 Have you guys heard about the light and easy robot vacuum A5? This is it. This is the fancy schmancy, self-docking, self-emptying vacuum that you have been waiting for. I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question and I get to help you find an answer. Now I get asked the question a lot from really busy homeowners that don't have time to vacuum their floors, the seniors that don't have the mobility that they once had or it might be somebody that's disabled that can't vacuum at all. They say, and how do I stay on top of the pet hair, the pet dander, the dust, the crumbs, all that stuff that gets kicked around in the house when you open it or close a door or the air conditioning kicks on and it goes airborne and then we end up breathing it. How do we end up doing the vacuuming if we can't get to it or we're too busy or we don't have the mobility to do that? And the answer is a robot vacuum. This will do a lot of the work for you. Now if you've been holding off getting a robot vacuum because you didn't have a thousand dollars to spend, you're going to be super excited to know that this is about a third of the cost. So this is very affordable and it will do most of the work for you. So what is it? Well it's a robot vacuum and it has this amazing infrared sensor on the front and so as it goes throughout your house it's going to sense where all the furniture is and it takes a couple minutes to learn but once it learns its way around your house then it's going to go on automatic mode and it can then clean for you. This is a real challenge for people that get robot vacuums. They don't read the instruction manual and if you're one of those people you're going to be really excited to know that there's a special instruction manual just for you and this is like how to get started super quick but they actually have a really in-depth manual that I recommend you read because it's going to show you how to program the remote control. Now I got to stop for a second about this remote control. This doesn't run off of any apps, it doesn't run off of Wi-Fi, it's just its own remote control and I love that it's a standalone unit because it's not going to interfere with any of the other stuff that you have in your house. So the cool part about this is you can totally manage your vacuum with the remote control. It has an auto feature so when you turn it on it can just auto clean and once it learns its way around your house it will do just that. It also has a timer on it so you can set up for when I leave the house it's going to know that you've left the house based on the schedule that you set so it has that capability. Now down here in the bottom it also has three settings so it goes on low, medium and then super high powered vacuum and the default is just medium so that's good for your hardwood floors, for your tile, for your carpeting, for your rugs and stuff like that. So this vacuum will do it all and it's all controlled with a remote control. Now there's one note, you can't use rechargeable batteries in this. So it does take two AAA batteries but you must buy just the AAA batteries, it doesn't work with rechargeable batteries so I just want to throw that out there. Now it does have three different settings and the settings are super cool because it can go in straight lines, it turns a corner and it comes back so that it doesn't miss anything. It's very specific almost like you know it's in a parade and it's marching and then it also has an area so let's say I spilled a box of cereal on the kitchen floor. I can turn it on that mode and it will just go in a great big circle around and around and it keeps getting a bigger and bigger circle and it vacuums up all that stuff and then it has an around the room so you can say go around the perimeter of the room and based on what you have there it will just like go around stuff around the whole outside of the room and then you can have it do the inside or do that marching pattern right. So there are three different settings. The cool part about it is the instructions are super easy to understand and it will show you exactly how to do it. The instruction manual also has your warranty and it also has the rules and regulations for how to get the best use out of this. So here we go. There are a couple things that you need to know about the back side of the vacuum and I say the back side I'm going to show you the fancy front part in just a minute but we got to look about the back side so that we know how it works. It has three wheels, it has two monster truck wheels and these are the big wheels that climb up on the carpet and then it has a universal wheel which spins it right or left or makes it turn around. So we have a turnaround wheel which is a universal wheel, two monster truck wheels that go up and down based on it or you want on hardwood floors or carpet. And these are big rubber tires so it's not going to scratch your floors as it rolls. That's pretty cool. All right, the next thing is it has three sensors here. These sensors are four stairs. If it gets close to the stairs it's going to go whoa. I think I've