Robot Vacuum Mop Combo, Auto Mop Drying, Washing, Self-Emptying and Refilling

12/29/22 - I wanted to add more context around my initial review below. We purchased both vacuums with our own money and this is not a sponsored nor paid review. This review is for the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra and it's a vacuum we use exclusively for our house. Full disclosure, we have a Shark robot vacuum which we are returning and both of our Roomba j7 vacuums stopped working a couple of months after the warranties expired. We are a household of 2 adults and 3 cats. The cats spend hours in a Catio in the backyard each day but, unfortunately, at this time, we just have dirt in the backyard, so the cats bring in a ton of dirt and leaves. If you remember the Christmas tree from the Charlie Brown Christmas movie where it dropped all its needles, that is what our cats do every time they come into the house. Things we really like - Base unit -- The base unit cleans the mop, empties the vacuum bin, refill the water and stores the dirty water in a dark tank so we aren't displaying to anyone who comes in how dirty our floors were. It does an excellent job of emptying the vacuum dirt bin. It also isn't very loud when compared to our Roomba base unit. Also found it very helpful to be able to set when to charge the vacuum and how much suction power it should use to clean out the vacuum dirt bin. Obstacle Avoidance -- The obstacle avoidance is very good. We have a cat who loves to play with those plastic milk rings which come off 1-gallon jugs. Even though we pick them up each night, she will find them (or pulls some from a hidden stash) and play with them all night. When Roborock runs in the morning, it actually sees the rings and goes around them. Our old Roomba j7 would run them over, suck them up and then 90% of the time get the ring stuck in its rollers and stop. (Good that it stops so it doesn't burn out the motor, bad that we have to go on a search and rescue mission because it seems to stop in those not easy to find places like under a bed or couch or in the back of a closet.) It will be interesting to see if the Roborock can see and avoid cat puke or the occasional cat log which gets knocked out of the litter box. Vaccuum control -- Love how we can set the suction and mopping power for each room. It has almost too many selections and it can be a bit overwhelming at first. I didn't think I would really enjoy the live map which shows where the vacuum is currently located in our house, but I really like it. I also love being able to see which rooms it cleaned and the cleaning path it took. Also, I find it helpful to see how it cleaned each room so when I do a manual vacuum, I can go the opposite direction for a thorough cleaning. Cleaning - The S7 MaxV Ultra cleans extremely well. I love how I can look into the dirt bin and see what it found prior to it emptying into the base unit. I love that I only have to do a manual mop and vacuum once a week now. This may change to a twice monthly clean if I feel like it is cleaning as good or better than I can clean. I LOVE how we can tell the vacuum to clean its mop pad every 10 minutes. Our iRobot Jet M6 would use one mop for the entire house. Once the mop was dirty, it was just spreading the dirt to the rest of the house. Odds and Ends -- There are some other features which we thought wow, why doesn't everyone do this. Roborock made the dirt bin accessible from the top and can even be opened when the vacuum is docked. The filter for the vacuum dirt bin can be rinsed which is awesome. Instead of flipping the robot over to replace its mop, they engineered the mop piece to slide off. On our iRobot Jet M6, we had to flip it over most of the time to put on a new mop because it just wouldn't slide in very well. Mapping the house took less than 30 minutes since it uses LiDaR. When our Roombas wanted to map the house, it would take multiple times and hours at a time. Love how I can set the vacuum not to empty its bin automatically so I can check and see if it sucked up things which shouldn't have been on the floor. (Things like a necklace which a cat decided would be a fun play toy, etc.) Love how the machine lifts the mop up so it can vacuum the carpet. We have a Berber carpet, so we don't have any issues with the carpet getting wet once the mop is lifted. Things we dislike or where improvement can be made. The App -- The app is usable but a tad clunky; its interface is very unfriendly almost to the point of being unwieldy. It took a couple of days before I realized it wasn't doing what I expected it to do because the app was a little confusing. In look, the app is similar to the shark app which is AWFUL. I would recommend Roborock get as far away from the Shark app look as possible because Shark's app is the worst. iRobot's app is very friendly so maybe Roborock could take a few lessons from their competition and improve