roborock Q7 M5+ Robot Vacuum and Mop, Upgraded from Q5 Max+, Up to 7-9 Weeks Self-Empty, 10000Pa Suction, Dual Anti-Tangle System for Pet Hair & Carpet, PreciSense LiDAR Navigation, App Control, White

SLM United States

Brilliant so far!

Update Jan 24 2019: I have had a little time to see how this vacuum performs in a number of situations. There are some good updates, and some not so good. Let's do the not so good first. Map saving feature in the app is listed as "Beta" and it is clearly beta. It will save the map, but every ~3 to 6 runs, it also seems to shift that map, overwrite parts of it and get confused in the process. The result is, in my case, that I find my vacuum in the kitchen closet, when she thinks she's in my bedroom, across the house. Last night I had to use the remote control to drive her to the dock, and then when I told her to dock, she ignored the dock and tried to drive down the hall to my office closet, where the dock was now "located". So map saving needs work. The good news is, it can be re-set by simply docking the robot and turning off map saving and then turning it back on, and that they know it's beta so it will get an update or two to fix this problem in the future. The good news is also... map saving is only necessary to use zone cleaning and no-go zones. So some people can get away without even using it, and re-setting it isn't very difficult. The good news that I have discovered is that this robot is even more versatile than I thought. It turns out the LIDAR tower on top, with which it "sees", is actually a button in and of itself, and when the vacuum tries to go under something it can't fit under, the button gets depressed and she will conclude she can't fit. Also, I can not only set my vacuum to perform a scheduled cleanup multiple times per day, but I can also schedule them at different suction settings; so, for example, I currently have it set to vacuum once a day every day except Sunday on Balanced mode, and then on Sunday vacuum on Max mode. I did try the mopping feature, and I was surprised at how useful it actually turns out to be. I followed the advice I was given to have it perform mopping in zones and have it repeat the zone 3x. There was a zone for each room/hall, and it never ran out of water. I did have to re-fill it after each zone was finished, and it took a lot of manually changing water and cleaning the pad, but it works well enough that even my skeptical girlfriend was forced to admit she saw a real difference. So far the only problem I see is that the app needs updating to correct the map saving feature. Which is going to happen... so I'll maintain my 5 star rating. Original Review: I am coming from three years with a Neato brand D80. I named him Dudly Do-Bot as a joke, but it quickly became "Dumba** Dudley" because he was, shall we say, not very intelligent. He managed to destroy a family heirloom in the form of a mirror, and knocked over it's replacement several times, as well as knocking over small tables with glassware on them, etc. In the end, I was constantly having to help him out from under things, out from corners, and put the dustbin back in several times a cleaning with him beeping incessantly at all times of day. In the end, I had to replace him. But Dudley did do one thing right. When he wasn't beeping and screwing up, he kept the dust down in my house, which is why I bought him; and without him, it quickly became a problem for me to breathe again. My girlfriend works as a housekeeper, so she wasn't exactly keen on coming home and vacuuming, and I have no vacuum otherwise (tile floors). So a replacement was necessary. I looked at Neato, Roomba and a number of other options. After a lot of consideration, I was planning to get the Xiaomi Mi, based on amazing reviews. Then this one came out and the reviews were even better. That coupled with the improvements and the wet mopping feature sealed the deal. While I had to pay various bills first, I did manage to get it about a month after Dudley bit the dust. I have only had it about 24 hours as of this writing, but I will be doing this review in sections over time. So this is "part 1" of the review. And I have to say, I am significantly impressed. Maybe not as much as I might have been were I not as well studied on what the options were, but regardless, I am still significantly impressed. Here is why. First, getting started was not difficult. I just had to pay attention to the instruction booklet and the Mi Home app while it was being connected to the network. It took me about 7 minutes all told. Second, updating the vacuum's firmware was easy and flawless. Third, the instruction booklet is better than I expected; it is translated into English well, although you can tell that whomever did it was speaking English as a second language, as there are some minor word choice errors. That is true in the app as well; but in most cases, it still can be figured out, and the errors are rare and minor in almost all cases. It was a nice change of pace from the crazy "English" I have seen in some other Chinese product manuals. Fourth, the app is very well done. I say that as someone who used to be a programmer. It has a lot of features, and in fact has almost every feature I could think of or want. For example, nobody who has reviewed this vacuum seems to have mentioned that this vacuum has unlimited configurability for when and where. You can set it to vacuum on a schedule of as frequently as once a day, but you can also create multiple schedules - meaning that you can, for example, have it vacuum five times on Monday, once on Tuesday, not on Wednesday, three times on Thursday, and then four times on Friday, while skipping the weekends. Zone cleaning allows you to set up multiple zones where it should clean and make up to three passes, all during the same cleaning. So you can have it clean the bathroom