Ezviz RE4 review: A cheap and cheerful cleaning robot

The idea of ​​a robot that can mop hard floors and vacuum carpets is great, but there’s a bit of a price issue. Even entry-level examples of the brand, such as the Ultenic T20 Pro, start at over £200, while self-loading machines with spinners, such as Tapo’s new RV50 Pro Omni will set you back around £500.

Finally, all-singing and all-dancing robots like Dream’s Aqua10 Ultra Roller Complete can cost more than £1,000. Obviously, there is a place for a basic mop’n’vac priced around £100, and that’s where the Ezviz RE4 comes in. At the time of writing, the RE4 can be picked up for £109.99, which is nuts for a robot that can wash and clean.

Naturally, for that kind of money, you’ll have to sacrifice some advanced features like moving mop heads and the kind of AI-enhanced navigation that the latest high-end models boast. But as long as it can find its way, give your carpets a clean surface and wipe up basic spills, doesn’t that matter?

What do you get for the money?

RE4 is available in two variants. The cheapest model comes with a simple recharging dock, but there is another option with a self-removing charging station, which means you don’t need to empty the dust from the robot itself.

At the time of writing, Amazon is offering the basic version for £109.99 and the self-release model for £114, down from the usual price of £199. That makes the self-release model the obvious choice unless a larger booth creates problems for your space. Our review unit came with a basic charging dock, but otherwise, the two devices are identical.

Physically, the RE4 is a typical Shenzen robo-vac: it’s a round thing 75mm long, made mostly of plastic and has a diameter of 345mm. The center tower LiDAR (yes, LiDAR!) adds another 15mm to the overall height.

There’s also a physical on/off switch on the back, as well as the usual pressure-sensitive power and home/dock buttons on top. That’s a useful feature for people who might want to turn off the unit fully instead of leaving it on standby.

The rear section has a removable waste caddy, which contains a dust box and mop liquid container. The dust box is small, so you will have to empty it often. I found I needed to empty the caddy after two runs.

The mop reservoir holds 300ml of liquid, and there is a warning not to add detergent. Other than that, I added a dash of regular floor cleaner, which didn’t seem to have a negative effect on the unit but did make the kitchen smell nice.

A thin mop pad (two included with the RE4, plus two dust filters and a spare side brush) attaches to the plastic plate, which in turn attaches to the bottom of the dust caddy. It’s a very basic system, as you’d expect at this price.

For short carpets and rugs, you can leave the mop pad in place and simply tell the system not to drain, but for deep carpets, it’s best to remove the mop attachment altogether.

The mop attachment obviously affects the length of the system because as it is attached, it gets stuck under furniture that would not have caused a problem when it was not attached.

How to use?

Initial setup

If you have stopped the robot vacuum, you will have ER4 working again after a while. Even if you’ve never used one, you’ll be done in minutes.

It’s a simple matter: unpack the transport packages, connect the dock, place the robot on the dock, download the app and set up an account. Then scan the QR code on the robot, enter the protection of your 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network, and you’re done. The robot will then set off on its own personal Lewis & Clark expedition to map its surroundings. This was done very quickly without any unexpected dramas.

RE4 was not mounted on the stand during the initial dwell or subsequent cleaning runs. That said, after the £1,300 robot vacuum I tested recently threw itself down those stairs with disastrous results, I still rank the top as a no-go. The ER4 also successfully navigated under my bed.

RE4 also made no more drama in the rat’s nest of power and data cables under my office desk than systems costing five times as much. More often than not, it cleaned around them successfully, but after one snag, I set this area as a no-go zone to avoid future problems.

The RE4 is not the fastest robot vacuum on the market, due to its weak 1A power adapter. A full charge of the 4,930mAh takes just four and a half hours, although that’s 30 minutes faster than the manufacturer claims.

One peripheral thing I liked about RE4 is that it speaks in a way that is closer to British English than American English. It might be a little thing, but I prefer my gadgets to sound more like Helen Mirren than Caroline Leavitt.

A companion app

The app’s mapping system works well enough and supports all the expected options such as renaming rooms, merging spaces and setting entry points. You can also set a cleaning profile for each different space by adjusting four degrees of vacuum power and three degrees of wetness for each mop.

