review – Think all robot vacuums are the same? Of course they all look round. Trifo’s Ollie fits that pattern, but surprised me a few times during testing, and it’s reliable enough that it’s definitely worth a look if you think robotic vacuums are in your future.
what is it?
Trifo Ollie is a robotic vacuum with increased suction and brushes based on pet owner needs. Other features include HEPA and charcoal filters, map management (including restricted areas) and an onboard camera for live viewing while cleaning.
What’s in the box?
- Trifo Ollie Robot Vacuum
- docking station
- Power Adapter
- Pet Hair Extractor
- Fun and fresh pointers with batteries
- fragrance pack
- User Manual and Warranty Card
Hardware Specifications
Suck: 4,000 Pa (Pet (P) or Ultra (U) models)
Bin capacity: 600 ml
run: 2 hours fully charged
camera: 1080p true color camera with time-of-flight depth perception
Design and Features
The Trifo Ollie is a somewhat stereotypical round vacuum that drives to its own dock to charge. Unlike some other robot cleaners, Ollie is back at the dock and is also able to speak to you clearly in English (and 9 other languages) instead of tones or beeps you have to decode.
It has two main drive wheels, a front wheel (shopping cart) and a sweeping brush that pulls everything in the robot’s path towards the larger hair extractor below. Two latches on the trailing edge of the air intake make it super easy to open and clear the inevitable tangles.
Includes a separate laser pointer for tormenting your cat or dog. It aims to be approximately 30º behind the robot’s direction of travel to keep pets out of the cleaning path.
set up
Connect the charging base to a wall outlet near where you want to place the Trifo Ollie, then place the vacuum on the base so that the rear rests on the brass charging pad. I had to use an extension cord to get it to the nearest outlet.
Download the app to your phone, then follow the prompts to set up your account and get started. This includes installing several updates. By now, you’ve heard the robot tell you aloud what it’s doing many times, and will form an opinion on how you feel about it, including how to find the volume level in the app. There’s also a silent mode to make things even quieter.
Once all setup and updates are done, you can start cleaning for the first time. You can do this by pressing the clean button on the robot itself, but why would you do it when you can do it anywhere in the app?
Performance
This is Ollie (one of my two dogs), he’s a lovely guy and a serious hair remover.
This is also Ollie. I can’t say these two are the best buds, but they got along just fine and the guy cleaned up well after the other.
if you have ever used Robot Vacuum, then you know that something comes with the territory. These could be obstacles, dangling cables, slender carpets, etc. All of this requires your presence when the robot cleans. In my case, the Trifo Ollie robot vacuum has some game-changing features.
The first is obstacle avoidance. Of course, it still has a bumper in front of it that taps against a wall to tell the robot to turn around, but the depth perception of the onboard camera is so good that it doesn’t usually touch objects. It paused for a while, then changed direction and continued cleaning.
Second, the camera has live view, which means you can keep an eye on it (or, more accurately, see what it sees). Perfect if you have a slender rug that you like to wrap up in a collection brush and hold your vacuum hostage. When combined with the wonders of WiFi access, I can start cleaning in my California home at my mom’s kitchen table in New York and noting the troublesome carpet in our bedroom. The rug is shown below. That shouldn’t be a problem, but it’s just over an inch tall enough for Ollie to be unable to climb it, but it’s been stuck in a corner before. As a result, it didn’t pass through the entrance to our bedroom.
The third is the mapping and cleaning process. When you start your first cleaning with the Trifo Ollie robot vacuum, the map on your phone will start to appear. Because of the camera, it will appear in the disjointed blocks it’s driving, but also in front of what the camera sees. So you’ll start seeing the path it’s taking and a wall 20 feet away. The room fills up as cleaning continues. Happily, it’s clear where Ollie can and can’t be cleaned.
The first screenshot shows a normal rectangular-shaped room downstairs. Ollie sees all the walls on the first 360 rotation, then starts cleaning, showing tan. This is a good representation of how well a vacuum can hit an entire room. There are wall-mounted cabinets on the right edge, they float on the floor and there isn’t enough room for a robot to get in, which is why there is an unfinished cleaning job there.