crossed my boundary here and it's going to spin itself around and it's not going to roll down your stairs. I know many of you were worried about that. Now you'll notice there's a great big windshield on the front of this. This is an infrared sensor. This senses your furniture and it learns its way around your house. And it also has a couple of rubber bumpers that are on the front of this sensor. So if it gets too close and it bumps into something, no worries. It's not going to scratch your furniture and it's not going to take the paint off your baseboards or your skirting boards. So I love it for that reason. Now you'll notice on the back it has pigtails and you say what? A vacuum with pigtails. It's true. It actually comes with a couple of spare pigtails as well. These are called twin spinner brushes. They just snap onto the bottom of the light and easy robot vacuum A5. As they spin, what they do is they scoop all the dust to the center. And then in the center is the great big vacuum suction plate where it goes and it sucks it in. Now, behind the big suction part there's like a big squeegee. It scoops everything up so that as it scoops it together, it can't get passed. This squeegee right here, this is the suction plate right here. And I want to tell you something exciting about the suction plate. This is not a normal suction plate. It doesn't just suck it in and then boom, it goes into a dust cup. It does do that, but it also does something else. So I want to show you this in a couple of steps. The first one is the suction part. So as the pigtails twirl around and it scoops everything in, it's going to suck it up through this hole right here in the middle. Now, if I flip the vacuum over and I open this up, you're going to see a dust cup. This dust cup is typical of a robot vacuum. This is not a special dust cup. It's kind of normal, right? It has a hole that sucks the stuff in and it traps it in there. Yay, that's normal. OK, here's where it gets exciting for the light and easy robot fight. What happens is this part with the hole in it also matches up. Here's the docking stand. It matches up to one that matches right here. And there's some technology in here so that when the dust cup inside the robot vacuum comes into dock in the station, something magical happens. I don't understand the science, but it comes in through this plate. It comes up through the vacuum. It comes over here and into this dust cup and it empties the vacuum for you. I know. Super cool. Why? Because most people don't know that this is full. And so if you have a vacuum that you can't see through, how do you know if your dust cup is full? So what happens is this is completely automatic. OK, so you put your dust cup in. You turn your vacuum on and when you turn your vacuum on, there's a little button inside here that goes right or left. If you push it all the way over to the right, it turns it on. And if you push it all the way over to the left, it turns it off. So that is how you turn your vacuum on and off. And then this is a start and pause button. When you first get your robot vacuum, there are a couple of things that I want you to do. I want you to take the docking station and find a blank wall on your house. And I say blank, like give it some space so that as the vacuum is finding its way back home, it doesn't trip over anything. As it comes back to home base. Now, once you get your vacuum for the very first time and you plug your vacuum in, I want this to be the permanent home. Here's the reason why your vacuum has an infrared sensor. And I'm going to program it based on the remote control. I'm going to tell it, this is where you live. This is your home. So when I send the vacuum out on some errands, I want you to go clean the house. It's going to come back as it gets tired and it runs out of battery power. So as it gets tired and it comes back, it has to know where home is. If the home keeps moving and it keeps going from room to room, it's not going to know where home is. So it's going to train itself to figure out where your home is and how far it can go and how much it can clean before it runs out of charge. And so when it comes back home, it needs to know where that home is. OK, so rule number one, put your docking station in one place. Do not move it around. Rule number two, every time you send the vacuum out, send the vacuum from the home base. And that way, when it learns its way around and it returns home, it will always return home and it will charge automatically. OK, so if you want to take advantage of the charging automatically and the programming so that it vacuums your house automatically and that it empties your vacuum automatically, you want to make sure the vacuum is in one spot. Here's the really cool part. How do you empty or how do you clean this thing? How do you empty it is the first part? And then how do you clean it is the second part? So how do you empty it is the vacuum itself? This is your dust cup. We're not going to touch this at all. We're not going to open this up. We're not going to check and see how dirty this is. We're going to set it and forget