwasher safe. The touch panel is easy to understand and we like the fact that you select the cooking method rather than the food using the quick buttons. It’s even easier with the app where you can re-programme the buttons, as well as follow the cooking from the sofa. Heating is quick and we were pleased with the results of the cooking.

I pretty much steered clear of cordless handheld vacuums until the KitchenAid Go came along. In addition to compact household appliances, the KitchenAid range includes a round and narrow hand vacuum cleaner. The appliances share the same design, colors (grey and silver) and battery. In short, you can use the same battery for all devices in the range.

Each device is therefore sold in two versions with different prices: one version with battery and one version without. The price at the top is with battery included.

Members of the KitchenGo range cost somewhat more than similar appliances from other manufacturers. However, you ‘save’ the cost of the battery once you’ve bought one of the series’ appliances with a battery.

Cordless devices with the same battery are convenient. The name KitchenAid Go also suggests that the series can be used on the go. For example, you can take them with you on a picnic, to the cottage or on a camping vacation. The devices are also suitable for smaller kitchens with few power outlets and shelf space.

To test the concept, I used several devices from the series in the kitchen and living rooms over a few weeks. However, the focus of the test is on the KitchenAid Go Cordless Hand Vacuum.

Charging and first use

The hand vacuum, like the other devices in the Go series, requires a 12-volt lithium battery. The square battery is charged via an included USB-C cable or in a docking station. The latter must be purchased as an option.

Four small LED lights on the side of the battery show how far (or how close) the battery is from being at 100 percent. Charging time is three hours.

When the four lights are bright without flashing, the battery is fully charged. You snap it into the holder on the underside of the handheld vacuum cleaner. A small notch at the top of the electrical socket makes it impossible to insert the battery incorrectly.

All KitchenAid Go series appliances have the same notch in their sockets. When you connect the battery to an appliance, the LED lights turn on briefly. The number of lights on indicates how much ‘juice’ is left in the battery.

Nozzles and features

The KitchenAid Go Cordless Hand Vacuum comes with a filter and two nozzles. One nozzle is wide and flat, the other is long and pointed. The flat one is for larger, flat surfaces and the pointed crevice nozzle for cracks and along edges.

When the filter and one of the nozzles are attached together with the battery, the vacuum cleaner weighs close to one kilogram. More precisely, 965g. I had expected (feared) that the battery would shift the balance of the handheld vacuum cleaner. This is not the case.

The handheld vacuum cleaner is neither heavy nor cumbersome to work with when the battery is clicked on. On the contrary, the battery provides a comfortable weight that makes the handheld vacuum cleaner easy to control and work with.

The vacuum cleaner is intended by KitchenAid as a kitchen helper, picking up crumbs and dirt in cupboards, drawers and on the floor. However, I also get in between and over sofa cushions, carpets and along the home’s sweeping moldings with ease.

With the crevice tool attached, the KitchenAid Go Cordless Hand Vacuum is eager to suck up just about anything. With an extra push of the handle button, you can switch between two types of suction: normal or turbo. Normal suction provides 24,000 rpm, boost provides up to 38,000 rpm.

Whatever I chose, the handheld vacuum was ready for anything. Lint from my project to cut cable ducts for the surround sound system was no problem. The plastic crumbs in and around the red cutting box disappeared instantly. Dust and crumbs from slippery floors and my nubby sisal carpet went up the same way through the nozzle.

When I switched to the flat nozzle, the experience was less successful. Dirt and dirt particles could fall out again and I had an unpleasant déjà vu from the last time I owned a handheld vacuum cleaner.

Design and transport

The design of KitchenAid’s handheld vacuum cleaner is generally well thought out. The unit is round and narrow with no edges where dirt will settle. You can disconnect the dust container and filter and put the container in the dishwasher. The idea is fine. Personally, I wouldn’t put the dust container in the same dishwasher as glasses and crockery.

The handle fits well in my hand and is long enough for me to get around with the vacuum cleaner easily. I don’t have to move my hand on the handle when vacuuming. Unlike the two nozzles, the handle can’t be unhooked, so the vacuum cleaner takes up space if you want to transport it. 40 cm to be exact.

The design also has other limitations. When emptying the filter and dust container, you have to turn the entire body of the vacuum cleaner to release the lock. The movement causes the contents to shake, and I had a lot of dust and dirt whirled up into the air when emptying the filter.

After a while, the filter will also need to be replaced. When, of course, depends on how often you use the handheld vacuum cleaner. A package of three new filters costs around €30.

Other members of the Go series

So far, KitchenAid’s range consists of six devices: Hand mixer, coffee grinder, mini chopper, blender, hand blender and hand vacuum. All can be purchased with or without battery.

The kitchen units stood solid and stable on my kitchen table or lay well in my hand during use. They have the same matte black design and simple operation as the hand vacuum cleaner. No superfluous buttons or displays. However, several of them weigh quite a bit; 1.46 kilograms for the mini chopper (5KFCR531BM) and 1.16 kg for the hand blender (5KHM762BM). The weight is including the battery.

