housethingsgoing
A frog and a duck living in a 4rm resale flat
Reviewing all the Xiaomi appliances in our 4RM flat
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If you've been doing some appliance shopping (on a budget), then Xiaomi is probably a familiar name to you. They have a ton of home stuff, from TVs to soundbars and even washing machines now. We're fans of the brand too - Frog likes how affordable it is, while Duck likes how most of their items come in white so it matches her aesthetic LOL. We've also heard reviews and concerns about their products being not as lasting or durable because of the price and quality, so here's our review of all the Xiaomi products we have in our house! They're not all good or the best in the market for sure, but one thing we can say is that we've been using most of them regularly (except the vacuum) for more than a year, and none of them have broken down yet. :) 
1. Body composition scale: BUY (sort of) Frog and I believe in embracing the hard truths in life, including our exploding reno budgets, the amount of times we secretly eat supper when we're not supposed to, and our growing body fat percentages. This is where this weighing scale comes in handy! It's super helpful because it tells us our fat percentage as well as our weight. It used to be able to connect to the app to also tell us a ton of random things like bone density (drink more milk everyone!) and body metabolism, but we haven't been able to get that function to work for a long time since we got our robot vacuum connected to the app as well. (and we have no idea how to fix this issue) So... I would say buy it if you can get it on sale (and are ready to NOT connect it to the app)! Otherwise the original price isn't really worth it. 
2. Air Fryer: BUY! This is honestly a really basic air fryer but it has served us really well over the last 1.5 years as well - it works well and is pretty easy to clean. The plate and the basket are also dishwasher safe so that makes cleanup even easier if you have a dishwasher. It's supposed to have smart functions as well but we don't really use it (or maybe we haven't found the right reasons to) so we just use it as a normal airfryer for fried food and... toasting bread. Apparently you can get recipes also if you connect it to the app, but Duck is an experimental cook so she prefers to rely on intuition and... good luck. :) Ours is the smallest sized (3.5L) version and it's just nice for 2 pax worth of fries or a palm sized slab of fish (yes we airfryer our fish because why not) - you might want to get a bigger one if your family is bigger! TLDR: Get this if you just want a standard airfryer without fancy functions. We have an oven and a cooking robot that does all the rest of the baking, steaming, etc so we didn't need our airfryer to perform any other tasks. 
3. Garment Steamer: BYE Initially we were really impressed with this steamer because well... it can stand upright (like in the photo) and the top also folds down to become like a traditional ironing board. Pretty cool eh! Here's what we like about it as well - the steamer heats up pretty fast and it has a safety function that turns off the steam periodically even if you forget to turn it off (so you don't accidentally blast yourself and burnnnn). BUT after using it for a while we realised that the main board area is also really short (it's even shorter than Duck's t-shirts, and she is not a tall person). The ironing board function doesn't really work that well, especially for long pants because you have to keep moving the clothing up and down. The other downsides? It doesn't come with wheels (and it's pretty heavy) so we gave up on moving it around the house. Instead, we bring our clothes to the steamer, which has been parked in a designated "Steaming Corner" of our house LOL. Also, this might be a user problem (we know Duck is clumsy) but somehow we've never figured out how to change the water without having water drip onto the floor... so we also have a floor rag beside it to clean up the drips. Not the most aesthetic, we know. TLDR: the steamer works, but for the inconveniences it brings us, I think you might be better off trying another brand. 
4. Smart TV: BUY (if you don't use Viu) VIU DOES NOT WORK ON THIS TV! The app is available for download, but we always get some error message saying it doesn't work on this model. Apart from that, the TV works exactly as a TV should - we watch our Netflix, Disney+, etc etc. It even comes with the little antenna so we can catch local TV programmes (but we don't oops). Resolution and sound wise, we wouldn't say it's the best, but it's definitely usable. The other thing that might bother you is that the TV is rather thicccc - meaning it doesn't flush closely to the wall. We turned this disadvantage into a blessing by hiding our socket behind the TV (because there is so much space LOL) but it might not be something that everyone can accept. TLDR: This is a really value-for-money purchase (we got it for just a few hundred bucks, which is probably less than half of a similar LG/Samsung) if you're not particular about things like sound and resolution and just want a basic TV. 
5. Robot Vacuum - the S20 version: BYE (or maybe buy if you're on a budget and this is the only one available). Quick disclaimer before we start is that we didn't actually buy this - it was a free gift from some contract renewal thing. but well a gift's a gift, so we put it to use and realised... It works BUT it's also not thaaat smart :) Our robot sometimes tries to climb over obstacles that it isn’t supposed to … this results in a lot of whirring sounds and funky noises as it tries its best to climb. We give it an A for effort though - it sometimes succeeds in hauling itself over via brute force LOL - but we’d prefer if it has better obstacle and barrier detection. It comes with a mop function as well - and does mop pretty thoroughly, but the water tank is pretty small so there's also lots of frequent water changing and manual dust removal from the vaccum/water chamber. BUT ALL THIS IS FINE - Duck's main gripe with this is that it requires a huge amount of space (idk if this is the same with every robot vacuum, since this is our first one), but it requires a 1.5m x 1.5m clearance around it - and that's a lot considering the size of our house. it's made us move our furniture around quite a bit so Duck's not too happy about that. But otherwise, TLDR: if you're looking for a simple vacuum and mopping robot, this should do the job (but remember to allocate your socket and furniture placement correctly to make space for it).
17 August
