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Roborock S6: the best robot vacuum for hard floors, long hair and messy kids

November 28, 2019 by M.B. Grant Leave a Comment

This summer, we bought a Roborock S6 robot vacuum to help keep up with the messes our baby and toddler make. We love our children very much, but damn – the daily struggle against crumbs and dirt was intense.

We did a lot of research and read tons of reviews before choosing the Roborock S6, an intelligent, app-powered autonomous floor vacuum (official site). We’ve had it for 4 months now and have definitely given it a workout.

In short, this vacuum is amazing. It has relieved us of a ton of sweeping and mopping duties and elevated the overall standard of cleanliness in our home by cleaning places we didn’t (or couldn’t) regularly clean and doing a better job of it.

Before we got it, everyone was telling us to just lower our standards (and then lower them again) but our floors were getting super gross and I was really tired of trying to keep up. Plus, I love a clean home, and I didn’t want to relax my standards – especially with a baby crawling on (and eating off of) the floor!

Thanks to the Roborock S6, we didn’t have to lower our standards at all. Quite the opposite, actually – my standards are now higher than they were before.

We named it Jeff.

Note: Like all products we review here on HomeUpgraded, our Roborock S6 vacuum is something we bought ourselves and have put through extensive use before writing about it. Everything in this article is our own research and opinions.

Roborock S6 features at a glance

The Roborock S6 vacuum is an app-controlled, Internet-enabled smart vacuum for hardwood, tile, and carpet. It is circle-shaped, so you might be wondering how it reaches into corners. The vacuum has a little spinning “arm” that collects dust and dirt from corners and edges – places my traditional upright vacuum cannot reach without an attachment.

It’s both a vacuum and a mop (you decide which mode it runs in) and you can operate it either from the smartphone app or via buttons on the vacuum itself. You can even use the app when you aren’t home. It docks and undocks all on its own, but you have to empty its dustbin yourself. The dustbin looks dinky compared to what we’re used to seeing on canister and upright vacs, but it’s large enough for a full sweep of our 2700 sq. ft home. We empty it between runs.

It takes about 110 minutes and most of a full battery to do our 2700 sq. ft. home, but we often target specific rooms with the app that lets you draw no-go zones and designate room boundaries.

See the Roborock S6 on Amazon.com

Why we love our Roborock S6

We had heard of the Roomba by iRobot, but we had also heard the complaints that the Roomba sorta of drunkenly zig-zags around your house in a crazy-making way and saw someone suggesting the Xiaomi Roborock S6 as an alternative because of its mapping and stricter line-by-line approach to cleaning rooms.

That’s how we got going down the research rabbit hole and ended up picking a vacuum that lacks the name recognition of Roomba but has nonetheless made us very, very happy we picked it.

✔ Our floors are cleaner than they’ve ever been – and that’s saying something, with two messy children, my own long hair, and plenty of foot-traffic around the house. I love walking barefoot around my house again. Honestly, this thing raised the bar on cleanliness since it goes under things and into places I only scrubbed occasionally. I’m actually a little embarrassed because I thought I was doing a good job, but this vacuum finds everything.

✔ Run the vacuum from anywhere. You don’t have to be home! You can start the vacuum from anywhere you have an Internet connection. I usually run it when I’m away from home because I don’t want to be in its way, but it’s not a huge nuisance if you do run it while home.

✔ It fits in corners and goes under furniture. Let’s be honest, I rarely moved furniture or push things out of the way for vacuuming. Fortunately, Jeff has no problem gliding under our king-size bed, dining room chairs, or our bathroom vanity.

✔ Does not suck up drapes. We have long drapes that end just above the floor in multiple rooms. I used to tie them up or drape them over nearby furniture but Jeff just eats around them.

✔ Works on hardwood, tile, and carpet. Our home is mostly hardwoods and tile, but we have a number of rugs of varying thicknesses and types. Jeff handles everything from our door mats to the oversize carpet samples we use in the children’s rooms. (We have not tried it on bath mats, we pick those up before running the vacuum.) It has not chewed any corners, left any rugs curled up, or otherwise bothered them. It mounts even our thickest rug (1/2″).

Jeff works on our low-pile rug, switching between tile and rug as he traverses the room.