rug, the floor next to your bed, and the kitchen, for example, and do so 1, 2 or 3 times in a row. Virtual barriers work to prevent it from going where you don't want it to go, but so far they have been entirely unnecessary: she recognizes and honors the magnetic barriers I placed around my bedroom mirror for Dudley, and has not touched the mirror. But even if she did, it wouldn't matter, as she is so gentle that she doesn't disturb the pipettes I have situated on top of the perfumery components and glassware on even the smallest (folding) table in my perfumery lab. I couldn't have left that table out at all with Dudley, as he would have (did regularly) either gotten stuck and knocked everything off of it or knocked it over. She also doesn't move the shoe I have holding open my bedroom door for her, which Dudley would always plow through, getting himself locked in my bedroom, which of course resulted in endless beeping from him. Dudley was a bull in a china shop. My new vacuum is surprisingly careful, gentle and precise. Dudley did not intelligently use his side brush, except by always taking a course that would put it closest to the wall. But what good does that do when the brush stopped spinning, and nothing I did would get it to spin again? My Roborock S5 has a very intelligently programmed and used side brush, which spins gently when she is cleaning away from walls so that it sweeps debris into her path, and when she is near the wall, it spins faster to get things out from next to the wall. Both work very well, and you can tell that a lot of consideration was put into that. Furthermore, she will move in small arcs to use that brush to sweep intelligently, not just in a straight line. That makes it much more effective still. The only time so far that I had to rescue her was when she managed to swallow the old telephone wire I have near the baseboard coming out of my garage in the kitchen, which Dudley never could get to somehow. When she realized she was caught, she moved backward, which brought a folding chair down around her, trapping her. I have also found evidence that she has been intelligently designed to detect tangles and clogs (socks, for example) and will reverse the direction of her brushes to "spit them out". Have not seen this first hand yet (except for the side brush spinning backwards), but I have found socks on the floor in my bedroom where they were not before she vacuumed, and if she wasn't doing that, it should have gotten stuck in her main brush. It didn't. Dudley could not fit under my bed. To my surprise, she does - and she has cleaned the entire surface under it. The first time she got stuck because my cat had torn up the liner on the bottom of the box spring, but I ripped it off and now she deftly cleans under my bed. The first time we ran her fully, the house hadn't been vacuumed in a week, and with a cat and two Yorkies, it gets pretty funky by that point. I picked up most of the pine needles they brought in, but I did leave a few 2-3 inch pieces on the ground to see if they would clog her like they did Dudley. Nope, she sucked 'em right up and kept on going. Another thing I really like is that when she was done with her first complete cleaning, her dust bin was completely full. With Dudley, he would fill it right where the air came in, leaving the sides of the dustbin empty. It required me to tap the dirt down into the sides, or empty it three times as frequently. She fills her dust bin much more efficiently, which should require less effort on my part. I also was very surprised to see how much she picked up during today's full cleaning, after I emptied the dust bin yesterday. It was 1/3rd full again. There are a lot of other features I like. It speaks to me in a pleasant female voice, and it was in English by default. If it gets lost, there is a feature in the app for finding your vacuum, which plays music continuously until you press a button on the top of the robot. The software has a volume control, and you can update and change the language packs, although right now there is only one in English. Updating the language pack installed on the vacuum was something I didn't expect them to be doing. It also includes a remote control for manual control. You have the four different vacuuming modes (quiet, balanced, turbo and max) plus the mopping mode (I haven't used mopping mode yet). It even has a Do Not Disturb mode, where you can set it to not vacuum or make sounds. By default this is set for between 22:00 (10 PM) and 8:00. You can also request help and give feedback directly through the app. I have not had to request help, so I can't say how that goes. Overall, the machine and the app are both 5 star. I am very pleased and very impressed. Even my girlfriend likes the new vacuum. She was expecting to hate it as she did Dudley, but was quickly won over by how intelligently it works. The only downside I can see has to be the reports of some people having trouble when they need customer service, but if this company is competent enough to get everything else right, I am sure they will eventually get that right too. One thing I notice that Roborock/Xiaomi could improve is the one thing that Neato (Dudley) does better. That is, the cleaning path. Neato makes sure that their vacuums move back and forth along the long side of whatever area they are cleaning; lengthwise. The Roborock cleans in a widthwise pattern, meaning it takes shorter paths and must make more turns. This is not as efficient for time or cleaning. That said, the higher suction on the Roborock and it's obviously higher intelligence more than makes up for the difference. There's more, but I can't remember it. I'll update this review in a few weeks or months and give you more information. If you're looking for a great robotic vacuum, though, I can (so far) heartily recommend this one. We shall see how well she lasts.