The second and third screenshots show upstairs where I placed the charging stand and where Ollie normally operates. I’ve deleted the map and let it start over. In the second image, you can see that the charging cradle is in the middle, and Ollie is in the guest room on the right. The master bedroom is on the left, so far only visible from the doorway. In the third image, Ollie has entered the main doorway several times, so you can see broken walls and other obstacles.
Some notes to pass. You can adjust the volume of the speaking voice. It’s preset to 50/100, and it’s pretty loud already. I turned it all off. You can also set up Ollie to work with Alexa or Google Assistant. I don’t use any of these, so this is not a feature I tested.
Cliff avoidance works well. There was a set of stairs outside our bedroom and Ollie saw it coming and had no problem avoiding it, which is fine as this has always been a problem with robot vacuums I’ve used.
As for cleaning, I am happy with both the coverage and the power. I used to have some robots looking at the floor and you might not be able to tell that cleaning has happened. Ollie’s path management seems to work well, it’s really easy to empty the litter box and disengage the sweeper and brush. Here’s a photo of the amount of shedding by double dogs in our house.
This pusher releases the bin, which then flips open with its own latch.
If the bin is too full, you’ll end up with some extra hair in the roller, but I’ve yet to leave a clump of hair on the floor like other robot vacuums. You can also see tangles around the rotary sweeper. It takes about a minute to clear all of them. Pretty easy.
The laser pointer felt like a last-minute addition and wasn’t worth it. It works, but it’s completely independent of the robot and doesn’t have any connection to the app, so you’ll either have to hold it in your hand to mess with your cat, or manually turn it on and let the robot drive it before cleaning. It also had very vague instructions and didn’t say how to install it on the bot, so I just had to look at the pictures on their website and figure it out before taking it off.
Another setting I didn’t need to try is motion detection. Because it has a camera and is connected to a power source while charging, the app allows you to receive push notifications if Ollie detects motion. It’s fun, but you probably have a pet, which means you’re likely to get a lot of notifications. You can also chat with your pet through the app. My dog probably doesn’t care, so this is not a useful feature for me.
The only time I think depth perception on the camera doesn’t work is during initial cleaning in the hallway, and it keeps hitting a framed mirror leaning against the wall. My guess is that the angle of the mirror is preventing Ollie from seeing it as a wall, and the mirror above the frame might be tricking it into thinking the room is deeper than it is because it doesn’t see its own reflection. That said, it was properly disposed of after the first cleaning, so it appears to be learning from its own findings.
Another nitpicky thing is map management. You should be able to edit the map for a number of different reasons, and I’m having some trouble there. I can’t separate the hallway from the bedroom and label it separately. I am able to set an exclusion zone but not label it. I also couldn’t set up a completely separate map for the lower level, just remapped it, and apparently couldn’t find its base station when I was done, because it was upstairs. The good news is that this is all app-based editing, so hopefully the app will continue to get better.
The Trifo Ollie Robot Vacuum app already does a great job of showing you the cleaning history, providing brush and filter usage times so you can plan changes accordingly, schedule controls, and even don’t bother with settings to override any schedules you’ve set.
As I mentioned before, it does clean really well, so the increased suction they mentioned does seem to do the trick. Here is a quick video taken by the car camera and saved to my iPhone. It doesn’t save the audio which may be a privacy setting?
There’s also an informative video from their website here that showcases all the features nicely and is worth a look.
what do I like
- Reliability and suction
- Mapping and Common Application Features
- camera view
- price!
what would i change
- Increased height limit for area rugs
- Release the laser pointer
- Longer power cord cables
final thoughts
I am very pleased with the cleaning ability of the Trifo Ollie robot vacuum and the generally low maintenance required to keep it running. Apart from emptying the bin and some tangles, it’s ready, I can start it from anywhere, tell it where and where not to clean, I can check it with video to make sure it’s not stuck on the carpet or cable. Aside from a few finicky items, the main complaint is the inability to climb on the slightly thicker carpet. Solid value for the dollar.
price: $299.99
where to buy (this: Amazon (Automatic discounts and coupons save a lot of money over MSRP)
resource: This product sample is provided by Triford
