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A Roborock robot vacuum is among the absolute best on the market, but what makes one worth choosing over other robot vacuums? There are a lot of robot vacuums out there. I mean a lot. But many of them simply aren’t worth your money for a number of reasons. Poor navigation is the herald of a crummy robot vacuum, along with being loud, not cleaning well, and just generally being dumb.
A Roborock robot vacuum is anything but dumb.
Let’s face it. If you get a crappy robot vacuum, you end up babysitting the thing more often than not, and you might as well just do the work yourself. With a Roborock robot vacuum, you can sit back, relax, and enjoy things in life better than cleaning your house all the time. We’ve regularly awarded Roborock as being best-in-class with every release, and that’s why we’re taking the time to point out 10 reasons why a Roborock robot vacuum is the robot vacuum you want.
1.) Laser-guided navigation
Robot vacuum navigation has been the brunt of jokes for well over a decade. That bump-and-go style of random navigation meant that robot vacuums were a cool gadget to have in the house but often went unused because, well, they were a bit useless.
Roborock didn’t introduce the world to laser-guided navigation, but it seems to have perfected it on a household robot, whose entire objective is to get itself in and out of as many corners of your home as possible. Every flagship Roborock robot vacuum features laser-guided navigation that is unbelievably precise. Since it’s run by lasers, which produce their own light, the vacuums don’t need external lights in order to see where they are going.
That means, no matter the time of day or if a room is in use, a Roborock robot vacuum won’t have any issue getting around, even if the furniture is constantly on the move or people are getting in the way of the vacuum.
2.) Reliability
I have a lot of robot vacuums in my house, but the ones I use on a daily basis are the ones from Roborock.
While some other robot vacuums might focus on specific features that sound impressive on paper, most vacuums just don’t get the reliability factor right. Oftentimes, when I leave the house for a few hours and try to run a robot vacuum from another company, I’ll come home to find that it got stuck in some random corner or wedged under furniture that it shouldn’t have gone under.
When I run any Roborock robot vacuum, I never have to worry about this. The laser-guided navigation combined with Roborock’s software intelligence means that their vacuums are just plain smarter and have no issue navigating the entire home without getting stuck or lost.
3.) Real-time mapping
Premium-grade robot vacuums have been mapping homes for a few years now, but many of them only display the map before and after vacuuming.
Roborock displays a map of your home in the Roborock app at all times, including the real-time location of where the robot is in your home. This can be extraordinarily helpful for a number of reasons.
While you’re out and about, you can check on the status of the vacuum and see what parts of your home have already been cleaned and which are still in need of cleaning. This can be useful if you need to get a certain spot cleaned in the home and don’t have time for the vacuum to finish the rest, say the dining room before friends come over for dinner.
It can also be invaluable in the rare case that the vacuum does get stuck, as you’ll know exactly where in the house it resides. Other robot vacuums might force you to walk around and look manually, instead.
Roborock’s mapping technology also features the path taken by the vacuum, so you can see exactly where the robot cleaned after each and every cycle. That means you’ll easily notice if something blocked the robot’s path and it missed a section of a room, which can help keep those hard-to-reach places cleaner.
4.) Zone cleaning with multiple passes
There are a few robot vacuums on the market that offer a way to clean specific rooms or spots in the house, but Roborock’s is the only zone cleaning feature that can make up to three passes for each individual zone.
Let’s translate that a bit.
Say you wanted the vacuum to clean the dining room and give it 3 passes, since you had tacos for dinner and those hard shell bits are all over the place. That’s a quick selection in the app when you draw the square around the dining room.
At the same time, it would be nice to also clean the kitchen with 2 or 3 passes since a few crumbs are likely to be on the floor from cooking. While the vacuum is around and doing its thing, you can also select the living room and entryway for a single pass just to clean up the stuff tracked in from outside today.
That’s versatility that other vacuums don’t offer, but it’s a simple command from within the Roborock app.
5.) Scheduled cleaning per zone
Many Roborock robot vacuums, like the Roborock S4, S5 Max, and S6, offer per-room cleaning functionality. When these vacuums vacuum the home, they create a floorplan and divide that floorplan into logical rooms.
Within the Roborock app, you can define these rooms and choose them for cleaning at any time. But the real joy is the ability to use this functionality in conjunction with the scheduling feature, creating a truly clean home that works with your lifestyle.
Let’s say you want to clean the bedrooms only on the weekends when everyone is out and about, but want to keep the common rooms vacuumed a little more often.
You can easily schedule this from within the app, creating one schedule for Saturday or Sunday at a specific time and including only the bedrooms. A second schedule can also be created for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the living room, family room, hallways, and bathrooms.
Maybe you’d even like a third daily schedule in the evenings for the kitchen and dining room since those are regularly a messy place in the home by the evening? It’s easy peasy in the app, and you can even schedule the vacuum to run in quiet mode for those evening runs so it doesn’t disturb the sleeping baby or ruin your favorite TV show.
6.) Quiet performance, yet powerful suction
Going hand-in-hand with that previous point is Roborock’s ability to pack an amazing level of versatility into its vacuums.
Part of this versatility is the range of suction power the vacuum can utilize, from maximum suction for extra dirty spots in the house, to a quiet clean for times that cleaning is a necessity but noise is not an option.
In fact, running a Roborock robot vacuum in quiet mode while watching TV is perfectly feasible task, as it’s easily quiet enough to not interrupt even the heavy dialog scenes. The Roborock S5 Max even has a mode that uses almost no suction at all and is designed specifically for mopping, meaning you can clean those hard floors without making any real audible noise.