Just Beth United States

Buy a robot vacuum already!

The robot vacuum post that you didn't know you needed! TL;DR Roborock E4 {$179-$269} Roomba i6+ {$549-$799} If you're looking to get a robot vacuum, I would like to say DO IT. As to which brand to pick, it's a toss up, and completely depends on your budget. I bought our Roborock on sale for $179 last year and have been very pleased with it. My heart was originally set on the more pricey Roomba self-emptying units, but since I am frugal and wanted to see if it would even work here, I went with the lesser expensive bot. We have a house full of old furniture and rooms so I didn't know if a robot would even jive here. I have been VERY pleased with our Roborock. It has done a great job over the last few months while we are not home. I would say, realistically, 8 out of 10 times it went off without a hitch. It went down our foyer stairs one time and had also gotten itself lodged under my sewing machine and other furniture a handful of times. Every day that it did its cycle (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9am) I would come home and empty the trap. It has a washable filter and I cut the hair from the brushes and cleaned the sensors. It has been well worth the $179 to not have to see cat hair, hay, gravel, stove dust, and leaves everywhere. A week ago I bought the unit I had had my heart set on. Well, the unit a tier above the one I had had my heart set on. The lowest priced Roomba unit with the self emptying dock has been at about $500 for the last year, the i3+. The next level up, the i6+, has run about $799. Last week, and even now, Amazon has had the i6+ for the same price as the i3+. My assumption is that a new i6+ is probably coming out soon so they're blowing them out. WHICH IS FINE, I want one. I don't spend a lot of money on goofy things, except 1978 El Caminos, so I decided to spoil myself with this i6+. To be honest they were similar in price LOL. I'm an adult with adult money, no kids, and a farmy kind of property with a dusty wood stove so I did it. After purging, donating, selling, and burning almost everything I owned in the fall, having a clean house feels absolutely amazing. Having a clean floor 24/7 is almost euphoric. I enjoy being home and no longer have those nagging feelings of dread about things I need to be cleaning. I also very much enjoy the kitty cats and Chris and I have raging allergies so I need something to clean up the hair. My feelings so far on the two: Quality of the clean: Roomba and Roborock seem to clean the same. I was very pleased with both. The Roborock generally took a little more than an hour and would get down to about 30% battery life. It was also slower than the Roomba. The Roomba is a faster unit, almost a bit more violent, and takes about 3 hours to complete the first floor. It does seem to be more thorough and charges itself halfway through a first floor cycle. Apps: I didn't want to get another brand so I'd have a second app, but I went with the Roomba anyway. The Roomba has a far superior app. And by far I mean, from here to Australia. The Roborock app is great and easy to use, but very primitive. You also cannot choose certain areas to clean with the E4. It cleans everything or nothing. The Roomba i6 created a map of our house and will just do certain areas that I tell it to. It can do certain rooms on different days of the week or on