on what they currently have. Missing Features/Functions - This vacuum has a ton of features, but I think they missed a couple of key features which provide real world value. First, I can't tell the vacuum in which order to clean the rooms. This is helpful for anyone who works from home and wants to clean the office prior to starting work. I should be able to tell it to empty its bin from the app, but I can't seem to find that feature. It should have come with the mop air dryer or at least Roborock should give anyone who has registered the vacuum a voucher for the mop dryer. Their main mop competitors such as Ecovac as this already built into their base units. It would have been nice to have options to tell the vacuum when to go back and empty its bin. Some of its competitors can set the vacuum to empty the bin after every room or after X amount of time. Finally, adding the ability to "skip" a room would be nice. Example, if the baby/child goes down for a nap, and the vacuum is running, it would be nice to tell it to skip the child's room, so the vacuum noise doesn't wake the child up. After years of owning iRobot vacuums and a Shark, we finally found a vacuum that actually does what it claims to do. It cleans and it cleans well. It doesn't lie about features it does have and it doesn't claim to do things it can't do. Bottom line, we loved the S7 MaxV Ultra so much that we decided to purchase another one for our 2nd story. (Initial Review) -We've had iRobot (most recently J7) and Shark (2502BLF) Robot vacuums and the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra is by far the best vacuum we've ever used. The app is a little confusing and could use some friendliness upgrades but overall, it is a good experience. I love how we can set the different cleaning settings for each room. In places where we have carpet, I can set Turbo but in places where we have tile, I can run as normal. (This helps deep clean the carpet where our pets come inside the house) One of the best features is sending the vacuum back to the dock to clean the mop after X minutes of it mopping. (We set it to clean the mop every 10 minutes). We had an iRobot Jet mop and all it could do was use the same pad for multiple rooms, so once the pad was dirty, it was just spreading the dirt to other rooms. This vacuum is a beast in both size and weight. It feels like it weights at least double of weight of our Roomba. The cleaning speed is good, and it really does an excellent job of cleaning. The only cons are the price and that it doesn't come with the heated blower to dry the mop pad. It's fun to empty the dirty water tank and see how much dirt it has picked up. Hoping to get many years of use out of this robot. Thank you Roborock.

Let me start off by saying that we have three Siberian Huskies in this house. That is a LOT of fur. We've had a couple of iRobot Roombas over the years, and they helped cut down the amount of time I spent sweeping up fur by a fair amount, but I had grown weary of the issues with them. Firstly, how randomly they wander around the house, the slamming into my furniture (especially chair legs), how freaking' LOUD the thing was when running, what a huge PITA it is to clean fur out of the rollers, etc. I also have problems with my hands that make mopping rather painful. Challenging for someone who has a bit of a "floor thing". I knew there were more advanced robots out there that could do a better job than trusty old Frackin' Toaster (Roomba's name, obvs) and come with more features. When this robot went on sale for Cyber Monday, I went for it. The reviews (here on Amazon as well as other review platforms and articles) were almost universally 5-stars positive, and it seemed to include pretty much everything I wanted in an upgrade. Holy moly y'all, best grand I've spent in a long time. I've had this guy running for almost a month now (because you know I launched him as soon as he was set up), and here are my findings. Pros: Quiet!: SO MUCH QUIETER THAN ROOMBA. I can watch TV if I wanted to with this guy running. People on the other end of my conference calls during the day don't hear it, even if don't have my noise cancelling headphones on. Smart pathing: When I fired it up to do its discovery run, I was amazed at how quickly it performed its initial room discovery. No vacuum running or anything, it just cruised around using LiDAR and other sensors and mapped the heck out of my first floor. On its first full cleaning run, it tightened up its mapping and identified furniture and other items. When it cleans, it performs an outline cleaning of the room and the furniture in it, then cleans the rest of the floors in an efficient and effective pattern. Freakin' awesome. Definitely smarter than a Valheim Troll, unlike my previous Cylons...erm, floor robots. Object detection: With the camera, LiDAR, and other sensors this guy has, it does a fantastic job of object detection. No