✔ Easy to empty and easy to clean the brush. I’ll go into detail more on this later but basically emptying out my upright vacuum always squicked me out because I had to reach into it and pull the globs of dust and out of the canister with my hand. I’m happy to say that the dust and dirt just falls out of the Roborock’s bin, and the brush is easy to snap in and out of place for the occasional de-hairing.

✔ Goodbye, tedious chore. With two small kids, sweeping and vacuuming was consuming a small part of my life. I was vacuuming and sweeping after every meal and snack and I was just really tired of it.

How it works: using the Roborock S6

Preparing to vacuum

We pick up any toys, laundry, shoes, cables, etc. from around the floors and then start the vacuum using the app. We don’t move furniture for it, but if you do, it’ll figure out the room has changed and adapt to the new layout.

Note: You can also carry the vacuum to the room you want it to vacuum and push a button on the vacuum to run it.

Using the Roborock app

The app is easy to use and [as of October 2019] lets more than one person “own” the vacuum and manage it via their own smartphones. This lets both my husband and I start, stop, or view the vacuum’s current progress.

You don’t have to be on your home WiFi to use the app or control the robot. To start the vacuum, open the app and tap “Enter robot” to see the current map of your home.

Here, you can pick rooms to vacuum, have it clean the whole house, or define a box-shaped area for it to vacuum. You can set no-go zones (shown here as red boxes) and partition rooms. You can also access settings and drop a “pin” to tell the vacuum to vacuum a particular location.

Mapping

The robot generates and saves a map of your house the first time you run it. You can generate a new map at any time, and you can save up to 3 separate maps. You can divide spaces into separate rooms, set no-go zones, and more. A saved map retains its no-go zones. Saved maps are useful for bringing the robot to a different floor. You have to pick it up yourself and take it to the new floor, but it should figure it out from there. [Note: We live in a one-story home and have not tried this feature.]

I usually target a specific room to vacuum. This is because some of our rooms get dirty at like ten times the rate that other rooms do. The app makes it easy to pick a room and start the cleaning cycle. The robot leaves the dock on its own and heads to the room(s) you picked.

In this map, the Roborock S6 just returned to its dock (middle of the lilac-color room) after vacuuming our kitchen/dining/family room area. The red regions are “no go” zones I set up manually and saved. These are areas with lots of cables and hazards like toys.

The rooms don’t have to be adjacent to each other. When it’s finished, it plays a recorded announcement and returns to its dock.

The whole process is completely hands-free and can be monitored in real-time through the app.

3 side-by-side screenshots from the Roborock app, showing how the robot first traces the room and then fills it in, going line-by-line and pivoting around the legs of chairs and tables.

You can use the app from anywhere you have an Internet connection. Yes, this means you can run the vacuum while you’re at work or out running errands. I usually run it when I’m out with the kids so they don’t interfere with it. Coming home to a clean home is the best.

October 2019 update: They just updated the app to allow more than one person to operate and monitor the vacuum! This was, by far, the biggest problem with the app (the fact that only one person could “own” and manage the vacuum) so I look forward to sharing the responsibility of running Jeff with my husband, haha.

Vacuuming

It runs quietly enough that you can have a (somewhat loud) conversation in the same room as it, but it’s also loud enough that I wouldn’t run it while trying to watch a movie or while someone is sleeping. Ours goes cu-clunk, cu-clunk as it passes over the grout between our large kitchen floor tiles, and it becomes noticeably louder when it’s working on carpet, but overall I would describe it as less noisy and intrusive than our upright vacuum.

It’s definitely slower than I am with an upright, but it’s also way more thorough and goes places I don’t bother with.

When it’s done with the area(s) you assigned it to, it finds its dock and puts itself back on its charger. The whole process is very hands-off, but you do have to dump out the dust bin yourself.

The Roborock S6’s cleaning capabilities and maintenance are covered later in this review.

Jeff finds his dock, lines up, and scoots into position for charging.

Scheduling the robot vacuum with “Timer”

You can schedule the Roborock S6 to run at a set time, which is called “Timer” in the app, and you can also tell it when not to run with “Do Not Disturb”, but we have not used the scheduling feature because our floors are constantly covered in a smattering of toys that we have to manually pick up right before running the vacuum.

