Aeno Robot Vacuum Cleaner RC2S Review: Effortless Mopping

Price upon review

Not available in the US

Smart home appliance manufacturer Aeno offers products ranging from sous vide to electric toothbrushes, but one of its specialties is keeping your floors clean.

The RC2S robot vacuum is one of four robot vacuums offered by the brand (the RC3S has the same specs but is in black), and includes everything you’d expect – app control, Lidar space mapping and an elevated suction mode – such as and some may not, such as mops and chunky wheels to climb obstacles. Other highlights include a compact charging station that’s anything but a floor hog, and voice alerts that tell you what it’s about to do.

Design and construction

• Low profile of 9.6 cm
• Compact base
• 0.6 liter dustbin can be replaced by a 350 ml mop module

White and glossy, Aeno’s robot vacuum cleaner RC2S follows a standard robot vacuum cleaner in terms of its round shape, agile weight (2.87 kg) and dimensions (Dia33 x D9.6 cm). Still, there are some notable design features. Turn it around and you’ll find a pair of chunky wheels with a tread so it can climb on rugs and carpet on hard floors, two rotating brushes and a brush bar.

Turn it the right way again and there is the possibility of manual control thanks to buttons: one to start or stop cleaning, another to send it back to the base station for charging. The charging station itself is pleasantly compact and measures H8 x W13 x D13 cm, so it takes up less floor space.

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

However, it is the mop module that probably stands out the most. It replaces the 0.6 liter dustbin and turns it from a robot vacuum cleaner into a robot mop, complete with a removable, washable pad. This has an unusually generous capacity (350ml), allowing you to mop up to 150m² of hard floors before needing to refill.

The mopping level can be varied from low to high, as can the suction power, which reaches up to 2500 Pa in turbo mode. Another plus is that it comes with replacement brushes, a Hepa filter and a second mop pad, so you can keep cleaning if one gets dirty.

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

Performance, app and features

• App could be more user-friendly
• Voice control options
• Much stronger on hard floors than on carpet

Being able to start and stop cleaning with Aeno’s RC2S without having a smartphone at hand is definitely a good thing – because like us, you might run into connection issues with the app. It only works on 2.5GHz, so initially rejected the combined signal from our router and required some troubleshooting.

Once the robot vacuum was connected, everything went smoother, albeit not flawlessly. For example, instead of separating the kitchen and hallway at the doorway, the kitchen became a perfect rectangle and part of the kitchen space was allocated to the hallway. While you can split, merge, and name rooms (or run the mapping a second time to correct errors), there doesn’t seem to be an option to move the boundaries between incorrectly divided rooms.

You’ll have to dig around the app to find the features you want, as this isn’t always obvious. For example, the cleaning schedule, which you can change semi-regularly, is hidden under settings, which isn’t a natural place to look.

Other features aren’t clearly named, such as Pin and Go, which provides targeted cleaning of a square meter wherever you drop a pin on the map. It’s a useful feature, but there’s a risk of it being ignored because there’s no explanation of what it does. It can also be unnecessary, because you can opt for a zoned cleaning, which is almost the same, except that the size of the area is flexible.

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

There was plenty to enjoy though: the RC2S found its base straight away rather than wandering around, and you can control the direction from the app using the arrow buttons if you want to send it in a specific direction. You can also set up ‘virtual walls’ or restricted areas if you prefer to keep it outside of a room, and it’s compatible with voice control.

We tested it by vacuuming and mopping both hard and soft floors (a medium-height carpet). We used flour to represent dust and oats as dirt particles, and had this set to clean the specific area twice.

A small piece of flour was left on the hard floor, but other than that it picked up well. With oats the result was similar: a few were tossed around, but the majority were picked up. However, it was less successful on carpet.

Although dust removal was initially good, flour that was not sucked into the bin had a tendency to fall from the brush bar back onto the carpet. Some smaller oat particles remained, while a few fell out.

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

Rachel Ogden / Foundry

The mopping performance was good on recent dirt, although some stuck-on food remained, and we had to set it so that the carpeted room wasn’t mopped. The biggest problem, however, was that while the mop pad was attached, it could get stuck. It stuck to a doormat more than once before we had to remove it. We were surprised that once rescued, the robot vacuum cleaner did not resume its task – something you have to tell it from the app.

Charging was quite slow. It takes five hours to charge it from an empty spot, and while mopping uses little power, turbo vacuum mode does. This is also quite noisy at around 65 dB.

We found post-cleaning maintenance to be more involved than some rivals. As the trash can slides out to be emptied, there are no arrows indicating how to open it. And when you are mopping, the pad needs to be washed and dried and the module needs to be aired out.

Price and availability

In the UK, the Aeno robot vacuum cleaner RC2S has an RRP of £399.99, but is generally available for less. You can buy it from Amazon for £382.82 or from Appliance House for £369. It’s not available in the US.

Robot vacuum cleaners are expensive and because of its features, this one is quite well priced. It lacks the advanced settings found on more expensive models, but if you have a lot of tile or vinyl flooring, it’s an economical and easy way to keep it clean.

Not the right robot vacuum cleaner for you? Check out our review of the best robot vacuums we tested for more recommendations.

Should you buy the Aeno RC2S?

The RC2S from Aeno is a robot vacuum cleaner consisting of two halves. While it performs well in some areas, for its price you would expect a more seamless user experience and fewer compromises. For example, many robot vacuums aren’t great on deeper carpets, but others recognize them and ramp up the suction and prevent them from getting wet automatically. That said, if you have large areas of hard floors, the targeted and planned cleaning of the RC2S can be invaluable, both for spills and daily sweeping.