How things have changed since my first experience with a robotic vacuum cleaner. The Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra is an example of a new generation of devices that can keep your home clean with minimum work from you.
The Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra is a very smart device with powerful vacuum cleaning options, but when used with its Empty Wash Fill Dock it really becomes a cleaning master.
The unit I have here for review came in its own box, plus a much larger box containing the Empty Wash Fill Dock. The Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra together with the docking accessory gives you an almost hands-free cleaning solution for home or small offices.
The vacuum cleaner by itself is impressive. Connecting over your WiFi to a mobile app you have access to mapping features that can really blow your mind. In minutes it can create a highly accurate map of its environment, including multiple rooms, that you can see in 2D or 3D. It also includes icons showing where it found obstacles and even identifying them as “TV cabinet” or “sofa” and so on.
You can then name each room and use this to instruct the robot to clean just one area, or multiple areas, including in which order you want it done.
Even if the rooms aren’t connected (and you manually move the robot to another area), it recognizes a previously mapped room and updates its cleaning to fit the configuration you set for it.
All this is seen on the app and announced by voice, from the robot itself. You can also link the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra to your Alexa or Google Assistant accounts and control its routines by voice.
Once it starts cleaning a room or area you can see its movements on the app, which means you can even start a cleaning sequence while away from home.
Even if a room is already mapped, new or temporary obstacles are detected and avoided without a problem.
Compared to my old robot cleaner there’s no bumping going around, as the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra comes with a LiDAR navigation aid, which helps it detects objects and avoids them.
It also detects carpet areas and hard floors automatically, so it adjusts itself to different cleaning conditions depending on the surface.
After the cleaning routine is done, it returns to the docking station where it empties the built-in dustbin into a bag – so you only have to worry about replacing that bag once every few weeks instead of constantly cleaning the robot.
The mop is attached to the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra and allows you to set both vacuum and mop routines, separately or together. And being the smart robot it is, even if a room has a mix of carpet and hard floors it will manage to switch between vacuum plus mop to vacuum only when it transitions from one surface to another.
The water for mopping the floor – and the resulting dirty water – is refilled/emptied at the docking station, in their own separate buckets.
If the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra is running a mop routine it can automatically return to the docking to automatically clean the mop after a set time if needed and depending on how dirty the surface is.
Once in the docking station, the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra executes a mop washing routine, then turn around to empty itself and charge as needed.
I had the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra executing a vacuum and mop routing in multiple rooms around the house and the speed is amazing. In a single pass it will vacuum the floor and mop it as needed so there are no double passes. It cleaned a medium-sized bedroom (around 20 sq metres) in about 15 minutes – including both operations.
There were times I only needed to clean the kitchen floor and I could easily point it on the map and select that area. The Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra proceeded to then go around that room only, even though the kitchen was connected to other rooms in the larger house map.
The FAQ says a full water tank should be enough for three to four days of usage (vacuuming and mopping) cleaning a 100 sq metres house and from my experience, this seems accurate.
I did have to carry it around to our bedroom because we have a baby gate at some point in the hall to prevent our pets from going through that area. In this case, it correctly identified that it couldn’t return itself to the docking station and asked to be taken closer to it. Just placing it on the floor in front of the docking station and pushing the Dock button on the screen is enough for it to identify the new room and find its way back to the base.
Its total suction power is now more than double the previous model from the same manufacturer, with a 5100 Pa power and it shows. IT does a great job of cleaning up the carpets, even with pets around.
Also worth noting is that for the three weeks I have had it here for the review I’ve seen two firmware updates come in, the last one with mapping updates.
This combo of robot and docking is really an amazing piece of design and engineering. Compared with our previous experience with vacuum robots the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra requires a lot less management and frees up more time for your other activities around the house – or outside.
The current retail price of NZ$ 2,700 (the robot plus docking) is certainly a barrier. It is worth it though if you can afford it and want to free up more time on your day. You can find the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra at PBTech.