it. I know that's really cool. Right. Once we've done that, this unit is going to take over and it takes over because we've plugged this in. There's a plug here on the back. This runs off of a 120 volt plug. And because it is a 120 volt plug, it's two prongs, not three. So it plugs into pretty much any wall outlet. And because it has this wind up part on the back, this is close to the wall and you only need that much cord. That's how much you need. Now, once this is plugged in, it's going to send all the messages to your robot vacuum. So when your robot vacuum says, oh, I'm tired, I want to come back home again. It's going to come in and dock to recharge. It's going to sit there for five seconds. After five seconds, the big mama machine is going to kick on and it's going to suck all of the dirt out of the suction cup. How it goes in through the base, up through the sides, through the front and down into the dust cup. This is what you're looking at. But this clear dust cup is what you're going to keep your eye on. And if this gets full for any reason, it usually takes about 30 days, depending on how many dogs and cats and how much pet fur or food or crumbs or whatever you have in your house, it might need to be emptied more often. So keep your eye on this. This is what's going to determine how frequently you have to empty it. All right, let's pretend it's time to empty it. So we're not going to empty the one in here. We don't need to. It emptied it into here automatically. Yay. OK, we're going to empty the big one. Now, for the big one, the very first thing we're going to do is we're going to unplug the unit from the wall just to make sure that nothing happens. OK, we're going to unplug this from the wall and we're going to turn off this unit because we don't want this to keep like, hey, I'm looking for home. Where's home? We're just going to turn off the unit. So we've turned off the robot vacuum itself. We've turned off the big unit. Then you'll notice this is the handle that picks this up. Right on top of this handle is an orange button. I'm going to put one hand here on the back to hold and support it. I'm going to put one hand here and put my fingers inside the handle. And I'm just going to lift this out like this. That is my dust cup that gets to go being empty. Now, I'm going to hold this over a garbage can. I'm going to push the one button. The bottom opens. All the stuff falls out. I'm going to close this without ever touching any dust. And then I'm going to return this back to the station. And this just slides right back in from the top like that. Then it clicks in place and you're done. That was cool. I'm going to do this one more time from the back. Now, one hand here, I'm going to lift this up and that's my dust cup to empty. Now, you'll see on the back, it has these two tongue and grooves. Inside here, it has the two tongue and grooves. And so what happens is you just slide this inside and as you slide it in, it locks in place, right? So that's how super easy that is. That is your fancy, schmancy, light and easy robot vacuum A5. OK, now how do you clean it? So this is going to be every three to six months, you're going to take the whole unit apart and you're going to clean it and you're going to replace the filters. Now, we haven't talked about the filters yet, but these are high efficiency filters. So when it sucks in the dust, it's going to separate the fine particles from the bigger particles. Here's how that happens. If I open this unit, we will do this every three to six months, depending on how much use you get will depend on how often we open these. So we're going to open the door. We're going to turn off the unit. We're going to take out the dust cup and then we're going to set this aside. We're going to remove this dust cup and we're going to set that aside. Then we're going to take a damp microfiber cloth and we're going to wipe down these two pieces. Now, the reason is this, we want to make sure that from the times that we've pulled this off and put it back that the seals are all clean. And so by just wiping any dust off of them, wiping any dust off of the back, this is the intake valve where this stuff gets sucked in through the unit. It comes up through here. It comes in through the back of this unit right here. And that's how it fills up your dust cup. So we want to make sure that all of the seals are clean. So by wiping that down with a damp microfiber cloth, it's going to get you the best performance for your light and easy robot five. Again, if you're just joining us, this is a fancy schmancy vacuum that's self docking, self cleaning, self emptying. And it's for a fraction of the cost of what you might expect a robot vacuum to be. So I've got links in the description below so you can take a look at it and then add one to your cart if this is a good time for you to get one. All right, now that we're wiping this down with a damp microfiber clock, I want to also wipe down the top and I want to wipe down the inside of the bin itself. This will also make sure that the seals in here are also clean and free of debris. Then we're going