command. Both tell you when to perform regular maintenance on the machines, when they are stuck, or if software updates are needed. Parts: I like that the Roborock company and Roomba BOTH offer replacement parts at affordable prices. I have been able to take apart and clean out the Roborock really easily. I won't have to do anything to the Roomba for a while, but I will have new brushes, filters, etc. on hand for when it is due. Clumsiness: The Roomba is definitely a superior machine, but it should be, at 3x the price of the Roborock. The Roborock is very primitive but very gentle. Like I said, only 1 time out of dozens of cleanings did it go down some stairs. And it was probably my fault for not cleaning the sensors. The Roomba is much, much faster and almost more violent, sometimes bashing pretty hard into my furniture and woodwork. I think after a few cleanings, it will figure itself out and no longer hit so hard. The Roborock is definitely a more simple, slower, and more methodical machine. Roomba goes in curvier lines and seems to have a method to the madness. Roborock says eff this madness, I need to go in a straight line or I'll die. Convenience: Both are great in that they are vacuums that I don't have to push around. We have so much wood floor, furniture, and trim - it is super cool to not have sheh just pushed up against it. I also cook a lot so the crumb thing was driving me bonkers. I do have to manually empty the trap on the Roborock, but it's not bad at all. A few seconds and I'm done. The filter is also washable, so it lasts a long time. The Roomba has the base that sucks the dirt out of the machine and into a disposable bag. 1. The base sounds like a god dang jet taking off when it gets the dirt out of the vacuum. 2. I haven't quite gauged how long it will take to fill the bag. Now I'll have to purchase bags from time to time. I'm not sure how I feel about it. But having to not have to remember to empty the little bastard is convenient since I have it running 3 days per week. Sounds: Both are god dang vacuums. They sound like vacuums. Run it while you aren't home. I hate seeing people complaining about the noise in online reviews. IT'S A effING ROBOT VACUUM, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT? Physical differences: They are approximately the same size and weight. Both are black and have cameras and sensors in approximately the same areas. Major differences are that the brush on the Roborock is 1 actual bristled brush, while the Roomba has 2 rubber "brushes" that work simultaneously to pull dirt between them, instead of sweeping dirt up into a bin like the Roborock. Both seem to function very similarly, but I'd have to give the blue ribbon to the Roomba. I want to point out that the other reason I went with the Roomba was that the higher quality Roborocks [$500-$800] only come with vacuum AND mop features, and I did NOT want a mop feature. They also do not come with a self-emptying dock. I personally don't see how you can jam a mop system and a vacuum system in a bot the same size and not compromise the vacuum capabilities. I also read a lot of reviews that the mop part is just a glorified restaurant pre-packaged moist toilette and having it drag that around my entire first floor seemed kind of gross. It's just us and the cats, I will mop when I need to.

@58Sloop United States

Should have bought this years ago! Love it!