The KitchenAid Go series is not suitable for backpacking if you’re going hiking. However, with their compact design and shared battery, I would say that they can easily be useful at the cottage, on the boat or in the caravan. For example, if you need a blender or mixer for a special occasion outside the home and want to avoid buying a new one.

I tested the hand mixer, blender and mini chopper by making a batch of homemade falafels. The dish requires different kitchen tools. The KitchenAid Go appliances performed just as well as my wired, traditional versions.

Parsley leaves, chickpeas, spices and more were chopped, blended and mixed into a fine, uniform mash. The battery, which the devices shared along the way, still had 50 percent left when the task was fully completed after half an hour of preparation.

Conversely, I wouldn’t recommend the 5KBGR111BM series coffee grinder. When the grinder blade engages, the top layer of beans inside the bowl lightens. The result is unevenly ground beans. Also, some of the ground coffee stays at the bottom of the bowl, so you have to hit it against something to get it all out.

Conclusion

The KitchenAid Go series costs more than other appliances in the same categories. For example, you can get hand vacuums that cost less than half the price of the Cordless Hand Vacuum 5KKVR121BM, plus the cost of the battery, docking station and new filters.

Conversely, my experience with the Cordless Hand Vacuum has been almost entirely positive. You can see and feel that we are a few steps up the quality ladder. The hand vacuum feels good in the hand, it’s efficient and well-designed for easy cleaning and maintenance.

My objections are about emptying the dust container, which can stir up dirt in the air (tip: do it over the sink). The flat nozzle is less efficient and the length of the vacuum cleaner is a bit awkward for storage and transportation.

The concept of a shared battery and the ability to put the series parts in the dishwasher works well in practice. The compact, cordless design leaves plenty of space on the kitchen counter. Especially if you use several of the appliances at the same time.

Despite the name, the KitchenAid Go series appliances are not meant for mobile life. Instead, they’re great for smaller kitchens or places with few power outlets. The compact design makes them smaller than conventional household appliances, but they perform just as well. I haven’t had any complaints about my falafels yet.

Because if a fridge is 600 millimeters wide, it often cannot be placed in a standard built-in cabinet. This fridge is 595 millimeters wide, and it’s a good example of the details LG thought of when designing and manufacturing the impossibly named GLT71SWCSF.

Plenty of space

The five millimeters don’t matter when it comes to the volume of the fridge, which according to the specifications is exactly 386 liters. But 386 liters can be experienced differently, and in this case they feel really spacious. There are five shelves just in the door with space for all kinds of drinks and whatever else you store there.

Two huge vegetable drawers at the bottom of the cabinet should be enough for even the largest families. During the test period, we also particularly liked the narrow drawer in the middle of the cabinet, where there is room for snacks at child height. This is the kind of fridge that invites you to bring out your inner organizer and compete with the professionals known from TV and Netflix

Double up on cooling

Generally speaking, items that are less sensitive to temperature fluctuations should be placed in the door, but that problem should be less pronounced here because LG has not only ensured that the fridge cools the food from behind. There is also Door cooling, which stops when the door is opened, but still ensures that food stored in the door is quickly cooled down again. According to the manufacturer, 35 percent faster.

In addition, there is Linear cooling, which LG has trademarked. In recent years, several manufacturers have developed special technologies for refrigerators that can keep food fresher for longer by reducing temperature fluctuations. In this case, the technology is created with a special compressor, which it is not possible to take a closer look at. But LG promises that it ensures fresh taste for seven days.

During the test period, we stored grapes, small tomatoes and carrot sticks for packed lunches in the fridge for a week at a time, and both fruit and vegetables were still fresh when we arrived on Friday. In our old fridge, tomatoes can be rotten after a week, so the immediate assessment from here is that LG is probably on to something with their Linear Cooling technology.

Customizable vegetable drawer

Another small detail designed to extend the shelf life of fruit and vegetables is a small slider on the top vegetable drawer that can adjust the humidity in the drawer to optimize it for either fruit or vegetables. It’s a small detail that we’ve definitely forgotten to use, and the question is how many busy people would remember it. But we appreciate the optimism and opportunity, LG.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a really spacious fridge with just enough technology to keep your food as fresh as possible, but without the even fancier features that come with actual smart fridges, this one from LG is a good choice. We especially appreciate the spaciousness and the fact that we can chop vegetables for a week’s worth of packed lunches in one go.

Installation

Once the camera is charged with a USB-C cable, it can easily be connected to the Arlo app by following the instructions. Unlike the Pro series, the Essential doesn’t require a hub and can be connected directly to the wireless network. Unfortunately, it does not support Apple Homekit like the more expensive cameras in the series. The camera can then be set up with an articulating wall mount that screws into the camera. If you want to use the camera indoors, it’s flat enough on the underside to simply stand on a shelf or on top of a cabinet.