to flip it over. Now, the back part is really important that we clean this as well. So we're first going to take off the twin spinners. And to do that, you want to turn your unit upside down. You want to take the two pieces right here and you want to hold it as close to the center as possible. This is a really durable plastic, but we don't want to yank them off and we don't want to break them. So you'll pull them at the same time and they just snap off just like that. And we'll take both of them off. And oftentimes you'll see that there will be hair or pet hair or stuff that's twisted around there. You want to empty that out, just pull that off with your fingers. And then with a damp microfiber cloth, clean the plates that those snap onto. The next thing that we want to clean are the two docking sensors. These two docking sensors are what this connects to when it goes into home plate. You'll see those two docking centers right there. That lines up and they're like magnetic. And when it connects, it centers the part that sucks in all the dust into the unit. It centers it in the right place. So if these are not clean and it's not reading that properly, it's not going to seat properly when it goes back home. Right. OK, now with the damp microfiber cloth, we want to clean the three sensors that keep it from rolling off the stairs. The next thing we want to do is we want to clean the wheels to make sure that there is no dust or debris or hair that's caught around these wheels. And then we want to wipe off the squeegee at the bottom that pushes all the dirt forward. OK, so these are the big elements for how we want to clean this. Then on the front, we want to clean the great big windshield that is that infrared sensor that learns its patterns around your house. All right, so once this is clean, then we're going to go to a sink, preferably in the laundry room or maybe the kitchen. When we get to the laundry room sink, we're going to go ahead and just lay all of the pieces out so that we can see what we have and that we don't forget to clean anything. This is the dust cup and there's a thumb imprint there. We're going to use that to just lift that off the top. You'll see there's a tab there on the top of the filter. We're going to lift that filter out. That is a replaceable filter. It is not washable, so we'll just tap out any dust that's right there. And we're going to set this aside so that we don't get it wet. You do not want to get it wet, but we do want to replace it every three to six months. The rest of the items here from the dust cup are 100 percent washable. There's a little knob there. You just open that door. There's inside two knobs here. You can lift out this inner piece here and set that in the sink. And then the filter that's to the left and then also that dust cup can all be just rinsed out. We need no chemicals or anything there. We can just wash them. This bigger piece is our bigger dust cup, and we just want to make sure that all the seals are clean. This has two buttons on it. If I push both of these buttons at the same time, this is going to lift off the motor from the top of the unit. Now, the motor cannot get wet. OK, that's the motor. We do not want to get this wet at all. We're just going to set that to the side. Inside, there's another filter. And again, this is not washable either. This just pops out and we're going to set that on top of the motor. And again, we'll replace both of these filters every three to six months. This cylinder can just be lifted out gently. And as it's lifted out, we'll put that in the sink. But we can just run some water through here. And this is the dust cup that we've collected everything in. And so that one button opens that up and you'll see that there's dust and gunk in there. And because there's a hole there at the top, we can just run water through here and that will wash or rinse out any of the dust that we've been collecting so far. Now, we're going to turn on the water and you'll see as I'm just running water through here, there's dust and dirt water that's pouring out the other end. And again, you don't need any chemicals for this. We're just going to rinse it out, keep it clean. And you can use your hands to kind of clean the inside of that and just rub off any dust or debris. We are going to wash our hands when we're done. So that's why it's OK to do this. And if you need to get up there around the edges, you can use a bottle brush or you can just use a cloth and the cloth will allow you, just like washing dishes, to get up and in those hard to reach areas. Clean this the best that you can. And then when you're done, rinse it out and we will leave this inside the sink so that it can just drip dry. And once it's 100 percent drip dried, then we'll go ahead and we will put the vacuum back together before we reassemble it over at the home base where it's plugged in. The next section of this is the cyclone area, which goes on top of the the dust cup there before we put the filter inside. And I have an oxo deep cleaning brush here and I'm going to go around the edges very carefully to make sure that