However, I will say this – everyone in the house is eager to pick up “for the robot”. Before we got this robot vacuum the floors only got picked up maybe once a week (by me, moments before I vacuumed the room myself). Now, since we run the robot vacuum basically every day and since not that much clutter has accumulated since the last time we ran him, the floors stay a lot less cluttered overall, and I no longer have to pick up so much clutter from the floors myself! HUGE WIN!

Cleaning capability

I am astonished at how much dust our Roborock S6 picks up in just one run. I’m actually a bit embarrassed, because I thought I was doing a good job with the sweeping and mopping.

Our home has these wedge-shaped HVAC registers that our traditional upright vacuum cannot without using an attachment. The Roborock handles these corners with ease.

My biggest resistance to getting a robot vacuum in the first place was I assumed it wasn’t as powerful as my upright vac, but we run it far more frequently and it’s way more thorough than I was and it reaches into little places I wasn’t, so maybe it wasn’t power that mattered so much but overall meticulousness. Either way, I have zero complaints about its power.

It picks up glitter, leaves, Cheerios, corn flakes, dried rice, dried Play-Doh and other annoying-to-sweep things so I’m very happy with its ability to keep up with our kids.

Meticulous vacuuming

The Roborock’s methodical, line-by-line approach to cleaning is what initially drew us to it. First, it outlines the room, then it goes “line by line” down the room, like an inkjet printer. (It uses its saved map as a “starting point”, but it doesn’t follow the map blindly – if your furniture has moved that’s fine, it’ll figure it out.)

We moved into this house in July and got Jeff a month later and as we set it up I thought, There’s no way the house can even be that dirty yet – but it came back from its maiden voyage packed with dust and dirt. I think I could sweep and mop before running the vacuum and it would find loads of things I missed.

Some of this is because Jeff goes places I don’t or can’t, such as under the bed and some of our furniture, but some of it is also because it goes slower and more methodically than a human. It also doesn’t seem to kick up much dust as it goes, so maybe that helps it capture more as well.

The Roborock S6 vacuums somewhere I rarely did – under our IKEA Hemnes. (It also has no problem navigating around larger random things left on the floor, even if they weren’t there during the initial mapping.)

Either way, it’s clear that the Roborock S6 does a way better job than I do with a traditional upright vacuum and mop.

Mopping mode

We use vacuum mode as our default and only switch to mopping on occasion. (If you’re wondering whether you even need vacuuming if your home has no carpet in it, yes you do. The vacuuming takes the place of sweeping in that case, and you definitely need to sweep before you mop.)

The mopping mode is for “light mopping”. I’m not sure how light is “light”, and we haven’t truly put it through its paces yet. (I’ll report back once we’re through a winter with this thing.)

The Roborock S6 comes with two reusable mop pads and several disposable mop pads.

Rugs and irregular objects

The Roborock S6 seems to have no problem going from our hard floors to our rugs. It doesn’t curl the edges or get trapped.

Our rugs include:

  • Rubber-border “utility” rugs by our service door and front door
  • Carpet sample style rugs in our children’s rooms and play areas
  • Vinyl anti-fatigue mat at the kitchen sink
  • Decorative rugs under the master bed and living room sofa
Clockwise starting at top left: our children’s thin play rug, our service door utility mat, the oversize carpet sample in our daughter’s room, and a decorative rug in our living room. The Roborock S6 navigates all of these with ease.

Here’s a weird place in our house that I didn’t like to vacuum myself – the baby jail on top of one of our rugs. It’s also crumb central. The vacuum had to switch between tile mode and rug mode as it worked its way around the baby jail, but it managed to get all of the crushed Cheerio dust that bedazzles this general area.

The baby jail has moved a few feet since Jeff last mapped it, but the Roborock S6 adapts on the fly.

Furniture

Tables and chairs – The Roborock S6 pivots around the legs of tables and chairs to get every last crumb from under the table. I just love not having to move the chairs to vacuum like I used to.

Beds – I didn’t fully appreciate the Roborock’s short stature until I realized it was going under our bed every time it vacuums our bedroom. Let’s just say I almost never vacuum under the bed. Now, the space under the bed is getting vacuumed all the time. I love it.

Kitchen cabinets – This is another place that tends to get really gross because it’s harder for me to clean it (or even see that it’s dirty). Jeff fits in the space under the cabinet faces and vacuums up every crumb from in front of the toe kick without scratching or damaging the wood.

