The iLife V3s Pro looks remarkably similar to its sibling, the iLife V5s Pro, though it swaps out the gold plastic cover for a white one with white and black bumpers around the sides. At 3 inches high, the slightly raised lip on the front of the vac keeps the V3s Pro from venturing to locations where it might get stuck. Two, three-spoke brushes that spin when the vacuum is running sit on either side, near the front of the device, loosening debris and guiding it toward the robot’s gullet. As with other iLife robot vacuums, the V3s Pro lacks a spinning roller brush, opting for a 3-inch suction opening that funnels debris directly into the dustbin. The lunchbox-like dustbin, complete with a bright yellow handle, sits in the center of the vac, beneath the white cover.
While the absence of a roller brush certainly makes cleaning and maintaining the bot much easier, we did notice that the V3s Pro struggled to pick up larger debris on a low-pile carpet. Robot vacuums equipped with a roller brush, such as the Shark Ion R85 — our favorite overall robot vac — did a better job.
Like other non-connected robot vacuums, the iLife V3s Pro is a snap to set up. Just like the V5s Pro, all we had to do was plug in the base, flip the power switch, and charge it. We appreciate that the power adapter works with both the base and the robot itself; it’s a nice little piece of insurance in case the family dog absconds with the small plastic base.
The iLife V3s Pro has three cleaning modes – whole floor, edge and spot cleaning, which sends the vacuum slowly spinning into a spiral as it focuses on one area. The machine picked up small, flaky pieces of onion skin as it carefully wound itself around our baseboards in edge-cleaning mode. Like its V5s Pro sibling, it approached walls and obstacles slowly and gingerly. Though it’s not always perfect, the slow obstacle approach reminded us of more premium vacuums, like the iRobot Roomba i7.
The iLife V3s Pro completed its lab-test cleaning runs in an average of 1 hour, 31 minutes and 1 second. This speedy bot is more than 9 minutes minutes faster than the iLife V5s Pro, but lagged behind the Eufy RoboVac 11's average cleaning time of 1 hour, 18 minutes, as well as that of the Shark Ion R85 (1:01). The device was also a full 40 minutes slower than the robot vacuum average of 1 hour and 50 seconds.
If you’re on a budget and have pets, the iLife V3s Pro is the best robot vacuum for you. While the vac won’t send alerts to your smartphone or allow you to only clean certain rooms, the V3s Pro excels at what is probably the most desirable feature in a robot vacuum: actual cleaning ability. Without a doubt, the iLife V3s Pro is one of the best cheap robot vacuums around.
