In this video, I check out the OKP C5 Robot Vacuum Cleaner, a pint-sized vacuum with child-like fun! You can buy the C5 for $248.88 from Amazon US 👉🏻 https://amzn.to/3gUU9gZ, for £249.99 from Amazon UK 👉🏻 https://amzn.to/3Bo1bSf, and for €379.99 from Amazon DE 👉🏻 https://amzn.to/3PhtyHM.
This is a much smaller robot vacuum cleaner than most, so its size is able to squeeze more easily between narrow spaces and furniture around your home. And with its playful real-time video playback, compact size, child-like voice, and illustrative facial expressions on its digital display, the C5 adds a unique level of fun to the traditional robot vacuum.
In the box you get a paper user manual, a 2-metre magnetic boundary strip, a wall adapter to power the charging station, there is the charging station itself and the pint-sized C5 vacuum. There are four side brushes in the box, two of which are spare, there is also a spare HEPA filter, and a small cleaning comb.
Features & Design
Looking over the vacuum, its size is 25.5 cm in width, and just under 8 cm in height, which makes it recognisably smaller than the other vacuums. Its charging dock is also quite small, so it makes it easier to position it around the home or under furniture.
On the front, there are sensors, a camera and two LED fill lights. Its bumper isn’t mechanical, instead, it has a sensitive solid rubber bumper strip around the front of the vacuum.
On top, there is a digital display, and two buttons to command the C5 to start or pause cleaning, and to return to the dock. A small rubber tab at the back allows you to lift its lid upwards to reveal a power switch and its removable waste container underneath. The waste bin has a removable HEPA filter, and although its small form factor limits its size to just 250ml in size, it’s a little bigger than vacuums of the same small size.
Underneath there are a few anti-fall sensors, a mapping sensor, two driving wheels, and two charging contacts when placed on the charging dock. There is also a small manoeuvring wheel, a narrow suction intake in the middle, and two replaceable side brushes.
For its size, the C5 has a surprising 6800Pa of suction power in its highest power mode setting, which is plenty to pick up various levels of dust and dirt. This power is adjusted in its companion app between four modes: Quiet, Standard, Powerful and Super Powerful mode.
Setting Up The C5 Vacuum
To set up the vacuum, you first locate a suitable position for the docking station and connect the dock to its power adapter. Then attach the two side brushes underneath and turn on the vacuum via the main power switch on top. Finally, place the vacuum onto the docking station to charge it.
Whilst the vacuum charges, I downloaded its OKP companion app and followed its instructions to add and connect the C5 to my home Wi-Fi network. Once connected, the app offers some of the common suite of basic functions and features. Compared to other vacuums, though, the options to customise the vacuum are rather limiting.
The App
From the app, you can start and pause cleaning, to order the vacuum to return to the charging station. You can also switch between its four suction power levels, locate the vacuum, set a cleaning schedule, update the vacuum over the air, and control the vacuum remotely using its onboard camera and LED lights for low-light areas.
The C5 has a number of expression faces and symbols on its top digital display. Its facial expressions illustrate various modes, from starting up, cleaning and automatically charging. Along with its child-like voice announcements, this makes the C5 feel quite fun and youthful, although it may be a bit too childlike for some. Sadly there are no other voice packs to download, so you’re stuck with commands being issued by what sounds like a 5-year-old child.
Cleaning
Out of the box, its battery was at 24%. This wasn’t enough to clean my entire home, so I first tested the vacuum in a small contained area of my home. Once I selected the Start Cleaning option, the C5 launched itself from the dock and the vacuum followed a set directly from the dock and started cleaning the floor space in a zig-zag-like pattern.
The C5 has four cleaning modes: the first mode cleans the whole floor area in a zig-zag direction. The second mode will clean the whole floor space, but in random directions, until it cleans the area. The third mode will just clean around the edges of your home, and the fourth mode will spot-clean an area within a 1 square metre area
As the C5 cleans your floor space, it displays its progress and its location within it, inside its companion app. Unlike most other vacuums in its price range, though, the C5 doesn’t store or save your room layout for use in later cleaning sessions. Instead, it will display its progress in real-time and store the recorded floor space map in its cleaning history.
