Roborock Saros Z70 and 10R Review – 6 Months Later

By Josh Teder

I’ve had Roborock’s latest top-of-the-line vacuums, the Saros 10R and Saros Z70, which Roborock sent me for the past 6 months, and I’m going to take you through whether or not I think that robotic arm is worth spending the extra money on, how well these robots have actually cleaned my floors, the downsides that I’ve encountered, and if I overall recommend them.

The Robotic Arm: Novelty or Necessity?

All right, let’s talk about that robotic arm. That’s probably the biggest and flashiest new feature with this new line of robots. The OmniGrip arm has a camera and additional sensors to not only help it identify objects, but also pick them up and move them to a place that you choose, or a heavy-duty paper bin included with the robot.

Does it work? Surprisingly, yes. When it works, it’s like magic. It definitely fulfills that novelty factor. Now, does it work consistently? In my experience, no. I’ve watched it try to pick up a shoe for like 3 minutes and then just give up and move on. It’s a bit like owning a cat. You never quite know what you’re going to see when you encounter it.

And when it fails, it can fail spectacularly. Like when it started taking shoes off my shoe rack, or when it’ll move shoes out of the way for cleaning, but then it’ll tell you it’s unable to move them back, even though it was the thing that moved them there. Though sometimes it does get things right in an unexpected way. What? No way.

One cool thing you can do to help it be more accurate is to manually train the robot with object recognition for specific objects in your home. And if the robot picks up something that you don’t want it to or is about to do something it shouldn’t, there’s a convenient stop button that’s included.

Excellent Cleaning Performance

Now, the 10R doesn’t have any fancy robotic arm, but where that robot, as well as the Z70, really shine is in cleaning performance. Overall, I found the cleaning performance with these robots to be excellent. They clean the carpet well at my old place, which was almost all carpet, and then at my new place, which is almost all hard flooring, they get the dust up off the floors, and they scrub them as well as I’d be able to.

“I do think that the spinning, rotating mopping brushes for both of these robots are superior to the vibrating mopping pad that my older Roborock vacuums had.”

It’s anecdotal, but I do think that the spinning, rotating mopping brushes for both of these robots are superior to the vibrating mopping pad that my older Roborock vacuums had. Now, depending on your floor type, you will be able to see marks where the robot vacuumed or mopped, which I can see on my hard floors, but I honestly don’t mind. And there is a setting in the app where the robot, when possible, will mop along your floor’s pattern, so these marks should show up less often.

Both robots feature dual spinning mop pads that can be detached and left at the base, keeping your carpet dry. Though over the past 6 months, I’ve had issues with both of these robots doing this. When sending them on a vacuum-only run, often they’d leave only one behind. Though with recent software updates, they have stopped doing this.

Now, when it comes to cleaning performance, there is a difference between these robots that you’ll want to be aware of. To make room for that foldable five-axis robotic arm, the Z70 has a smaller onboard dust bin. The 10R will likely still perform better due to its superior roller brush design.

Design and Aesthetics

Another highlight is their overall design. The Z70 has a nice matte black finish with orange accents to signify that it’s the more techy/premium of the two robots, while the 10R has a sleek aesthetic with its matte black look and glass base. The base design for both robots is slightly narrower than my previous Roborock vacuum, so it’s even easier to put the dock in more places around your home.

Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance

So, how well do they navigate around my home? Well, in both locations, including with a ton of junk everywhere from the move, the navigation for both robots has been excellent. They haven’t destroyed my plants as previous Roborock vacuums did, and I’ve never had an issue with them not finding their way back to the dock.

Though, yes, on occasion, they will run over stuff in our closet, like a sock or part of a shirt on the floor that it didn’t see, and it’ll stop until I go get it unstuck. But generally, the navigation, obstacle avoidance, and recognition are all pretty good. Like with other robot vacs of the past, you can see on a map all of the objects it’s identified and didn’t run over.

Roborock’s app is another highlight. It’s very easy to go in, select the rooms of your home that you want vacuumed or mopped, and then fine-tune the cleaning modes. I was also surprised at how good the initial room mapping actually is.

What makes this navigation so good is its StarSight Autonomous System 2.0. It uses a combination of sensors, specifically a dual-transmitter solid-state lidar that replaces the traditional dome on top of the robot, allowing Roborock to slim down the design. There’s also a 3D time-of-flight sensor that performs 3D scans of the environment, helping the robot gain detailed spatial awareness.

There’s also VertiBeam lateral obstacle avoidance, which uses vertical structured light sensors to measure distances and changes, which allows the robot to easily move around obstacles and furniture, as well as avoid tangled cables. That’s actually something I’ve been pretty impressed by with these robots. They’ve avoided running over pretty much any cord that they’ve come in contact with, in my experience, at least. And the last crucial sensor is, of course, an RGB camera, which helps the robot identify objects and obstacles.

Battery Life

Moving on, let’s talk about battery life. The Z70’s battery life is shorter due to the arm’s power drain, though both are technically rated for the same battery life. In my experience, over the past 6 months, for my 1,100-square-foot apartment, I could run the vacuum and mop AI feature twice and still have enough battery left over.

Now, for my new home, which is larger, it’s about 2,500 square feet, and each robot has about 1,000 square feet per floor to clean. I found that they can do two cleaning runs on a single charge, which is awesome.

Voice Commands and Remote Viewing

So, what have I not found myself using with these robots? The two things I haven’t used all that often with the robots are voice commands and remote viewing. Now, you can technically use the voice assistant named Rocky that lives on the robots themselves to ask the robot to clean a specific room. And you can use the room name that you actually named the room in the app, which is pretty cool. But I found there are so many missed triggers with the assistant that I just ended up turning them off on both of the robots.