Operation and handling

The app gives you a good overview if you have multiple cameras and you can instantly switch on the dialogue function to talk to someone standing in front of the camera. If it’s dark, you can switch on the spotlight and if it turns out to be an intruder, you can activate the siren to scare them away. A unique feature is that by logging into My Arlo in the browser, you can get the same view as in the app. This gives you the feeling of being inside a security centre.

There are three modes that the cameras can be set to: Away, Home or Standby. And with geofencing, it’s easy to automatically activate the modes when you leave home or come home. For each mode, you can decide what it should do if it detects motion. To avoid false alarms, you can mask out the field of view. What we do notice is that on the Essential model, we get significantly fewer advanced features like automatic face tracking, adjustable wide angle and the like. Battery dropped by 30 per cent in 3 weeks with a number of motion alerts per day.

Video quality

While you can’t expect the same high video quality as the Pro model, it’s still a cut above the rest. The higher resolution is noticeable and we see more detail in the image. The video stream has fewer issues with artefacts, and this is especially evident if you’re on the home network and can stream in 2K. Even in the dark, it stands out as it focuses better and you get better sharpness than many competitors.

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Daylight quality (Photo: Jonas Ekelund, L&B Home)

Cost of ownership

As usual with Arlo, there are a lot of really advanced features, but unfortunately they all require a subscription. They include cloud storage, better notifications, and person and animal detection. Without the subscription, you can only see motion alerts and live streaming video. More or less useless. However, you can purchase the base station, which allows you to record video on memory cards. Either way, it’s an unwelcome extra cost on top of the camera.

Conclusion

Arlo feels like a reliable and professional choice as they’ve drawn on experience from their significantly more expensive cameras for this ‘base model’. It’s easy to install, the app works well and you get good video quality. But there are hidden costs. If you want advanced detection and cloud storage, you’ll need a subscription, or for local storage you’ll need a base station. If it wasn’t for that drawback, it would have been an overall winner.

The Ninja Creami Deluxe seemingly promises the impossible: speed and flexibility, no matter which ingredients you’re making ice cream out of. Typically, you have to wait up to an hour for a regular ice cream maker to cream your ice cream. And then you can forget about easy slushice.

The process

The ice cream should be in the freezer for 24 hours, so the system requires some preparation on your part.

I tried raspberry rosemary sorbet, frozen apple juice (because it was the easiest ‘recipe’ I could think of) and a classic ice cream with egg yolk, vanilla and chocolate chunks. When your ice cream mixture is ready, pour it into one of the three tubs provided and place it in the freezer. To make ice cream, place the tub directly into the Ninja Creamis container, which locks into place under the ‘blender’.

On the machine, you first need to choose how much ice cream you want to make. You can either make a full or half portion. A full batch of sorbet takes about five (noisy) minutes, and if the texture is a little crumbly, you can press “respin”, which helps a lot. The texture is just as creamy as the sorbet you buy at an expensive restaurant. There are no crunchy ice crystals or unevenly frozen pieces. ‘Respin’ typically takes an extra two minutes. Then you’re done and you can throw the tub back in the freezer or in the dishwasher. Cleaning is done in under two minutes.

Creami Deluxe has 10 built-in recipes, or rather textures. They are Ice Cream, Sorbet, Light Ice Cream, Gelato, Milkshake, Mix-In, Frappe, Frozen Drink, Slushi & Frozen Yoghurt.

If you want fresh berries or chocolate chips, add them at the end and the “mix-in” programme spreads the ingredients around the ice cream without massacring them.

If you want to make a drinkable recipe such as slushice, add water (or tequila!) to the top of the container before blending. The texture will be like only 7-Eleven can make it on a hot summer day.

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The first image is before "respin" and the second after. The result speaks for itself and the Respin programme should almost always be used (Photo: Lasse Torp Hansen)

Drawbacks of the system?

The biggest disadvantage of Ninja Creami is the noise. You really become aware of how long a minute lasts when using the machine. Therefore, it’s not ideal to use late at night if you don’t want to wake up everyone in the house. Additionally, the capacity is smaller than the typical ice cream maker. One container can hold 709ml. If you’re making something drinkable, there also needs to be room to pour liquid on top, which means even less volume.

On the other hand, as mentioned, you get three containers, and you can of course buy more if you want. And with the machine making ice as fast as it does, serving lots of people is no problem as long as you remember to fill and freeze the tubs 24 hours in advance.

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The first image is before "respin" and the second after. The result speaks for itself and the Respin programme should almost always be used (Photo: Lasse Torp Hansen)

Conclusion

The Ninja Creami Deluxe introduces a whole new way of making ice cream. The technology is convincingly practical in the home, which is not always the case with technology originating from the professional world. The Creami Deluxe manages to produce a texture as soft and delicious as a traditional ice cream maker.

Most importantly, it’s fast. The noise may be a challenge for some, but that’s the price you pay for the brutal approach. The variations alone, especially slushice, give the Ninja Creami Deluxe an advantage over most “regular” ice cream machines. Once you get used to having a few different ice cream flavours in the freezer beforehand, it’s hard to go back to a regular ice cream maker. The Ninja Creami Deluxe is simply smarter.