Roborock S6 fits under our kitchen cabinet faces for extra cleaning goodness.

What about small stuff left on the floor?

I feel like the “hazardous item” size threshold is about that of a toddler sock. Anything smaller or shorter than a small sock and the Roborock S6 is either going to roll over it and try to suck it up or get trapped on it somehow.

Obviously, we haven’t tested this exhaustively (we don’t want to break our robot), but we have had a few mishaps…

Phone charge cable – I once found Jeff trapped, unable to leave our room because my phone’s charge cable had wrapped around the brush and was holding him in place. He kept trying to turn around, run the length of the cord back to its source and then try to leave again, but the cord kept him tethered. He was stuck in a loop trying to free himself.

Sound machine cable – We set Jeff loose in the baby’s room, forgetting about the white noise machine under her crib. The machine has a very fine, thin cord, which Jeff pulled it hard enough to unplug it from the wall and dragged it a few feet from its starting position. Fortunately, the cord itself was perfectly fine, despite being thin and delicate.

Toddler-size sock – Jeff pushed this small sock around a bit but did not consume it.

Puzzle piece – This foam puzzle piece gave Jeff some trouble. The vacuum mounted it and switched to carpet mode in effort to suck it up. We were present and able to pause the robot and pull it out. The puzzle piece and the robot were both fine.

Sheet of paper – A sheet of paper got wrinked as Jeff pushed it into the table legs but there no damage to the vacuum.

Crayons – Another time, we found a half-chewed crayon that was had gotten worn down by Jeff’s brushes. (The vacuum itself was fine, but the crayon looks pretty wild and seems to have some bristles stuck to it now). Crayons are definitely a hazard to the Roborock.

Jeff ate a crayon 🙁 Luckily, he was fine.

This is basically why we don’t use the Timer (schedule) feature – we need to manually clean up the floors before running our Roborock S6, because while it’s pretty good at avoiding hazards and hasn’t gotten into any real trouble yet, it’s not perfect, and our kids leave everything on the floor.

What’s in the box?

The Roborock S6 comes with its dock, power cable, instruction manual, two reusable mop pads, a small stack of disposable mop pads, and a replacement air filter.

Vacuum maintenance

Like any vacuum, the Roborock S6 needs periodic maintenance and part replacement. The app tracks the vacuum’s usage and suggests maintenance of various components every so often. Note that this isn’t based on the actual degradation of the components, just an assumption of their state after X hours of use.

We’ve run ours for a grand total of 33 hours so far, and we’ve got a long way to go before we need to replace anything. (I left the sensors one at 0% so you can see what it looks like when it gets to zero on something.)

The Roborock S6 app’s Maintenance page displays the remaining life of various vacuum parts.

Replacement parts and accessories are inexpensive. They’re typically sold as a bundle on Amazon. You get multiples of each part (two brushes, six spinning feet, four filters, etc.) in the bundle.

Roborock S6 replacement parts on Amazon.com

Emptying the dustbin

Emptying the canister on my upright vacuum was a disgusting experience: I often had to reach into the canister to loosen the jammed-up dust and hair wads using my fingers. (Barf.)

So far, the Roborock has not made me touch any of the crud it picks up. It falls out of the dustbin with a few knocks against the inside of our trash can.

I cannot believe how much crap this vacuum finds even though we run it every other day. We must have been living in absolute filth before we got this robot vacuum.

Cleaning the roller brush

We’ve only had to clean the main brush twice in 3 months of owning it so far and I’m not sure if that’s a normal cadence or exceptional or what. I have hair that reaches about halfway down my back and I’m losing it at a rate that indicates I should be bald by this time next year, so my hair tends to be a challenge for any vac we own.

Fortunately, my long hair doesn’t seem to jam the Roborock and since the brush can be lifted out of the vacuum it is easy to clean the roller (at least, compared to my upright vac where the roller is not removable, so I get down on the floor with some scissors to cut my hair off the roller).

Removing the main brush: push the two slider buttons toward each other.
Close up view of the main brush. You can remove the yellow cap to pull hair and string off the brush.