On the flip side, that fourth level of suction (MAX) is enough to pick up AA batteries from the floor, which means even the dirtiest of floors will get cleaned when needed. Remember, too, that these suction modes can be chosen while scheduling or manually running a cleaning task, furthering the idea that these are unbelievably versatile robot vacuums.
7.) A truly notable side-brush
Of all the things to consider when making a robot vacuum, the behavior or construction of the side-brush is likely one of the lowest bullet points on the list.
But Roborock has put great thought into even this small, typically unnoticeable part of its robot vacuums. The Roborock S6 launched a genius idea that only the Roborock S4 now has; a variable speed side-brush.
When the vacuum detects that it’s in the middle of the room, it will automatically slow the side bush down in an effort to keep debris from being flung across the room.
Vice-versa, when the vacuum gets into a corner, it’ll speed up the brush to make sure all the junk in a corner gets pulled out. On carpet, it’ll stop the brush completely, keeping it from getting unnecessarily bent by the carpet fibers.
The Roborock S4 and S6 also have a brand new brush design that’s made of a stronger, more durable silicone material that out-performs and outlasts traditional bristles.
8.) Adjustable height main roller
A little known fact of a Roborock robot vacuum is its ability to adjust the height of the main roller brush underneath to meet the height of different surfaces.
This is done via a spring mechanism that presses against the floor and can better clean different types and heights of surfaces, such as the height difference of an area rug versus a carpeted room.
This performs two important tasks. That means the best clean happens automatically without user intervention or a settings tweak.
First, the robot is able to get its rollers closer to the floor than some other robot vacuums might. This is an obvious positive point as it means the vacuum can physically grab more debris as it moves through your home.
Second, it means the vacuum is more efficient. This feature cuts down on the amount of time it takes to clean because the vacuum can pick up more debris in the same amount of time.
9.) New drivetrain (S4 only) keeps it from getting stuck on edges or under furniture
The Roborock S4 launched Fall 2019 and debuted a new type of drivetrain that helps it back up twice as well as previous designs.
While a drivetrain is something typically talked about in a car or truck, it’s just as important in a robot vacuum, especially for homes with area rugs.
Over the years, I’ve found that many robot vacuums will get stuck in the space between the end of an area rug and a wall, as they don’t have enough power to back up and get over the hump. Imagine stopping your car just before a speed bump and then trying to go over it. You need to press the gas pedal in a bit more than usual just to get over the hump.
The drivetrain in the Roborock S4, specifically, acts like a more powerful engine that can get it over humps and out from under furniture much more easily than previous generations of robot vacuums and, as such, you’ll notice that Roborock’s vacuums don’t get stuck in the same places as other robot vacuums.
The trade-off with the S4 is in its climbing capabilities. The Roborock S4 is only able to climb up to 1.5cm in height, versus 2cm for other Roborock robot vacuums. You can use this information to then determine which functionality suits your home best: climbing over tall transition strips or backing out of tough corners and out from under furniture.
10.)Mopping (Especially with S5 Max)
Roborock ships three of its vacuums with mop attachments; the Roborock S5, Roborock S5 Max, and Roborock S6.
Each of these three vacuums can have the mop attachment slid onto the back, helping to better clean hard floors by picking up the tiny dust particles that might need a wet pad to be removed. It’s really no different than wetting down a cloth before you wipe your kitchen counters. A dry cloth can only do so much, but wetting it down beforehand creates a cleaner surface.
Roborock’s mopping accessories feature a small lip on the bottom of the vacuum, keeping the vacuums from running up onto carpets and accidentally mopping them.
The Roborock S5 Max and Roborock S6 have a particularly fantastic feature regarding their mops too; the ability to control how much liquid goes onto the pad. This can be helpful for situations where you might have a sticky kitchen or dining room floor and need to add some extra moisture to the mix for the best cleanup possible.
While the Roborock S6 is controlled via a physical switch on the mopping pad, the Roborock S5 Max’s liquid levels are controlled entirely through the app and have several additional quantity selections over what the Roborock S6 offers.
The Roborock S5 Max also launches with a brand new suction mode: gentle. This is a minimal suction mode that is designed for mopping-only, as the robot makes little to no noise at all and tones the suction down to the absolute minimum levels.
This mode also works perfectly for folks wishing to do a whole-home clean, including carpets, followed by an extra mopping for the hard floors. It’s a great option for keeping the noise level down even further than Roborock’s quiet vacuums already do.
It just makes life easier
Coming home to a clean house is a thing of beauty.
It’s surprisingly difficult to find a robot vacuum that can actually live up to this task without requiring you to spend lots and lots of money, but Roborock has proven year-after-year that it’s able to fulfill this desire without breaking the bank. With three 2019 flagship models to choose from, there’s a Roborock for every home and situation.
The Roborock S4 will work best in homes that don’t need to be mopped, or for folks who want to save a bit of money over Roborock’s other models.
The upcoming Roborock S5 Max is designed for homes where mopping is a daily need, particularly homes with different hard flooring types like wood and tile, as the app-adjustable liquid mopping controls will make a huge difference in many situations.
The Roborock S6 is the company’s most well-balanced model that offers options of every kind, including a powerful suction motor, an ultra-quiet vacuuming mode, robust mopping functionality, and a feature set that continues to grow with regular software updates.
No matter what your home looks like, it’s clear that a Roborock robot vacuum will make your life easier.