Construction and cleaning

As mentioned above, this model is exceptionally large, so you should measure your counter space before you buy it. The construction feels solid with impact-resistant plastic and thick metal, which explains why Wilfa offers a 5-year warranty. The large basket has a removable grid, which unfortunately has a tendency to fall off if you try to pour the finished food. A little caution is required. The basket slides quite easily and has no issues with getting stuck.

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The heating element is visible, but can be cleaned with a dishwashing brush. (Photo: Jonas Ekelund, L&B Home)

Unfortunately, as the basket has a window, it can’t be machine washed as the window would be damaged. But in the two months we’ve been using it, keeping it clean by hand has actually been just fine. The non-stick properties are good because nothing has actually burnt, although we have cooked ribs with BBQ sauce, which is known to burn when dripping. Wilfa recommends scrubbing the exposed heating element with a dishwashing brush.

Handling

The large touch panel has buttons to adjust the heat and time and switch on the light. There are also quick buttons for French fries, chicken, steak, pizza, fish, shrimp, heat maintenance and drying. The great thing is that you can customise them yourself. For example, if you get better results with a different time and temperature for your fries, you can simply reprogram the preset programme. Very neat!

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You can also use IKEA's standard oven dish to make gratins. (Photo: Jonas Ekelund, L&B Home)

But what drives us crazy is that you have to preheat it before you can start cooking. It simply stops when it reaches temperature and refuses to start cooking until you pull out the basket, put the food in and close it again. If you’re experienced, you can calculate the heating time and simply set a total time for everything. But there are no easy solutions here. You have to stand and wait for several minutes, pull the basket out and put it back and pretend you didn’t have the food in it to begin with. It’s stupid and you should be able to switch it off.

Preparation

We set it to 180 degrees and after the annoying preheating that took just over 2 minutes, we expected it to be 180 degrees. In fact, it was only 140 degrees! And it took almost 6 minutes, which is very slow, for the temperature curve to flatten out. But still not at 180 degrees, but at 160! Over the next few minutes, it slowly rose one degree at a time to eventually reach 170-174 degrees. This might be an acceptable deviation if you’re putting something in the oven for 20 minutes, but if it’s only going to be there for a short time, you need to take into account that the oven is far too cold for the first few minutes.

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You can also use a whole piece of loin - or short ribs if you want to go American. (Photo: Jonas Ekelund, L&B Home)

Surprisingly, it turned out that what really affects cooking is the size. Not so much for the result as for what you can cook in it. With previous air fryers, we cooked simple dishes for one or two people. But with the Dualfry Grill, we discovered that it can actually cook a frozen pizza, short ribs or a large oven dish of gratin. As a result, we haven’t used the oven once since we started using it! We also like the extra high temperature which, in combination with the grill grate, actually produces grill marks.

Conclusion

At first, we were sceptical about the low but extra wide format, which makes the Dualfry Grill take up a lot of space on the kitchen counter. But it’s precisely this format that makes it possible to cook things that don’t fit in a regular airfryer and made the regular oven superfluous throughout the test. Also note the extra high temperature and the grill grate to get a proper surface. However, we were annoyed that you can’t opt out of preheating and that it takes so long to heat up.

As I belong to the category of people who would rather do “something else” (as in anything else) to avoid cleaning windows, I couldn’t help but give the product a thumbs up.

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The recharging station is quite large but stylish. Inside is the window cleaner itself, and behind it I find the included cleaning products (Photo: Åsa Warme Hallén)

Now there’s a successor in the form of the Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni, and of course I’m curious to know what has happened in a year.

New since last time

While I appreciated its predecessor, I have to say that Ecovacs has taken a big step forward.

No, it doesn’t come in a fancy case like the W1 Pro did, but on the other hand, it’s not the case that will clean your windows either.

The Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni comes with a portable, rechargeable station to which the window cleaning robot itself is anchored with something like an umbilical cord. The result is that I don’t have to find power to clean my windows. I just need to make sure the station is charged and ready. And that’s great!

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On the underside, W2 OMNI looks like its predecessor. The fan that keeps it from going out the window and the rubber tracks that allow the robot to move. At the far corner of each corner are the sensors that detect the surface. (Photo: Åsa Warme Hallén)

On one charge, Winbot can clean about 55 square metres or about 110 minutes of use, and that feels like a lot.

Is it up to the task?

I have to admit that my expectations are high as I go out for the first time to test it. I read on the website: “The industry’s first edge cleaning feature: WINBOT W2 OMNI is equipped with multiple sensors to seamlessly get past obstacles and prevent blockages. The edge cleaning feature improves edge cleaning by 65%.”

And although it would probably still be a little better if I took the time and energy to do it myself, it’s actually really good. Above all, I don’t have to mess with water. Hooray for that!

The Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni comes with a portable, rechargeable station to which the window cleaning robot itself is anchored with something similar to an umbilical cord. The result is that I don’t have to find power to clean my windows. I just need to make sure the station is charged and ready. And that’s great!