Washing the mopping pads

When it’s time to mop, you attach a mopping pad. There are disposable mop pads and reusable mop pads. We’ve only used the reusable mop pads so far. The mopping pads are supposedly machine washable but we have elected to hand wash ours.

Here’s a brand new pad vs. a pad after one mopping. You get two of these with the Roborock, so if you do a lot of mopping you could have one in use and one in the laundry.

Roborock S6 reusable mop pads – before and after one mopping session.

The bottom line

So that’s it – we love our robot vacuum! It took a daily chore I was sick of doing and turned it into something I could automate and have done when I wasn’t even home. Before we bought our Roborock vacuum were considering a cleaning service, but those run about $75/week where we live. We quickly “broke even” on this vacuum purchase, and it’s still going strong after 4 months of regular use (we run it about every other day). I’ll come back and post an update if the vacuum ever fails or requires a major repair, but so far we are thrilled with it.

We recommend

Roborock S6 Robotic Vacuum Cleaner

Smart and efficient

Workhorse smart vacuum that keeps up with kids, long hair, and daily messes. Works on tiles, hardwood, and carpet, and manages the transitions with ease. Control it from anywhere with an easy to use app.

Buy the Roborock S6

Filed Under: Appliances, Reviews Tagged With: automation, roborock, robot vacuum

Review: Keystone KSTAP14B portable AC kept us cool during Seattle’s 2016 heatwave

August 26, 2016 by M.B. Grant 1 Comment

Last updated: 8/26/2016

Our Keystone KSTAP14B portable AC rating: 4.5/5

stars_4_and_a_half

It’s roasting here in Seattle, Keystone portable AC saved us from melting

It’s HOT here in Seattle, but our Keystone KSTAP14B portable AC unit arrived just in time for yet another 90 degree day.

keystone_portable_AC_setup_2016

It’s about the size of a mini fridge and it vents hot air out your nearest window while expelling cold air into the room. Depending on your room size, it maintains anywhere from -6 degrees to -15 degrees difference from the ambient temperature of your home. How fast it does it also depends on the room size, but you should feel a difference within 10 minutes in a bedroom-size room and in about 25 mins in a bigger room.

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keystone_ac_in_bedroom

Pros

There’s a lot to love with the Keystone portable AC:

  • It’s portable! Or at least, relatively easy to move around compared with other styles of air conditioners thanks to its wheels and upright design. (However, at ~80 lbs, it is not a travel air conditioner.)
  • Cools a bedroom fast and effectively
  • About as loud as a box fan on high, and the noise is smooth and consistent so I found it easy to sleep in the same room
  • It has a remote! And that remote has all the same buttons as the AC unit itself
  • Caster wheels for easy re-positioning
  • Flexible exhaust tube is generously long, ~6 feet total
  • Runs on normal 115V outlet (just be careful not to run too many other things on the same circuit, it does take most of the circuit’s power)
  • No water pan to empty (on AC mode and fan mode; dehumidifier mode requires some emptying)
  • No protrusion from the window, so it looks nice from the outside
  • Washable mesh filter
  • Programmable 24-hour on/off timer so you can set it up to cool your place before you get home
  • Move it from room to room in under 10 minutes, like you might a box fan, since you have to redo the window kit. We moved it from our living room to our bedroom at nighttime, though, and we had the whole thing up and running again in about 8 minutes.

Here’s a video showing how it doesn’t “cycle” or rattle or sound annoying like a lot of in-wall AC units do.

Cons

  • Heavy! But this is true of any portable AC unit
  • Included window kit only works with windows that slide sideways or up and down
  • Exhaust hose is very warm, countering some of the cooling effect. I wish it came with better insulation (supposedly you can get an insulated sleeve for it)
  • At 48″, the included window kit isn’t quite tall enough for our windows (we solved this with a piece of cardboard)
  • Adjusting the temp makes it beep, which might not be ideal in the middle of the night

Here’s a video I made of how the beeping sounds when you change the temp or mode:

Where it really shines

Bedrooms

Even though it’s been somewhere between 77-84 degrees in the rest of our apartment as we went to bed every night this week, the AC unit brought the bedroom temp down to 65 and kept it down there until the daylight heat returned.

It’s the difference between sleeping uncovered and uncomfortable vs. cozying up under an actual blanket and not feeling like the other person in the bed is trying to roast you with their body heat.