Now, because of this, there are many expected functions missing in the app, such as selecting a set area or a specific room to clean in your home, creating no-go zones, to being able to send the vacuum to a specific area to carry out a spot clean. Instead, the vacuum will only vacuum the whole area of your floor space, and spot cleans are carried either from the dock’s location or by controlling the vacuum remotely to the spot and selecting Spot Clean. This vacuum also has a surveillance mode where you can view its onboard camera and microphone to operate the vacuum remotely whilst you’re away. You can save photos and videos to your camera during this function, which is fun at first, but I found it unfortunate that you could vacuum in this mode.
Another limitation of the C5 is that it uses the older method of using a magnetic strip to block or prevent the vacuum from entering an area you don’t wish it to go. The length of this strip is just a little over 2m, which can be enough to span most corridors or areas of floor space where you don’t want the C5 to go. It works well, but I find it isn’t as good as being able to set up multiple no-go zones within an app.
Battery Life and Cleaning Performance
As performance goes, its 6800Pa of maximum suction will certainly pick up heavy dirt and debris, but if you were to clean the entire house this way, it will likely take a recharge or two to complete a clean. I vacuumed 25 sqm of floor space using its third Powerful suction mode, and it finished with around 50% battery remaining.
It did clean all of my 45sqm of floor space in my home, with the same power setting, and it achieved this in 95 minutes, which is around 30 minutes longer than my usual robot vacuum with a wider cleaning area. At around 10-15% it will always return to the base to recharge, so you can’t utilise the full 100%.
The vacuum is a certain level of carpet or rug detection, which will increase its suction power. However, I found this to be a little hit-and-miss at times. Sometimes it would increase power for a few seconds and immediately reduce it, even though it was still on the same surface.
Its small form factor and narrow wheel size can sometimes struggle to get on top of some thicker rugs, and it was a challenge for it to move between a narrow transition of hard floor and rug areas of my home. Its smaller size will mean it will be doing more passes in your home than a larger vacuum would. So if you have a large floor space, then I would recommend getting a standard-sized vacuum instead. However, if you just want a robot vacuum to tidy a single room or small floor space, the C5 may be up to the task, albeit with quite a few limited abilities over vacuums of a cheaper or similar price.
My Impressions
The C5 Vacuum from OKP retails for $248.88 with a coupon from Amazon US, £249.99 with a voucher from Amazon UK, and €379.99 with a coupon from Amazon DE. And you can click on these links to learn more about this vacuum, and buy one.
At this price, I would struggle to recommend the C5 robot vacuum. Its small size can seem like a positive feature for certain areas around the home, but I personally, found it offered more negatives than positives, especially when there are much more capable robot vacuums for the same price or less than the C5.
The charging dock, although small, did move too easily when the vacuum docked or left it to clean. The dock also had no ability to stow any of the excess charging cables in either – likely also due to its small size.
Although the 250ml waste bin is larger than its similarly sized competition, it did need regular emptying after a few cleans. I believe there is a full bin sensor either on this vacuum, so you’ll have to keep checking to see if the bin is full. I also found that the way the bin was designed, it was too easy for it to drop what it had previously sucked up. Emptying it was also quite awkward, because you need to remove two other components before you can get to emptying its contents.
But other than these limitations, due to its small form factor, I found the biggest issue I had was through its companion app. Setup and navigating functions were easy and nicely laid out. Still, with no ability to save maps of your home, this makes managing the vacuum far more demanding of your own time, which shouldn’t be the case with a robot vacuum.
Unless you live in a minimalistic house with hardly any objects on the floor, your home is likely never ready for a robot vacuum, no matter how intelligent it might be. Without being able to select specific rooms to clean, you have to make sure you either lay down its boundary strip or be on standby to make sure the vacuum goes where you want it to go. And with competing vacuums costing less or similar that offer this kind of function, if you want the robot to work for you, rather than against you, I would personally look for a robot with a bit more intelligence than this one.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Brief overview
0:33 – Unboxing
0:52 – C5 Vacuum features & design
1:05 – C5 Charging dock
2:07 – Suction power and modes
2:27 – Setup and install
3:52 – Battery & cleaning
4:34 – Companion app
5:42 – Magnetic strip
6:09 – Performance
7:00 – Rug detection
7:55 – My Impressions
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