My only beef is that the Ezviz maps look messy, with lots of jagged lines rather than straight lines and weird phantom gaps. To be clear, none of this in any way interferes with the performance of the EZ4; it’s just that the map images are confusing and less interesting than many of our competing apps.

The app doesn’t directly allow voice control, but Ezviz supports integration with Alexa and Google Home (though not Apple HomeKit). Once I connected the Ezviz app to Google Home, the “Hey Google, vacuum the bedroom” command worked fine, as did the reverse command to stop and return to the charging station.

The app also has a remote control function, but given that there is no camera to get a view of the robot’s destination, this is of limited use.

Is it good to find your way?

Overall, RE4 performed well, rarely getting stuck in confined spaces. It cleverly avoided throwing itself down the stairs, and successfully navigated around curtains, shoes and random boxes I threw in its path.

On the occasions when the ER4 got stuck, it required manual intervention, it was able to remove itself quickly, and it had no problem finding and returning to the charging station.

Up front, it performed more reliably than another cheap robot vacuum I recently tested, the Ultentic T20, which had an annoying tendency to bend when trying to find its dock.

To avoid something

RE4 failed to dodge our standard pseudo-dog poo, but given that no other system we’ve tested recently has been able to do so, I can’t mark it here ahead of time.

Additionally, the RE4 tended to go into low-profile objects, depending on the front bumper rather than its camera finding its way around obstacles.

RE4’s contact avoidance prediction may be based solely on having an IR detection system rather than one based on visible light cameras.

There is nothing by myself It is not good at this, but it tends to throw out small and simple things, which can annoy the most fastidious householder. I could always tell when the bathroom was cleaned because my scales were out of place by a few inches.

Steps, rugs and thresholds

Ezviz says the RE4 can jump over obstacles up to 20mm tall, which seems about right. I placed two idle shelves, one on top of the other, to create a 22mm barrier that the ER4 rolled over without a problem.

The rugs proved to be less of a hindrance even in the bathroom, where my rugs are deeper and thinner than elsewhere. Some robot vacuums tend to pick up small rugs and drag them up and down the unit, which is the downside of high suction rates, but the ER4 didn’t suffer from this problem.

Moving from one room to another by crossing the edge of a carpet is one of the basic accomplishments of any robot vacuum, and again, the ER4 hits the mark here, happily moving from carpet to carpet to hard floor and back again.

How well does it clean?

I’m honestly impressed with the RE4’s cleaning capabilities, considering it’s only rated at 4,000Pa, which makes it the weakest of the ones I’ve tested by some margin. In comparison, the Dreme Aqua10 is rated at 30,000Pa stronger, 7.5 times more.

Performance in our benchmark tests was on par with the 8,000PA Ultenic, and visually, my carpets always looked cleaner and smoother after the ER4 did its thing.

Given the basics of hacking, performance on this front was average; all RE4 does is wipe the wet cloth on the floor. It removes dust and loose dirt so that anything dry will still be there once the ER4 is gone.

If you’re looking for a powerful hard floor cleaning system, you need to cough up for a powerful mop attachment system like the Dreme Aqua10 or the new Tapo RV50 Pro Omni.

Marks should be given to the ER43 for its effectiveness, however. Normal vacuum run for my 21m² topping up took just 28 minutes and used 38% of a full charge. That makes the RE4 one of the fastest, most efficient vacuum robots I’ve tested.

Should you buy Ezviz RE4?

Considering how cheap the Ezviz RE4 is, it’s hard to knock it too much for its weak points, such as avoiding obstacles that often come into contact with ground objects, and its clumsy and convenient map visualization.

Its cleaning performance is excellent, as long as you don’t expect it to dry out your lino, and it’s efficient, fast and reliable. Recharge time can be a problem if you have a large house, but it didn’t cause any problems for me.

The small dust trap on the robot itself is a bit of a pain, but if you can extend it to a self-emptying model, which is also very cheap, even this is not a bad point. Overall, RE4 is a bargain. If you’ve always wanted to give robot vacuums a whirl, but lost track of the price until now, here’s your chance to get your foot in the door.