The AC unit is about as loud as a box fan running on high. If you can sleep through a hotel air conditioner, you can sleep through the Keystone. We are used to sleeping with white noise and box fans, so this wasn’t a big deal for us, but people used to sleeping in silence may find it loud. It’s a consistent loud, though – it doesn’t cycle or stutter like hotel air conditioners and some window air conditioners. It just runs steady, and that makes all the difference in terms of this AC unit’s “sleepability”, in my opinion.

Apartments

This AC is basically designed for small spaces. It did pretty well in our 500 sq. foot living room/kitchen (we live in a 1 bedroom apartment now), though not as well as it does in the bedroom. We’ll tolerate a warm living room as long as there’s a nice, cool bedroom waiting for us at bedtime, so putting the AC in the bedroom made more sense for us.

Is it worth it for a Seattle apartment? We think so. I don’t know who convinced Seattle builders that we don’t need air conditioning in our homes here, but July – September can be brutal (and 2016 was one such year). We see lots of window ACs and exhaust tubes in windows around our neighborhood, so it’s not just us being wusses about the heat.

That room that never gets cool enough even though you have central air

Even in homes with central air, I could see this being useful for lofts or rooms that just never get cool enough. A lot of two-story homes struggle to get the 2nd floor bedrooms and living spaces cool enough in the hottest parts of summer. A portable air conditioner might save you having to move your mattress downstairs or staying out of that loft area you enjoy during the cooler months of the year.

Homes with strict community rules

Portable AC units are almost invisible from the outside. It doesn’t protrude from the window at all and its “in window” footprint is small. This should please your HOA, landlord, or busybody neighbors.

No DIY required

Just plug it in and go – no holes to drill, no insulation to stuff into cracks, no wiring. Much better than some of the alternatives out there…

ugly_window_AC

Photo credit: uglyhousephotos.com

Keystone portable AC unboxing

The Keystone portable AC unit arrives in a large, two-piece cardboard box with a plastic strap holding the halves together. With the plastic strap removed, you can easily separate the two halves of the box, but you shouldn’t separate them until you’ve got the AC unit inside your home or apartment.

Heads up: it’s heavy

It’s about 80 lbs and pretty big so plan on wheeling it into your place and having a helper for stairs unless you are a muscle god.

Not much assembly required!

The exhaust tube and collar parts are on the top and separated from the AC unit itself with a block of packing Styrofoam. I expected to have to put a lot more fiddly bits together, but this is about as pre-assembled as Keystone could’ve made it.

keystone_portable_AC_review_unboxing

Lift them out and remove the Styrofoam  here’s the AC unit itself. Fortunately, you don’t have to lift the AC unit out of the box or cut the box off from around it. The box is already in two parts, so all you do is lift the cardboard box up and the unit is left sitting on the other half of the box.

keystone_portable_AC_review_unboxing_AC_unit_by_itself

The AC unit is on casters, so it’s (relatively) easy to wheel it into place once you’ve unboxed it.

Keystone AC on-unit controls

You can operate the Keystone AC with the remote or the on-unit controls. They’re pretty self explanatory, but some notable things here are Swing (which causes the lid to lift and lower so air isn’t just emitted straight out of the unit) and Sleep (which gradually shuts the unit off after 30 minutes).

keystone_portable_AC_review_top_panel_controls

keystone_portable_AC_review_top_panel_buttons

Remote

The “Follow Me” feature is a nice touch that separates this Keystone portable AC from some of the similarly priced competition. When it’s on and the remote is pointed at the unit, the remote sends a temperature reading to the mothership AC unit every 3 minutes.

This is a nice little touch that helps you get the room to the temperature you actually want it, not the temperature the AC unit thinks it is from a reading taken at the unit itself.

Other than that, the great thing about this remote is it duplicates all of the same buttons that exist on the unit itself (because the last thing anyone wants to do in this heat is get up again).

keystone_AC_Remote_closeup

Window kit appearance, dimensions

That plastic piece that holds the hose up to the window (the “window kit”) is, at minimum, 26.5″ tall. At maximum, with both pieces in position, it’s 48″ tall. You’ll need a window that slides horizontally or vertically to hold it in place. Our windows slide horizontally, so our kit is placed vertically.