all the seals and everything around the edges are 100 percent clean and that there's no dust trapped in there. Now, I'm going to also clean the filter holder that goes with the top filter on top of the dust cup that goes on the inside of the vacuum. We just want to make sure that there's no dust or debris or anything that's locked in that area. So once we've cleaned all of the pieces and I'm just brushing these gently with a little brush to make sure that there's no debris caught in here. This is really important that all of the edges and all of the pieces that have little moving parts, there's a little flappy window here. We just want to rinse that off, make sure that that's clean. And then there's a little filter here at the bottom of this dust cup. That's again, one more filter. I want to make sure that that's clean. And then this filter here has a filter on top. We want to clean that with our oxo deep cleaning brush. And I'm just brushing this so that any loose debris will fall off with the help of a little bit of water. I'm going to clean the inside of this cup. This is the dust cup that goes inside the vacuum. And we're just going to go ahead and wipe that out with a cloth and a little bit of water. I'm going to use my oxo deep cleaning brush just to catch the corners so that there's nothing stuck in there. I'm going to clean the seals there and the window hinges. And then I'm going to put all of this aside. I'll put a cloth here on the ledge of the counter. And I'll just let all of these drip dry. We don't need to hand dry these. We've got lots of little moving parts. We'll just kind of shake out the water and put them on the side. And those can just set here until they drip dry. I do want to rinse the little twin brushes off the twin spinners. And I'm going to use my oxo deep cleaning brush to just go over each of those bristles and just make sure that there's no hair or debris or anything that's caught in those. And if you take care of these twin brushes, they will last for a very long time. They do come with a spare set. And you can replace them. But if you don't need to replace them, certainly don't. OK, I'm going to put this up and leave this door open here. I'm just going to prop the door open with my oxo deep cleaning brush. And I'm going to let that drip dry for a while. And then we'll come back and we'll put it all together once it's dry. So how do you put it back together? That is a great question. We're just going to close the lid to the docking station dust cup. We're going to reverse the process and put that cylinder back in the top. That's going to hold the docking station filter. And we're going to put that in with a tab facing up. Then there's a little tongue and groove locking position here on both the side and the front, and that matches up with a little locking button on the side and the front from the motor. And so we're just going to seat those two just like a puzzle piece together. And once those match up, they just snap in place, preventing any air leaks from the vacuum itself. And when that seals tightly, that makes sure that all the air sucks in from the robot vacuum to the dust cup from the docking station. So we're going to set that aside. And then we're going to take the dust cup from the robot vacuum and make sure that it's dry. And then we're going to put in this little tiny slider cup. Now, there's a tall wall and that tall wall goes on the side where the pictures are slides in just like that. And then also there is a filter there on the top. And we're going to close that door that's going to lock that in place. We're going to take the filter that we took out before. And this is still pretty clean. We're going to use it again. We're going to put it back in with a tab facing up. And you'll notice that there's a little tongue and groove here. And it matches up with a little tongue and groove on the side of the unit itself. So we're just going to snap that in place. And once it's snapped in place and that's locked, we're good to go. And then we're going to take our two twin spinners that I call pink tails. And we're going to take those back to our robot vacuum. So your docking station never moved, right? It stayed in the same place. We bring back our big unit. We lock that in place. Our replacements can go over here. And our vacuum gets turned back on. So to turn our vacuum back on, we just switch that over to the right. And you hear how it comes back on? The light turns blue and it goes back to the docking station and it locks itself in place. So that is your light and easy robot vacuum A5. It's a super great unit and I think you're really, really going to enjoy it. One of the things I like best about it is it does the work so you don't have to. All right. Thank you for joining us today. Again, I've got links in the description so you can add one of these to your cart or so that you can just learn more about it so you can read online ratings and reviews. If you have questions, I want to make sure you get them answered. All right, thanks for joining us today. And until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.