Now there’s a remote control in the app, so I can still sit down and control the robot. And even though I don’t have to handle a lot of water, I can’t read a book or anything like that. I also have to lift my bum out of the lounger to move the robot between the windows. Apparently I can’t have everything.

Worth considering

A window cleaning robot is not nearly as self-propelled as a robot vacuum cleaner. I have to attach it to the window and I have to move it between the windows. It’s not like I just switch it on and leave the house. We’re not quite there yet.

The fact that it can’t handle joints is a minus, which unfortunately pulls down the rating.

Conclusion

The Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni would be a typical “nice to have” for most people. However, if you have tall windows that are incredibly inconvenient to clean, it’s almost a “need to have”. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it replaces a really well-done manual window cleaning, but it’s certainly good enough – even around the edges! If you have a little money to spare and like gadgets that are almost borderline unnecessary in most cases, then I say: Buy!

Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra requires space. According to the manual, there should be about half a metre of space from the edge of the robot’s ramp. The robot uses the space in front of the ramp to rotate and position itself before and after a task is completed and when it returns to the stand.

Attach the cord to the back and plug the other end into a power outlet. Roborock switches on with a melody that can best be described as a waltz. Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra follows the template almost to the letter when it comes to setting up a smart device. The front of the robot’s lid is removed so you can scan the QR code and download the Roborock app. The lid is magnetic, so it easily finds its way back into place when you put it back on.

From the app, connect to your Wi-Fi and hook up the device. You do this via Scan to Connect or Search for Device. When Robocrock is on, it will appear in the app. Only 2.4 GHz is supported.

Pour clean water into the container with the blue drop symbol on the lid. Already here the design shows weaknesses. The two containers are difficult to open because the click-locks on the lids bind.

The handle is flexible, so the container can swivel in your hand. Place the containers on a flat surface before opening and closing them. Only use cold/moist water. Otherwise the plastic of the container may be damaged and change shape.

Remove the cover on the front of the base station and add detergent to the container on the right. There is no detergent included. The brand Omo produces a detergent for Roborock devices. Expect a price of around €20 for about half a litre.

To the left of the container is the vacuum cleaner bag, which is pre-inserted. The bag holds 2.5 litres, which is less than the 3.2 litres that Dream’s bag can hold. How quickly the bag fills depends on usage and the amount of dirt in the home. A pack of 3 new bags costs €25.

Once the water, detergent and vacuum cleaner are fully charged (takes about 4 hours), Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra is ready to show what it can do.

First venture onto the floor

In terms of design, we’ve gone one step down from the Roborock Q Revo, which we tested at the end of 2023, as the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra has the same canisters as the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra, which we tested a year ago. Let me say it right away: I’m not happy with these canisters. They’re angular and hard to open without spilling the contents. They don’t look good either. The S8 MaxV Ultra is open at the top, so the containers are visible.

Design is a matter of taste, so the S8 MaxV Ultra should of course also be judged on its performance in practice. I put the robot to work mapping my home and got a taste of how fast and efficient the S8 MaxV Ultra is.

The robot scanned my living rooms in minutes and wasn’t bothered by me occasionally passing by. The scan of my two living rooms of approximately 60 square metres was completed in under 3 minutes. The final map with relevant details such as tables and sofas was completed and saved in the app in under 7 minutes.

Unlike what I’ve seen with other robotic vacuum cleaners, Roborock had no tendency to invent dining tables where they don’t exist. Or placing a sofa where in the real world I have a fireplace.

Cleaning room by room

The S8 MaxV Ultra can be set to clean in specific ways, for example to only vacuum. You can also select zones, individual rooms or the entire home. The robot has the strongest suction power to date for a Roborock vacuum cleaner, 10,000 Pa. The robot has an ‘arm’ that shoots out from the side to reach around all edges and into corners. Obviously, Roborock calls the design FlexiArm.

When Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra is out on the floor, I’m again annoyed by the slightly cheesy design. The robot shakes and jumps when I run it at maximum vacuum power. However, it doesn’t affect the result. On my nubby sisal carpet, Roborock was good at getting it all in.

Thanks to AI, the robot should be able to recognise small objects, such as toys. However, the same AI is not able to make the robot avoid larger objects. The S8 MaxV Ultra repeatedly drove under my sofa and had a date with my yoga mat, which is tucked away there.

Conversely, the robotic arm on the Roborock is highly functional. The arm’s side brush and a mop system with extra rotation is where the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra really shines.

On the tiles in front of my fireplace, the brush crawls into all the bumps and the mops do the rest. The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra delivers a really good result and comes in where the Dreame X40 Ultra had to give up.

App and fine-tuning

Good, efficient cleaning doesn’t help much if the app won’t play along. Fortunately, Roborock’s app does. It’s easy, almost intuitive, to use for simple tasks and for fine-tuning the cleaning.