Here’s what it looks like from the outside:

keystone_ac_outside_the_window

Cost to run

This AC unit uses about 1580 watts as it runs. At 10 cents a kilowatt hour (your utility costs may vary), that works out to about $3.80 day to run it for 24 hours a day, which you probably won’t.

It’s probably closer to $1/day with typical use. (So worth it) 

How noisy is the Keystone portable AC unit?

As stated earlier in this review, it’s about as loud as a box fan running on high. However, it’s a consistent noise, a lot like a white noise machine might generate. It doesn’t cycle on/off like some AC units, beep, click, or anything annoying like that.

From the manufacturer:

  • 55 dBA on high (close to a dishwasher or clothes dryer)
  • 52 dBA on medium
  • 49 dBA on low

Why we chose Keystone over competitors

Basically, it had the best BTU to cost ratio we could find.

The more BTUs, the more powerful the AC. Our budget was firmly “under $500”, so we wanted the most bang for our buck. The reviews on Amazon were great and we were dying in this heatwave, so we ordered it and we love it!

The things that really sold us on the Keystone portable AC:

  • Best BTU to cost ratio (14,000 BTUs at a better price than this similarly featured 12,000 BTU Honeywell AC unit)
  • Don’t have to empty a water bucket like you do with cheaper portable ACs, unless you use dehumidify mode
  • Remote control
  • Excellent Amazon reviews in a tough category; many competitors have noticeably fewer stars

BTUs matter

Portable air conditioners vary in terms of BTU. Generally, the more BTUs, the more cooling power and the larger a room the AC unit is recommended for.

The Keystone KSTAP14B is rated at 14,000 BTUs, and the manufacturer states that this is suitable for a 700 sq. ft room. Meanwhile, this well-rated and less expensive EdgeStar model is rated at 12,000 BTUs, which doesn’t look like that much less until you see that the manufacturer only recommends it for a 425 sq. ft space. That’s a pretty big difference in the amount of space cooled, and it’s a pretty big difference in how effective two different AC units might be in the same room. We figured we were best off getting the most BTUs and beating back the heat with raw cooling power, and that strategy seems to have worked.

Generally speaking, portable AC manufacturers pair these BTU ratings with these sq. footage recommendations:

  • 14,000 BTU : 700 sq. feet
  • 12,000 BTU : 425 sq. feet
  • 8,000 – 10,000 BTU : 350 sq. feet
  • 5,000 BTU : 150 sq. feet

Keystone KSTAP14A vs. Keystone KSTAP14B

Shopping around a bit will reveal that there are two Keystone models with similar names. The only difference as far as we can tell is the body styling; the A looks straight out of the 80’s and the B has a sleeker body design. The rest is the same.

The bottom line

Summer 2016 in Seattle shall be remembered for its hot, record-breaking heat. I’m also 9 months pregnant as I write this, so this summer has already felt like trying to medal in the misery Olympics. I hadn’t had a decent night of sleep in over a month when the Keystone KSTAP14B portable air conditioner arrived and transformed our ability to sleep through the night. You can’t go wrong with this AC unit!

» See the Keystone KSTAP14B on Amazon.com «

Filed Under: Appliances, Reviews Tagged With: best portable AC unit 2016, Keystone portable AC, Keystone portable AC KSTAP14B review, KSTAP14B, portable air conditioning review

Ultra-quiet Kenmore Elite 41582 washer and 81582 dryer hands-on review

May 30, 2016 by M.B. Grant Leave a Comment

Researching new washing machines taught me two things:

  1. Every machine has bad reviews from a certain percentage of owners
  2. Most reviews don’t talk about the things I really care about in a machine, like noise and capacity

I chose the Kenmore Elite 41582/81582 pair because they seemed to have the most positive reviews for their price tier and because Sears had a good promotion on them this Memorial Day weekend.

So, here we go: now that these machines are in my house and I’ve put them through a dozen loads, I feel comfortable telling you how awesome they are!

Kenmore Elite 41582 (washer) and 81582 (dryer) my laundry room right after Sears set ’em up:

2016-05-27 19.35.01

(I was not paid or perked to review these machines, and I have no relationship with Sears or Kenmore. I bought these machines myself.) 

