Roborock’s Q Revo Max V Is the Ideal Robot Vacuum Cleaner for Daily Cleaning

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I recently reviewed the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra , which remains the best floor robot I’ve tested over the past year. I was excited by Roborock’s announcement at CES 2024 that they would be releasing literally a fleet of new bots this year. This week I’ll be reviewing two such robots: the Q Revo Max V and the S8 MaxV Ultra, both of which mop, vacuum, and self-fill and empty. I’m happy to report that while the S8 Pro Ultra is still an incredibly well-built bot, there are improvements to both new bots that make these new releases worthwhile without losing any of the features that made me love the S8. The Roborock Q Revo Max V ($1,199.99, available in April) is an upgrade from previous models with retractable brushes that can reach around a wall or corner, increased suction power, and a new AI-powered voice assistant that makes the job even more fascinating.

New retractable brushes provide greater coverage.

The unit itself consists of two parts: the base on which the vacuum bag is located, the clean water tank, the dirty water tank and the entire cleaning mechanism of the robot, and then the robot itself. The overall tower area is slightly smaller than bots I’ve recently tested, such as the Ecovacs Deebot and Eufy X10 , and it comes in a shiny white color (it’s unclear if it will also be available in black). The actual bot looks the same as its predecessors: RoboBots are round, with a protruding circular “button” on top. One of the reasons I like this brand is that the lids on their bots are magnetic, so they are easy to remove and close for cleaning or accessing the inside of the bot (which you’ll really only need to do for setup and maybe later, for maintenance).

One of the main differences between the S8 and Q Revo lines is the mop itself. The S8 line features a mop, while the Q Revo features rotating disc mops—in this case, two of them on the back of the bot. There are rollers for the vacuum cleaner on the front. The Q Revo has one roller and the S8 has two, but I didn’t find that the number of rollers correlated with cleaning performance. If anything, the Q Revo was a little easier to clean if something got snagged: accessing the rollers is as simple as flipping the robot over and then squeezing two clamps to release the lid. I found the process easy compared to other robots like Roombas where it was often difficult to put the parts together. Roborock does a great job of making the ends so different that you always figure out how to put things together. There’s also the familiar rotating brush to help sweep debris out of the robot’s path, and it definitely feels larger than other bots, which should help pick up more debris closer to the wall. Each water tank holds just over 4 liters of water. Over the course of two weeks, I used the Q Revo on its highest settings at least once a day without having to top up the water tank, which was an improvement over the S8 Pro Ultra and all the other bots I’ve tested recently.

Easy installation and mapping

I found the Q Revo easy to unbox and install; Since I regularly install and remove these robots, it’s worth noting that Roborock plans their packaging carefully, and this tower required little more than attaching a docking ramp to the base and it was ready to go. The installation was painless and took about ten minutes. Under the cover there is a Wi-Fi indicator; you download the Roborock app, press two buttons on the robot itself to put the Wi-Fi into open mode, and the app detects it in seconds. At this point, the app sends some updates and Wi-Fi connections, which are mostly done without user interaction. During testing, I did not experience any disconnections – Roborock remained online the entire time. Remarkably, it quickly returned to the network after two power outages, which you will learn as it announces itself through the voice assistant known as Rocky. (More on that in a moment.) Like other LiDAR-based robots that use a laser for guidance and mapping, the Q Revo mapped the entire area within seconds of leaving the dock, which never ceases to impress me. The app creates a map of your space where you can manipulate it. During the first outing, you can choose whether the robot will clean itself or just map, and I always recommend sticking with mapping so that the robot is less likely to get stuck scouting your space. Even though LiDAR is triggered immediately, the robot will still wander around the space, almost confirming what the lasers saw.

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Customizable Settings

In Cleaning Mode, Roborock has expanded the previously available options to include four vacuum and mop cleaning intensity levels, and the brushes or mops will rise and fall depending on the type of floor found underneath. For those concerned about robots accidentally wiping down your carpets, I haven’t encountered an issue on any model I’ve tested with LiDAR. Modern robots do an incredible job of detecting floor texture, and Q Revo is no exception.

Q Revo has a suction power of 7000 Pa, which is significantly more than previous models. One of the benefits of these latest models is the sheer number of options available through the app to customize your vacuum, and this is where I think you can make or break the floor robot experience. Unlike iRobot, which is known for the inexplicable patterns the robot moves across the floor, Roborock allows you to choose a pattern, either back and forth or a little more randomized. In addition to intensity, you can also choose whether the bot should make one or two passes through the space. However, I believe the setting that will most likely affect your vacuum cleaner the most is obstacle avoidance. In this settings panel, you can tell the robot that you have a pet, which means it will detect both the pet and its poop. There is a “less collision” mode, which means the bot will try to anticipate walls and furniture to bump into them less, as well as AI environment recognition and obstacle avoidance. Turning on pet detailing and collision modes simply didn’t clean up the floor as well, but turning them off improved efficiency. I quickly realized that setting the robot to maximum suction and moving back and forth resulted in the floor being so much cleaner that there was no point in lowering the settings.