I could use the map to designate rooms and specific areas to be cleaned and change parameters such as power and mode, while the S8 MaxV Ultra was out on a ‘task’. This is great.

To my surprise, Roborock had an easier time passing my 2-3 cm high doorsteps. On paper, Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra can only pass a maximum of 2 cm high, but Roborock did the job on its own.

Furthermore, the voice control of Roborock is easy. The commands are predefined in the app, so the voice control is integrated into Roborock’s own ecosystem.

Then just say ‘Hello Rocky’ + a command. If you forget what the robot can and should do, a pamphlet, a voice control card, is included in the box. It can be displayed and shows commands in six languages. It sounds basic and analogue, but it works. Just like there are so many other simple and basic things that also work with Roborock S8 MaxV.

Conclusion

In terms of design, Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra looks like an industrial machine. The robot sometimes sounds like this when it’s at work or emptying its dust chamber into the stand. I’m not thrilled with the angular design. I’m particularly bothered by the awkward containers with corners where dirt can collect and the open top where dust will accumulate.

However, design is a matter of taste, so it shouldn’t be the downfall of the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra. On the contrary, the robot vacuum cleaner is easy and efficient to use. The app and robot are a pleasure for the home’s floors and for the home’s occupants.

My floors, carpets and tiles were generally clean after meeting Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra.

The S8 MaxV Ultra is efficient and does what I set it to do without wandering off into other rooms of the home. The voice control works, and talking to your vacuum cleaner – almost – doesn’t feels foolish. Especially when it responds nicely and obeys.

As one of only three models in Europe, the Uniform is approved by the ECBC (European Coffee Brewing Centre). The centre is an independent organisation that tests for precision, uniform grinding and the amount of coffee residue. The latter in particular is one of Uniform’s ‘aces’ up its sleeve.

Unpacking is easiest when the box is on its side. Otherwise, the Uniform is difficult to lift out of the box and protective wrapping. On the kitchen table, my small, cold Bodum grinder pales next to the almost 30 centimetre tall Wilfa grinder. I immediately pack my own home coffee grinder away in the cupboard.The Uniform WSFBS-200B has a Bluetooth-enabled scale that can be used as a lid. The scale doesn’t take up unnecessary space on the worktop and it absorbs some of the sound when the grinder is working. However, the uniform doesn’t make a lot of noise.

With the ‘Wilfa Svart’ app, you control and fine-tune the scale’s functions. ‘Wilfa Svart’ is available for iOS and Android.

The scale is connected with the USB-C cable and plugged into a power outlet via a USB converter or to a device with a USB port. After two hours, the scale is fully charged and ready to use.

Every time the grinder has been switched off, the scale must be reconnected via Bluetooth inside the app. It’s easy enough, but annoying to repeat. Once the app is connected to the scale, you’re ready for your first brew.

Brewing via app

For decades I’ve been following the hottest trends in coffee brewing without even knowing it. My grandmother taught me the method now known as pour over.

We’re talking about freshly ground beans poured into a filter set in a filter holder. Boiled water is then gently poured over them. Exactly what temperature the water needs to be at, I don’t want to know. Wars have started for less.

I would like to continue this method in this test, but the Uniform WSFBS-200B will only cooperate if I do the process backwards. On a daily basis, I use a metal measure and know how much the total number of beans visibly takes up in my own grinder.

Through years of (flavour) experience, I’ve found the amount of water that suits my needs. Of course, adjusted according to how much coffee I’m making. We’re talking cups here, and then the problem arises.

The Uniform WSFBS-200B measures in a ratio of water to coffee strength. Both are set in the app as ml water and the degrees ‘mild’, ‘nordic’ and ‘intense’ respectively.

When I brew for one person (often myself), I usually use three measures of beans to 770ml of water. Whether that’s a lot or a little depends on taste.

If I want to be fussy and do things my way, I have to use the Wilfa scale and weigh the three measures beforehand or only pour three measures of beans into the grinder. Using the app’s timer, I find out how long the Uniform WSFBS-200B takes to grind the three measures.

Next time, I fill the bean hopper to a maximum of 200g, switch on the grinder and start the app’s timer. When the time is up, I press the comfortably large stop button in the centre of the grinder.

Backwards and cumbersome? Maybe, but it works, and Uniform and I became good friends.

Grinding galore

The Uniform WSFBS-200B has 41 grinding levels. You choose by rotating the upper part of the round grinder. Watch out for your thumb. The stop and start button is located where your finger will naturally place itself. It’s not a good idea to turn while the grinder is running.

The wide range of degrees makes it possible to grind beans for virtually any type of coffee – from espresso to French press and steeping.

How much coffee you grind for which types of coffee, the scale and the app can help. I put the emptied metal bucket on the scale and set the tare in the app. The scale showed ‘0.0’ g even though the can was on it.

I pour three measures of beans into the bucket and the scale reads 18g. That way I know if I want to use the app to select water volume in relation to brew strength or vice versa.

I tested one measure (6g) of beans at three grind levels. From espresso (between 3-7), to pour over (between 14-28) and steap (between 39-41). The degrees mentioned are Wilfa’s suggestions.