Update almost 3 years later, purchased Nov. 30, 2020, today is August 20, 2023. The Roborock E4 is still going strong running daily on high, for a total of 849 hours so far and 387,000 square feet cleaned. I didn't double check his math but my son says that came out to 73 square miles, and maybe so! We did do a factory-reset today because she was getting a little lazy, but it ran like a bat out of Hello again after the reset. I hope they keep making this model, if this one ever dies it's definitely the one I'd want to buy again. Tons of dogs, tons of dog hair, muddy shoes and messes and we're not very kind to her, she's been dropped and kicked a lot over the years. Roborock Company, if you're listening, keep making the E4~~~!!!!! EDIT AFTER 6 OR 7 WEEKS OF USE: I still love this vacuum; as my Great Pyranees and German Shepherd start to shed their winter under coat however, she clogs often. It's not her fault (the vacuum), it's just a schit-ton of hair and clumps. That said, it is still so easy to remove the brush and clean it out, unlike standard vacuum brushes. I really love that you can clean out the brush with no tools needed. Just pop it out, take the hair off of it, and pop it back in. Been using this every day for a week now. 1100 sq ft home with laminate floors, two kids in and out all day in rural America (no side walks just grass and diry/mud) with dirty feet, three very large, very hairy dogs, and two cats and the pets also in and out all day tracking in dirt when they're not just dropping their hair every where all day long. This will sound like a paid review but it's not. We have been using a $1200 Hyla water vacuum for the past several years and while the Hyla has it's many positive features, it's also a huge, heavy, messy pain in the butt to use - therefore we did not use it as much as we should. Even when we did, the very next day we would have what looked like snow drifts of dog hair in all the corners, under the furniture, every where. It was a constant battle we lost on a daily basis. There was this love-hate relationship with the pets because their hair was EVERY WHERE and so gross no matter what we did! For this reason I was skeptical about the Robo-Vac, I just didn't think it could handle the work load. My teen boy did research on robo vacs for a year trying to talk me in to getting one because the boys are in charge of vacuuming and hated the Hyla. The one he recommended finally went on sale so I got it as a family Christmas present. WOW. I love this thing! We named her Rhonda. Rhonda not only keeps up with the work load, she doesn't clog with dog hair the way the Hyla's hose did. That hose would clog several times per cleaning, any little old bread tie wire, wad of hair, little scrap of candy wrapper - clog. Thirty minutes taking it apart and cramming coat hangers down it's throat to clear it. Rhonda doesn't clog. There is no hose to clog. The suction is amazing. We have found an entire dryer sheet and a key chain in her dust bin that she sucked right up with no trouble. She did pick up a rock yesterday and gave us the error message to remove the rock (what the heck is a rock doing in my house? who knows). She also goes under the sofa, chairs, tight corners, under the book cases, right up against the walls, every where the Hyla either didn't fit or was such a bulky pain to use we didn't sweep regularly. Because we put down these laminate floors last year, we put felt pads on the bottom of all our table and chair legs so they wouldn't scratch up the floor. Ever seen what mass amounts of dog hair does to felt pads? Every table and chair leg had a mass amount of hair stuck to them, looked disgusting, everything had dirty furry feet! The Hyla could not get this off. Enter Rhonda! Rhonda has those rotating fingers that scrub up against everything, she pulled all that mass of stuck hair off her first run and has continued to keep it clean since then. Another problem was kids and couch blankets, or any blanket. Blankets end up on the floor, covered in dog hair. No more! Last night watching TV I noticed my boy wrapped in a blanket that was no longer covered in dog hair! Because they love her so much, they also keep their shoes and socket and stuff up off the floor so she can clean. Rhonda wakes up every day at 8am and starts cleaning. It takes her about an hour to do the entire house, bedrooms, pantry, laundry, both bathrooms - all those places the kids and the Hyla generally ignored. Usually we empty her dust bin twice. Because it's so fun and easy to use, sometimes we run her a 2nd time during the day. The noise level isn't bad at all. She gets on the throw rugs by each door awesome, they are cleaner than ever. It is so amazing that I don't have snow drifts in the corners, or wads of hair on my socks. These dogs are Great Pyrenees and German Shepherds - nothing but hair, all day long, hair hair hair! Not anymore! Yesterday we washed the filter. It takes much longer to dry than they say, so I should by a 2nd filter to use. We cannot sweep this morning due to the filter still damp, and Rhonda told me this with an error message that her filter was wet. I can't say enough about this robo vac, I love it love it love it. It's not a gimick tech toy, it's a hard working floor cleaning machine.