Plus, you can connect Roborock to smart home platforms and Apple Home now via Matter, which is new and awesome. Just note, you need to do this from your vacuum settings, not your user settings. With the Matter connection, you can control the robot, telling it which room to clean, what power mode to use, and also tell it to return to the dock. Information like battery level and status also comes through this integration as well.

Why this matters so much is that it makes it much easier to include your vacuum in your home automation. So when your smart home software knows no one is home, you can have it set to automatically set the robots to start cleaning. And I’ll leave my smart home guide video if you want to learn more about the current state of the smart home, all the platforms and the products I recommend, as well as what’s up with the Matter standard.

Remote viewing is another cool feature, but one I haven’t personally used all that much, probably because I work from home and I’m usually not very far away. But I can certainly see use cases for it. Like if you’re away and you get an alert on your phone that your home may have been broken into and you want to go around and see if there’s any damage or anything’s missing, or if you’re away and you just want to check in on your pet.

Speaking of which, when the robot is around doing its thing, it will automatically snap pics of any pets it sees, which you can download from the app. You can also use the robot to search for a pet. And you can even talk to your pet through the vacuum if you really want to freak him out. But I don’t have a pet, so I can’t verify that the pet snap feature works as intended.

Maintenance

In terms of maintenance, so far, I haven’t had to do anything aside from refilling their water tanks, getting rid of the dirty water, and then occasionally getting a sock out of them or dusting the tops of them off. Though yes, over time you will need to replace things like the dust bag found in the dock, as well as other parts like the roller brush and spinning mop pads.

Here in the US, they come with a standard one-year warranty. But note, because these devices have quite a bit of tech and engineering going on with them, they’re not meant to be user-replaceable, which I wish Roborock would work on. I can see why they don’t want users messing around with the motherboard or replacing electronic components, but for things like the battery, which isn’t user-replaceable, it really should be.

The Downsides

All right, now let’s talk about the downsides that I’ve encountered with these vacuums. And there are only two main downsides that I haven’t already talked about, both of which can sort of apply to the robotic vacuum space as a whole.

First, they don’t vacuum and mop everywhere. There will still be corners, crevices, baseboards, stairs, etc. that you will likely still need to clean yourself. Which is exactly why when I moved into my new home, I bought a Dyson V11 Extra, which has attachments that can handle stairs, baseboards, etc. You can also use it as a handheld vacuum for things like furniture pieces and my desk to eliminate dust from other surfaces, which robotic vacuum cleaners, for the most part, can’t help you with unless you go for a model like the one from Eufy that has one of these kind of integrated in with it.

“In terms of the time they save me by cleaning most of the floor, yes, they probably save me at least an hour a week, considering they not only vacuum but mop.”

Though in terms of the time they save me by cleaning most of the floor, yes, they probably save me at least an hour a week, considering they not only vacuum but mop. But you are spending a lot for a vacuum that can’t exactly do all of your cleaning for you. And that leads me to my second downside, which is price.

Now, these two robotic vacuums are top-of-the-line. They have practically every feature you could ask for, including a robotic arm with the Z70. The Z70 typically costs $1,000 more than the 10R. However, closer to the holidays, I’ve seen both of these robots on sale, and I’ll leave links to both robotic vacuums in the description and pinned comment, plus links to multiple retailers, so you can compare their current prices.

And be sure to follow our site, 6monthslater.net, either via RSS or just checking out the site every few weeks to see not only our latest content but updates on products and services that we cover from around the web, which I post in our quick post feed.

My Recommendation

So, do I overall recommend getting a robot vacuum? Yes. Mainly because it saves you time, and you can schedule these things to clean more often than you normally would. If you’re going to want the top-of-the-line vacuum that can auto wash, dry, empty itself, and fill its tank with more fresh water, plus a vacuum that cleans well, but importantly also navigates well, that’s where some competing robots can really fall down, I think the 10R is a fantastic choice.

Now, if I recommend the S10R, does that also mean that I’m recommending the Z70 for most people? No. Maybe if it were a few hundred more for that robotic arm, like it is currently, as I’m recording this, it’s on sale for about $1,200. Yeah, then that novelty might be worth splurging for. But even if money were no issue here, the Z70 can get into some really weird situations with its arm to the point where it might become more of an annoyance than a novelty. And if you end up just turning that feature off to actually make sure it completes its cleaning runs consistently, well then you might as well have just gone for the S10R and saved some money.

Is Two Better Than One?

Now, one other thing that’s new that I have with these two robots is, well, I have two of them. And depending on how big your home is, how many floors you have, you might be wondering, well, is it worth getting two of them?

Having two of these is definitely a luxury and nice because you don’t have to manually carry the robot upstairs. Though some companies are working on robotic vacuums that can climb stairs. So, do you need to? No. The robots themselves can memorize the floor plan for four different floors. So, you don’t need to, but it definitely does make it easier to automate cleaning multiple floors throughout the week.

Final Thoughts

So, those have been my thoughts on some of the latest robots from Roborock after 6 months of use. And be sure to let me know what you think of them. What do you think of the robotic arm? Let me know in the comments. And to see more of my thoughts on smart home tech, like other kinds of smart home devices to buy, or my thoughts on devices like the Home Assistant Green, you can click here to get to all of those videos.

And to see all of the products I recommend at any time, you can do that by visiting 6monthslater.net/shop.