Uniform provided a grind for the espresso that was like light powder with no tendency to clumping. The coarser steap was ground evenly and uniformly. The grind for the pour over was particularly successful. The result was airy and worked perfectly.

For years I’ve been annoyed that sometimes the water didn’t run through but left a large pool at the bottom of my paper filter. The grind in my own grinder has simply been too uneven with a tendency to stickiness.

I got the following grind times for 6g of whole beans: Fine (1st setting) took 20.8 seconds. Pour over (26th setting) took 17.08 seconds and steap (41st setting) took 14.43 seconds.

Anti-static container and cleaning

Uniform’s ground coffee container doesn’t have the friendliest lid in the world. It often needs to be adjusted before you can slide the lidded container into the compartment on the front.

At first I thought it was sales hype, but it’s legit and it works. The can is anti-static. In practice, ground coffee won’t stick to the bottom and sides of the can, but will come off easily when you tap the can against the edge of the filter, for example.

Uniform’s design is not flawless. After use, there’s debris inside the compartment and it spills out onto the kitchen counter when you take out the ground coffee pot. The small brush that comes with the grinder takes some, but crumbs shouldn’t happen with a grinder in this league. Wilfa could learn from the design of the Sage Smart Grinder Pro.

Conclusion

Uniform is for users who want precisely ground beans for specific types of coffee. The app is preset to distribute water and amount of ground beans in relation to each other according to the type of coffee.

If you (like me) know in advance how you like your coffee, you can skip the app’s instructions and make your coffee as usual. By doing so, you might end up paying for more than you need.

Conversely, the Wilfa Uniform WSFBS-200B delivers impressively uniformly ground beans, whether you grind for espresso or French press. Which you should expect, because the Uniform has 5.8 cm wide, stainless steel blades of Italian origin. You can see it and feel it.

Some swearing later, we decide to try our best with the two poles and we place them at two extremes of the unshaped garden.

And then it was time for the excitement to begin: was it enough for Goat to create a usable map of the garden?

The answer is a resounding yes! The demarcation works flawlessly, and we breathe a sigh of relief and get our heart rate down. Now it’s playtime!

Simple installation

It’s easy to install the Goat G1-800 and map the garden. It’s also easy to mark small ‘islands’ where you don’t want it to go. After installation, Goat starts driving around on its own to explore the terrain. And this is where we get worried again.

The sensitive sensor with advanced technology doesn’t notice the tennis balls and dog toys scattered around the grass. One of the tennis balls gets run over three times on this reconnaissance trip. Fortunately, Goat hasn’t started mowing the lawn yet.

It only does so after a few minutes when we ask it to. We watch anxiously as it approaches the tennis ball again. Will it tear it up or go around it?

Sensitive sensor

No need to panic. The tennis ball survives, because just over a metre before the Goat turns around. It turns out there’s a dandelion sticking up out of the lawn, which it apparently recognises as an obstacle!

The garden owner has to manually pick all the dandelions before the Goat G1-800 can move freely. And it turns out that it recognises the tennis ball and drives around it. But it would be nice if it wasn’t so nervous about coming into close contact with the yellow flowers on the lawn.

The mowing

After the test period is over, it’s clear that the Ecovacs Goat G1-800 mows a beautiful lawn. There are no visible stripes and a completely uniform carpet of grass. And since it has been mowing daily, it no longer has the problem of seeing dandelions as obstacles to be avoided.

There is also a noticeable and positive difference in the amount of moss – indications are that the lawn may eventually become completely moss-free, which pleases the garden owner.

Conclusion

Ecovacs’ technology requires you to place a number of white and silver coloured poles around the garden for the Goat G1-800 to navigate. We have yet to meet a garden owner who thinks they look good. Therefore, it can’t get a top mark. The fact that you have to check your garden for dandelions and other weeds, which Goat has avoided with its sensitive sensor, is also a drawback.

Narwhal Robotics has just introduced its latest flagship Freo X Ultra to the Scandinavian market. This is the true Swiss Army knife of robotic vacuum cleaners, as the little guy can both vacuum and wash the floors. The little white robot is packed with smart technology and, if your home allows it, can be largely automated to clean all by itself.

A giant box

As mentioned, the Narwhal Freo X Ultra comes in a giant box. There’s a good reason for that. The included base station is quite large, measuring 41.5 × 37 × 43.4 cm and weighing 8.5 kg. This is mainly due to the unit’s ability to wash floors, as the white plastic housing contains two containers for clean and dirty water respectively. Unfortunately, the base station does not also contain a container for the robot vacuum cleaner to empty its rather small container, as we have seen with other manufacturers. At the top is a small control panel with touch function.

The robot itself is somewhat smaller and similar to most other models on the market. It’s chalky white in the purest plastic and has a small tower with a built-in LiDAR sensor on top. If you’re already familiar with Narwhal, it will look quite familiar as the design is almost identical to the previous generation (Narwhal Freo). The true innovation is to be found on the underside.

