Roborock S8 Pro Ultra Robot Vacuum Cleaner Is Expensive, but Worth It
When I bought my first robot vacuum five years ago, I was deeply disappointed by how much work the damn thing still required. Even with a self-emptying tower, the vacuum required constant maintenance – emptying, rescuing, freeing the rollers from obstacles. The included mop was so useless that I left it under the couch for a year. But today’s floor robots don’t just vacuum and mop—they’re becoming more autonomous creatures. The Roborock S8 Pro Ultra ($1,199.99) is an amazingly useful vacuum cleaner and mop that requires virtually no maintenance. I will never, ever go back to the bots of old.
This generation of robot vacuum cleaners is much more autonomous.
The price of robot vacuum cleaners has dropped significantly in recent years, and many now feature self-emptying towers. Separately, there are robot mops that require you to remove the mop pad, wash it, replace it, and then push that pad (and all the germs and dirt it collects) across the floor. Sometimes, like the Roomba i7 and Braava, they have to work with each other (spoiler: they don’t even seem to like each other). S8 is a representative of a new generation of floor robots that vacuum and wash floors. More importantly, they fill, empty, wash and dry, and only put clean water on the floor. You fill the clean water station and empty the dirty water station every few weeks, and replace the vacuum cleaner bag about once a month.
These bots need more space
To do all this, you’ll need a slightly more substantial tower: the latest robotic vacuum stations are about the size of a toilet bowl. Although the S8 is larger than the Switchbot K10+ , it is still compact enough to fit into small spaces. I didn’t have to rearrange any furniture to do this. The bot itself isn’t impressive either; I realized that this is also important when assessing effectiveness – the smaller the bot, the closer it gets to the wall, under the toe and between the legs of the chair. It makes more passes through the space, which means the brushes will also make more passes. Roborock is a good medium sized bot with a low profile. The Pro Ultra comes in black or white, and I liked the simplicity of the bot—a few simple buttons appear on top and the rest are hidden under a cover. The base is a matte molded plastic that you’ll definitely see without being confused. He could probably hide under the side table.
This robot uses lasers
Like most of the new bots I’m testing, Roborock uses lidar, which means you don’t have to bump into objects to find them – it uses light detection and ranging (lasers!) to explore the space. A few moments after leaving the base for the first time, an almost perfect outline of the room appeared on the map. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only disadvantage of lidar compared to bump and turn is that the new robots won’t attempt to enter the space if they sense a blockade; they will avoid it. So even though my Roomba i7 simply breaks through the curtain between two rooms, the new bots interpret it as a wall. On the other hand, Roborock gets closer to walls than any other new robot I’ve tried.
The S8 mop can handle even tough jobs.
The Roborock mops and vacuums at the same time and has yet to accidentally put a mop on my rugs. You can set the intensity of the vacuum cleaner and mop, or ask the bot to do one or the other instead of both. During the month I tested this bot, I had a dog track the worst dirt you can imagine through a doggy door onto a white tile. Thirty times a day a new trail of dirty paw prints was left. Roborok would quietly and quickly come up and wipe down the area, and by the time it was done, the dirt would be completely gone. It didn’t matter whether the dirt was wet or dry, which means it did a better job than even the last Dyson mop I tested. Moreover, it did not track dirt in other places. The entire floor will remain in its original form; once the dirt got in, the mop pad was rinsed to a fluffy white color (I checked!), and I was able to send the Roborock out every 30 minutes or so without the battery ever taking longer to recharge.
With Roborock you are much less likely to get stuck.
The vacuum cleaner was equally impressive: although it has the same rollers as any other floor robot, Roborock was less bothered by larger pieces of debris on the floor. Labels, teddy bears, and the occasional dog treat seemed to make no difference either while the vacuum was patrolling the floor or when the vacuum was emptying at the base. The bot’s wheels only got stuck a couple of times on some cords under the sofa. Normal obstacles that bothered other bots, such as carpet transitions or rapids, didn’t bother Roborock much. While I did have the occasional yarn-related incident that required me to distract myself from the cleaning bot, that didn’t seem to be a big deal either. After that I just put the bot back on the floor; he will quickly get his bearings and get back to work.
S8 integrates into your home and workflow
Roborock integrates with Google Home, Alexa, and Homekit, making it much easier to use Roborock to hit the dirt trail. It also allows for automation, meaning you can use occupancy sensors to tell the robot to return to base when someone is in the room, or use a water sensor to send it to mop the floors if there’s a leak. , or (my favorite) add a vibration sensor to the high chair and send the vacuum away as soon as your baby starts eating (and dropping) food.
S8 is equipped with the latest features such as joystick control.
The S8 has a few more new features that I think are important in a robot vacuum, such as a joystick function so you’re less likely to have to rescue your bot. You can simply guide it with the joystick, using a map that shows with high accuracy where the bot is at any given moment in space. You can also set zones to do more cleaning of a certain space (like under a high chair or in front of a doggy door) and specifically put a mark on the map and the bot will go straight to it. There is a really nice 3D version of the map available that visualizes furniture in space, but aside from the pleasure it gave me at first glance, I preferred the 2D version for functionality. I like that Roborock tells you exactly how much life is left on every part that needs replacing, from sensors to brushes, filters, and dust bins.
Gets the job done quickly and quietly, just as it should be.
I’m extremely impressed by the speed at which the S8 completes tasks and its fairly low noise levels; you can be connected while it is working. Roborok takes a few minutes to leave the dock when you call him (he’s preparing a mop), but once he does, he doesn’t lay around. It follows a reasonable path across the floor (and you can actually influence this pattern to make the cleaning more or less efficient if you get the sick satisfaction of watching the bot scrub every inch of the floor in rows back and forth).
It’s still a robot
S8 cannot pick up a cord or toy and walk under it. Living with a robot means you’ll always be looking for ways to pick up and lift things off the floor, especially cords. I tend to throw laundry towards the washer and dryer, leaving it to accumulate at the base of the machines, and Roborock twice got caught on a towel left there. Guilty.
Like most floor robots, there are plenty of settings you can fine-tune, from those that control how the S8 handles carpets, to how it reacts to objects in its path, and even whether to expect a pet. Helpful tip: If your pet mostly avoids the bot, disable this feature as it may affect how well the bot cleans. This is the problem with most floor bots: the more settings you touch, thinking they will improve the bot, the less they do. It’s usually best to just let the floor robot do its thing without interfering with app settings or floor cleaning.
Expensive bot, but worth every cent
The S8 is, excuse me, damn nice. It’s efficient enough that I don’t want to use it to test another floor robot. While working, I don’t suffer from the bot-related anxiety I’ve had in the past: I have to keep track of where the floor robot is, whether it’s stuck, stuck or confused, or whether it can complete a task the first time. . This is my first attempt at using a Roborock product and it costs over $1000. But if you spent less money on a bot that requires a lot of attention and were disappointed, the S8 will restore your faith.