more damage to my furniture from repeatedly slamming into legs etc. It will make a guess at what it's run into if it runs into something on the floor. Fabric, shoes, cords, whatever it comes across that is 'unexpected'. Funny story - my husband's Chewbacca head slippers were identified as "pet waste" (I assume due to being brown, and about the size and shape of a pile of big dog poo if viewed from ground level head-on) but that's the only oddball identification I've seen. Cleaning around furniture: Okay, this is fabulous. The Roombas are awful at navigating dining table and chairs, stools at the counter, etc. Would spend 30% of its battery life stuck under the chairs. Ser Toaster III rocks at it. Gets aaaaaaaaalll the husky glitter from under the table and without beating the snot out of my chair legs. Mopping: Look, I know I could probably do better on my hands and knees with a bucket, but pass. My entire first floor is ceramic tile and it now gets a nice sponge bath every day. They look and feel quite clean, my socks are clean, and judging by the water I'm dumping out of the tank, ST3 is definitely getting the job done. I love that it goes and cleans the mop frequently rather than dragging a dirty rag around the house. I also bought extra mop pads so I can change them out every other day or so and get them a thorough trip through the washer. Fur removal: Both in removing it from the floors and being able to remove it from the machine, I give it a 12/10. Despite my Husky pack's best efforts, there are no fluff drifts. I still have to bust out the Dyson on the weekly to get the cracks and crannies, but I could probably get away with less often if I was slightly less extra about the fur removal. But seriously? Whoever designed the roller was a frigging genius. Rather than fighting to unwrap the fur from the ends, the ends just twist off so you can slide the whole fur bundle right off. To whomever designed that roller: I love you. Seriously, I love you. Cleaning the unit: Another win here. The brush assembly that cleans the mop head has a little lever you can flip up to remove the brush and do any fuzz removal or give it a rinse. The filter that catches any debris (leaves, stray fur) lifts right out for cleaning as well. (Learn from my mistake, put a paper towel under it or you're gonna make a muddy mess on your way to the sink). The bin design is also very smart (both for water and for dirt) - super easy to empty and keep clean. Scheduling: I love being able to set different routines and schedules. I work from home, so being able to set the robot to go vacuum my office at 5:45am and subsequently ignore my office when it does its noon run is great. You can set quiet hours where it will do a job, but it will turn down its voice and not empty itself. The office run it does for me is after I've gone to the gym, but before my husband wakes up, so it returns quietly to its dock and doesn't empty itself until it goes to do its noon "daily maintenance" cleaning. This is important because when it does empty the dust bin, it is LOUD AF. But just for about 10 seconds or so. The app: I like that I can view where the robot is, how it cleaned, what the maintenance status is (it reminds me to clean the sensors, clean the filter, etc), any objects detected, etc. See cons for what I don't love. Cons: The app: The app is not particularly intuitive. The routines are in a completely different place than scheduling, for example. That's honestly my biggest beef. App needs a serious UX overhaul. Dust bin bag: This is a disposable vacuum bag. I wish the design didn't require a disposable and non-reusable bag. Carpet: I have a large rug in my office with a fairly low pile. After observing how it does on this carpet, I don't think I would recommend this unit to anyone with plushy carpeting. It uses a rubber roller rather than a brush, and I just don't think it would do a particularly amazing job of grooming the pile. Toaster (the disgraced Roomba) has moved upstairs (AKA No Dog's Land), and I think because of the double roller with an actual brush, it performs better on carpet with any kind of pile. If you just have area/throw rugs with a lower pile or berber type carpet, I think it'll do fine. Throw rugs: Speaking of throw rugs, mixed bag on those. I have a couple it will successfully navigate, but others (like my bathroom rugs) it wants to drag around. I know which ones it'll mess with now, so I pick them up. The ones it doesn't mess with, it really nicely lifts the mop up so you don't end up with a wet rug, then puts it back down once its off the rug. Final verdict: Ser Toaster III is a fantastic floor robot. It's not absolutely perfect, but nothing is. This gets close enough for me to say unreservedly that I would buy it again. If you can swing the cost on this unit (including the recurring cost on the bags and replaceable parts like the edge brush and such), it's totally worth it.