The Narwal Freo X Ultra boasts a maximum suction power of 8,200 Pa (Narwal Freo has a suction power of 3,000 Pa) and has been equipped with a redesigned Zero-tangling brush. The stronger suction power and new brush should make this model particularly suitable for dog/cat owners. When it comes to the vacuum cleaner bags that attach to the robot itself, a pair of disposable bags are included, as well as a reusable plastic dust chamber. Both disposable bags have built-in air filters and are easily replaced by removing the top of the robot, which acts as a large lid. If you choose to use the reusable plastic container, you must purchase filters from Narwal.

As mentioned, the Freo X Ultra can also mop floors. For this, it uses two triangular mop heads, each of which can rotate at 180 revolutions per minute. The robot finds its way around via its tri-laser obstacle avoidance system with LiDAR SLAM 4.0 integration. Primary control is via Narwal’s own app, but you can also use voice commands via Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri.

Cumbersome map editing

Setting up the Narwal Freo X Ultra is straightforward and takes minutes. You install the device with Bluetooth via the app, which connects to your local network. Once this is done, you can set the device to scan your home – this is where it gets really smart. The robot now drives around and searches every corner of the available rooms. Along the way, it automatically detects the type of surface it is travelling over. The result is finally displayed with a 2D/3D map that can be edited manually if necessary.

Unfortunately, this is where I ran into a bit of a problem. I always thought that a robot vacuum cleaner wasn’t ideal for my old Copenhagen apartment. The space is a bit cramped, and one of the doorsteps between the rooms is a bit higher than the others. It was the latter that resulted in an alternative solution. As the robot couldn’t get from the living room to the hallway, I had to move it manually and create an extra map.

Unfortunately, the map editor doesn’t allow you to merge two maps together, so I have to switch between the different maps every time I need to clean my apartment’s zones. Of course, if you have a multi-storey home, you’ll run into the same problem.

It sucks in a good way

Once the scanning is done, it’s time to put the robot to work. From the app, you choose whether to vacuum, mop the floor or a combination of the two. By default, the vacuum cleaner is set to one of the lower settings. Here it’s not as noisy, but of course it doesn’t suck as hard either. The map function gives you good control over exactly which rooms need to be cleaned, and you can keep track of where and how far the vacuum cleaner is in the process. Most robotic vacuum cleaners have problems with carpets. With the Narwal Freo X Ultra’s 8,200 PA suction power, it does the job just fine, even if it does make more noise than a wooden floor. The unit can be set to adjust itself up and down according to need and surface. That’s smart.

The many built-in sensors mean that the Narwal Freo X Ultra can, in theory, elegantly steer around clutter and furniture, and the new Zero-tangling brush should mean that the robot doesn’t get stuck in free-hanging cables and the like. My impression is that it handles obstacles quite well for the most part, but you’d be doing yourself a big favour if you clean up and remove things from the floor before you start it up. I experienced a couple of times when the new smart brush stalled due to a thin cable, like an apron strap getting tangled in the brush head. When this happens, the robot stops and asks for help. The same thing could happen with a regular vacuum cleaner, so I wouldn’t blame the robot per se, but it does mean that I wouldn’t let the robot clean if I wasn’t home to rescue it if it got stuck in a cable under the sofa or something.

After each cleaning, Narwal Freo X Ultra returns itself to its base station, where a special cleaning function kicks in. This applies to both vacuuming and mopping floors.

No automatic vacuum cleaner emptying

Unlike many other robotic vacuum cleaners, the Freo X Ultra has no container for vacuumed dirt in the base station. Instead, it compresses the vacuumed dirt. Both the disposable bags and plastic container hold 1 litre, and Narwal claims you can clean for up to seven weeks before the filter needs to be emptied or replaced. Of course, this depends on the size of your home and how dirty it gets. One thing’s for sure though – you can’t just go out and buy new disposable bags or filters, they have to be ordered in from Narwal. This can get expensive in the long run. A smarter solution would have been for the robot to transfer the dirt to a container in the base station, like the DreameBot L20 Ultra, which has a built-in 3.2-litre dirt collection bag in its base station.

Cleaning the mop after use

The mop part of the robot is more practical. After mopping, the dirty water is sucked up into the base station’s dedicated container and the mop heads are automatically cleaned and dried. The robot is then refilled with fresh water and detergent from the base station’s clean water and soap tanks and is ready for new challenges.

Conclusion

The Narwhal Freo X Ultra is a great invention that, with a few weekly trips around the home, can significantly reduce dirt build-up. However, as mentioned above, no tree grows into the sky and a robot will never be as flexible and efficient as an old-fashioned Miele vacuum cleaner or a more contemporary Dyson. Whether you should buy a robot depends on your cleaning needs and level of cleaning. Personally, I’ve grown to love the extra cleaning and see the Narwal Freo X Ultra as a great addition for those who want to keep dirt at bay and have more time for chores other than boring things like vacuuming and mopping floors.