Robert Jay United States

The only Robo Vacuum Cleaner I liked!

When the pandemic and stay at home orders hit, my wife wanted me to vacuum the house. I immediately started looking for Robo Cleaners. Over the past six weeks, I have tried four different models. It was something I did not like about each of the first three. I have a two story house with an elevated entry level that Robot cleaners cannot climb up to. That means I have in effect three floors on the house. In spite of promises, none of the other three could map and retain the maps for more than one floor at a time. The S6 pure can. Also, the S6 maps using a laser guidance system, not a camera. I think it may be more accurate in navigating and finding things, and of course could do the job in total darkness since lasers don’t need the lights on to work. This mapping function actually divides the floor into multiple rooms, this is a function I had to perform manually on other models I tested. If one wants to of course one can of further combine or divide the rooms or set the boundaries anywhere you want manually. One thing I miss on this model that other models that is that other models allowed you to label the names of the room, where is this as he does not. This may be improved on a future software update. However, I can still figure out which is the living room and which is the dining room on the map it draws. We have oriental rugs in some of the rooms. One of the other cleaners I tried promptly chewed up the fringes on the rug and curled it off. It sucked it into its apparatus and stopped and I had to freeze it. No matter what I tried to do or how low I placed the strings, , it constantly choked and had to be rescued every time it crossed the border of the oriental rug. (That one was returned in about two days.) The S6 nibbles the fringes a bit, but passes all of them OK. My wife did not like even that. On previous models, some allowed exclusion zones or no cross lines. This did not work. The no cross line did not work, because I want the vacuum to work on both sides of the line rather than just walling off a corner of the room. One of the other cleaners allowed you to map off a non-entry area. When I tried, the minimum width was something like 6 feet, which was way too large to use just on a fringe of an oriental carpet. Finally I tried the S-6 Pure. This is a brand new model from this company. I usually don’t like to buy things just as they are released, but the clock was ticking and I had no choice. However, I am extremely pleased with the product. As I said, it is brand new so I assume that everything is as up-to-date and improved as possible. It does indeed map more than one floor, and it has map three floors in my house. It has also made a pretty good guess as to how to divide all the rooms on the floor. These are modifiable if you wish. As I said, so far you cannot label the rooms, but that is not really necessary. I tried the no-go zone on this one. Unlike the other cleaner I try it, this cleaner allows a no go zone of perhaps 1 foot in width. This is perfect for the fringes on the carpet. I selected a no go zone around the fringes of the oriental rug and let the cleaner loose. One was pretty much perfect and one just nipple devoid of a little bit. I adjusted the border of the no go zone to include completely the fringes. Now the robot zooms around the living room but avoids the fringes of the oriental rug. I also set little no go zones around the vents which are on the floor in this room, so that the Robot cleaner does not go over the metal grating. This cleaner also has an option, which I have not tried yet, where it will vacuum at a lower strength on hard floors, but will sense when it is on a carpet or rug and increase the vacuum strength to vacuum these areas more heavily. This unit will also mop floors, obviously just smooth non-carpeted floors, but I really did not care about this function (though it is nice to have!). I am glad it is there because it might be of some use in the future, especially for kitchen and bathrooms. This unit has the largest battery size of the various sizes that are available in different manufacturers machines, so they charge more to list out as long as anybody else’s. It also has a vacuum setting which is among the strongest of the ones available in different models you might find. One additional thing I should say is that their customer service appears to be excellent. I have emailed them multiple times with various dumb questions, and I usually get a response within a day. Another nice thing is that they actually appear to read my question and do not give a boilerplate response. This is not the cheapest Robo vacuum cleaner on the market (not the most expensive), but if these features sound interesting to you, I have not found another cleaner even at a higher price that is it’s equal.