Kenmore Elite washer (41582) & dryer (81582) at a glance

  • Super quiet
  • Laundry comes out clean
  • Nice interface extras: “time remaining” countdown, interior light, set beep volume (OFF is also an option)
  • Lots of modes for different types of loads
  • Big drum capacity: 4.5 cu feet (there is also a 5.2 cu feet model)
  • You can pause a load and add more to it if you just started the cycle

See the Kenmore Elite washer on Amazon (this isn’t my exact model, it’s bigger but has the same interface)

Kenmore Elite washers are REALLY quiet

This washing machine is quiet. It also has a button for toggling the “done beep” volume: loud, normal, and off (this is also true of the dryer).

The first few times I ran the washer I could not even believe it was running. My machines are in a room (with a real door, not a louvered door) next to my living room, so I had ample opportunity to hear (or not hear) them in action. I made these videos to demonstrate just how quietly these machines run.

Washer washing a pillow

The vast majority of a cycle is just washing/tumbling the load.

Notice the machine doesn’t get thrown off balance by the uneven load, and the amount of water/soap is appropriate for the size of the load (a normal size pillow, two pillow cases, and four shirts).

My previous machine was a HE top-loading agitator-less machine that would make a repetitive grinding noise as it cycled laundry in and out of the water, so this gentle hum seems very quiet by comparison. It’s even quieter with a normal load (not a pillow flopping around).

Washer doing its spin cycle

Washer doing the last 2 minutes of its spin cycle

The last 2 minutes of the spin cycle is the loudest thing I’ve heard this machine do, and honestly, I think it comes off louder in the video than it does in real life.

Dryer doing normal drying

While I was researching machines, it was hard to find information on how noisy various machines are, or how annoying those noises might be.

My previous home had a set of 2010-era Maytag Bravos machines (top loading HE washer) and the washer was so loud and annoying. It went vrrm vrrm vrrm vrrm vrrm as it moved laundry in and out of the pool of water at the bottom of the wash basin, and the repetitive noise drove me nuts. I often started laundry and the left the house for some errand so I wouldn’t have to listen to it.

Drum capacity: huge

The drum capacity is 4.5 cu feet on my model, and there’s also a larger version (5.2 cu feet). My big plushy queen-size comforter fits inside both washer and dryer with room to spare.

My city apartment has a compact washer and dryer, so it’s pretty nice to blow through a ton of laundry in just a few big loads. You don’t have to do big loads, though – there’s a setting for “small load”, too.

Interface design: excellent

Washer interface

The buttons on this machine are straightforward: rotate the knob to select your load type, toggle any settings you want to be particular about, and hit the play button.

2016-05-29 19.17.12

Use the buttons at right to set temperature, spin speed, soil level, and beep volume. The “—” is where “time remaining” for the current load displays.

2016-05-29 19.16.55

Dryer Interface

Same idea as the washer, turn the dial to choose a mode.

2016-05-29 19.17.12

Without “Static shield” on, the first couple loads came out really clingy. Once we turned this setting on, that problem went away.

2016-05-29 19.17.18

Performance: Excellent

The comforter challenge

I have had a particular big, fluffy queen-size comforter for at least 15 years and I’ve washed it in more machines than I can remember. I sent it through a wash and a dry cycle in the Kenmore Elites.

It was pretty dry at the end of the washer’s spin cycle and didn’t throw the machine off balance or reach the end of the cycle with suds still in the tub (both common problems I’ve had with other washing machines in the past). It took just one dryer cycle to dry it, not two or more like some older machines have required.

The pillow challenge

Likewise, I have a large fluffy pillow that I’ve had for a few years now. It is notorious for throwing agitator-style washing machines off balance, but the Kenmore Elite handled it just fine (I washed it on “Bulky”). The washer even did a good job of spinning most of the moisture out of it. It took one and a half dryer cycles to dry it (I ran it on “Bulky”).

The bottom line

These are fantastic laundry machines. It’s hard to know how many years you’ll get out of a newly purchased appliance, but if I run into any trouble I’ll come back and update this review.

Kenmore changes its line frequently, but if you’re reading this from the future there’s a good chance that the Kenmore Elite line has only gotten better since this article’s creation in May 2016.

 

Filed Under: Appliances, Reviews Tagged With: 41582, 81582, dryer, Elite, Kenmore, quiet washing machine

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