Roborock’s S7 MaxV Ultra Review: Laziness Top | Digital trends

The S7 MaxV Ultra solves all of these hassles via a jack-of-all-trades base station. After sweeping and vacuuming your home with a broom, the S7 MaxV Ultra returns home to charge, empty the waste collected in a bag, drain the dirty water in a reservoir, refill with fresh liquid and even wash your mop head. If your standard charging station is a Chevron, this is a Formula 1 Pet Lane.

Only a handful of competitors operate at this level of automation, including the $ 949 Narwal T10 and $ 1,549 Ecovacs Deeboy X1 Omni.

Ready, set, clean

If you are accustomed to seeing robot vacuums bounce aimlessly on chair legs and baseboards, seeing the S7 at work would be a revelation. In LiDAR’s magic (think radar but with light), the S7 actually sees your home in 3D and creates a path around obstacles. In the first run of the S7, I once saw a chair move forward carefully through the labyrinth of legs, then weaving between them as beautifully as a man would drive.

All the sensor data adds to the strikingly accurate presentation of your home floor plan, which you can pan out in all the easy Rover app on Google Maps. We are not just talking about walls. It automatically names the room, separates the carpet from the hardwood tile, and even identifies furniture such as sofas and TV stands. While it’s not perfect (it made my clawfoot tub look like a bed), it’s incredibly impressive, and you can easily correct the little bits that went wrong with the app.

Room detection means you can clean a few areas of your home instead of firing it for the whole house. This feature in the app is a bit complicated, but it is effortless after connecting to the voice assistant. Asking Alexa to clean the kitchen on the way out the door and back on the shiny floor really feels like the future.

Although all the bells and whistles did not bother us. The onboard camera is one of those nice-in-theory options you’ll forget about once you spy on a dog, and the remote control option is wonderful. If I wanted to manually position a vacuum on a mess, I’d use a stick vacuum, not a controller.

So how does it clean up?

In our hardwoods and tiles, the vibrating mop has done an admirable job of eliminating dust, dirt and paw prints in a single pass. You can use plain water or spike with Roborock’s $ 16 cleaning solution, but after upgrading we noticed no difference in cleaning ability. We’ve got clean, streak-free floors that have somehow dried up in just a few minutes. Thanks to a remarkably efficient mopping process, the dock’s 3-liter water capacity allows for frequent mopping over several weeks. In fact, we’ve seen ourselves maintaining reservoirs for another reason: the stench.

Yes, when the S7 MaxV removes the discomfort of mop cleaning, all the waste water has to go somewhere. It turns out that the condensed floor cocoon turns into a room-temp reservoir that eventually creates a nice smell. This lovely aroma wafts from the dock a few weeks later, and dumping the raced mop water down a utility sink will be a breath-taking task you’ll want to draw straw.

As a vacuum, the S7 MaxV handles our hardwoods effortlessly but it looks like we have a lot of dog fur embedded in our carpet. As an experiment, I carried my four-year-old Rumba on a 12-by-10 area rug right after the RoboRack was finished and it was pulling an embarrassing amount of dog fur. Something was not right

Upon further investigation, I found that Marty’s coat completely jammed the S7’s internal dustbin: the fur was so thick, even Dock’s strong suction couldn’t remove it. No wonder it was not well cleaned.

After cleaning the bean manually, it performed better, but it still seems to have some hair missing. I re-examined the rumba on a carpet that had been “cleaned” by RoboRock and again discovered that it was leaving a disgusting amount. What it missed:

Consider the end of this bot business if it sounds amazing with its impressive-sounding 5,100pa suck. The S7 MaxV has only one rotating beater brush, while the Roomba has two, with a more aggressive pattern. The S7 does not perform an unacceptable job on the carpet, but it is clear that other machines offer a deeper cleaning.

The sheer lack of cleaning power makes the S7 MaxV Ultra stand out for its tank-like mobility. We have a rug that is too long for Rumba to climb and the other is too random. Roborock bulldozes both of them without complaint, cleverly pointing and picking up his mop.

Roborock’s avoidance of ReactiveAI 2.0 also helps keep it out of trouble. You can look at it near an obstacle like a sock or a shoe, examine it and then work carefully around it. But the technology doesn’t work well for small obstacles, such as charging cords and shoe laces, which our review unit has received several times. And while its hazard detection correctly identifies it as a hazard after hitting a floor heating grating more than once, the VAC will not automatically begin to avoid it. You still need to manually out a “no-go zone” in the app.

As one who gritted his teeth at the jolt of the Roomba, I was delighted to see how incredibly cool the S7 MaxV Ultra is. Although I set it to run when I’m out of the house, it makes a dental drill more tolerable buzz than barking and you can easily watch TV in the same room the way it works.

We’ve already acknowledged that the S7 MaxV isn’t the most powerful Rovac in the block, so what could it cost $ 1,400? Well, sucking isn’t everything.

Is there a better option?

For ultimate convenience, the Roborock S7 doesn’t match the MaxV Ultra. We haven’t tested the less expensive Narwal T10, but the lack of a beater brush suggests it will perform poorly on carpet (and other reviewers agree). The more expensive Ecovacs Deebot X1 Omni almost matches for the S7 MaxV Ultra feature, but without the ability to increase or decrease its shaking, it should give you two separate brooms in your home. In terms of specs, the S7 MaxV Ultra is the most advanced bot you can buy right now.

How long will it last?

Roborock is not as established in this game as iRobot, but it is not a fly-by-right Amazon competitor either. The lifespan of any such mechanical device will depend on how often you use it and how moderately you use it. After one month of extremely frequent use, all symptoms indicate a long life. From silicone-gasket reservoirs with stiff handles to flip-top doors for dust collection, everything looks well-built and durable.

When something inevitably breaks down, we are encouraged by the availability of replacement parts and accessories such as mop cloths and filters at the RoboRock store at a reasonable price (for example, a new Beater brush will give you back only $ 23).

Will you buy it?

Yes. It may seem strange to recommend a Rovac that can be cleaned by a cheap competitor, but these devices, for convenience, do not disinfect your home for surgery. With its all-terrain firmness, barrier-free and self-emptying features, the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra is the most hassle-free Rovac you can buy. But if you own a pet or have lots of carpets in your home, you may be happier with a dedicated robot vacuum.

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