The Q Revo didn’t absorb lint from inside stuffed pet toys like the S8 did – and this is something I encounter a lot, so I have to remove it manually with some frequency. Kudos to the brand for making sure the roller gets stuck in the trash doesn’t render the bot immobile—you can still return it to the base so it opens up and can be easily grabbed, or use the in-app remote to guide it. It is for you. You can usually tell when there’s something in the bot because it will rattle or make sounds, but again, I appreciate that it will still continue to move forward. Vacuum is definitely the better of the two modes; The Q Revo did an impressive job on deep-pile carpets, low-pile carpets, tile and wood floors, and it has a large enough container on board that it rarely had to return to base in the middle of a vacuum to empty. The base also received a power boost. This is important because it determines how well the base pulls all the debris out of the bot.

Other robot vacuum cleaners worth considering:

A good mop for daily cleaning.

I’m impressed by how effective the new robots with mop heads are at cleaning your floors with just a pad, but the Q Revo has two powerful rotating brushes. While they provided excellent cleaning, they weren’t as effective as the S8 line when it came to deep cleaning. It was effective at getting rid of muddy paw prints, spilled drinks, and other large messes, but didn’t give the deep clean I was hoping for on my white tiles. So, these mops are good for everyday cleaning, but you will still need to do a deep clean weekly with something manual. What I really liked was how the rotating brushes came out of the bot’s body and went up the wall and around obstacles. This is the best wall-to-wall floor mop I’ve tested, and it did a great job in my kitchen, an area that’s notoriously difficult to really clean. Like other bots, it struggles with inside corners, so you’ll have to manually clean them weekly. Q Revo also gives you an extra layer of customization tools, and these have helped in some cases. For example, when the mop is running at maximum intensity, you can even adjust the amount of water used to make it even more effective. I don’t want to leave it on with high water flow all the time, but I have found it to be useful for tougher stains on tile and wood.

Application with several different settings

Even though the Roborock app offers a significant amount of settings, it was still relatively easy to find what I needed and change the settings I wanted. The mapping options in particular remain some of the best. You can easily separate spaces, merge them, create zones on the fly, or tell the app where floors or furniture are changing or present if LiDAR makes a mistake. Like other new machines, this model offers remote viewing, which is a built-in camera that allows you to watch live video from the robot. This is especially useful if the robot gets stuck somewhere or you want to keep an eye on how well it’s cleaning – several robots now offer this option, and I’m struggling to find a need for it.

Built-in voice assistant takes longer to bake

The most exciting new feature, although not entirely ready, was the voice assistant named Rocky on board the robot. It lacks the flexibility of other assistants like Google and Alexa—you can only summon it with “Hey Rocky,” and if you have more than one robot in the house, you’ll have to do a lot of whispering to get its attention. correct because the app won’t let you tell them apart. Once you have his attention, you can give Rocky a very specific set of commands, such as “start cleaning”, clean a specific room, or my favorite “clean here”, which will then try to detect your voice. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work out very well, but watching Rocky try was adorable. I imagine Rocky will improve and Roborock will release updates over time, and it was useful to be able to ask the robot to clean up areas on the fly as long as you remember the very specific wording of the command. Siri will use artificial intelligence to try to figure out whether you meant “start cleaning” when you said “clean now,” but Rocky doesn’t do that yet.

Overall, I was pleased with the Q Revo Max V. While I would argue that even the best floor robot is a maintenance tool rather than a complete vacuuming and mopping solution, this model delivers on that premise. Once the settings were set, I got good coverage and excellent wall-to-wall vacuuming, although I did have to clean the vacuum rollers at times. The mop is great for cleaning surfaces, especially around the edges of walls, but not for deep cleaning, and may require more passes and occasional adjustments to the settings to work properly. Rocky as an AI assistant is a fun addition and I look forward to future developments. At $1,199, the Q Revo Max V is still an expensive machine, but it appears to be worth the money compared to other floor robots, including the new $1,599 S8 Max V, which I’ll review later this week. The Q Revo Max V will be available on the Roborock website and other retailers such as Amazon in early April. Of course, details regarding pricing and availability are subject to change prior to actual release.

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