Only the bad stuff: a review of the Roborock S7 Max Ultra’s negative aspects

If you wish to find out more about the positives of the Roborock S7, don’t read on.  This review will just focus on the negatives. Here’s the truth:

1. No doubt you’ll read in the positive reviews about the Roborock’s supposedly high tech sensors.  These so-called hi-tech sensors are the fake deal, not the real deal. Why? When you actually observe the Roborock in use, you’ll find that benchmarked against much older vacuums such as the Samsung Powerbot VR9300 (launched at CES way back in 2016) - the Roborock has really not evolved much at all, and may even be worse than Samsungs a whole generation older.  The Roborock relies on bumping in to things to navigate around; so does the Samsung.  The Roborock claims to have a LIDAR to more precisely identify objects - this leads to pretty maps with a lot of apparent detail, but in practice the Roborock just continues to find its way by bumping into things - probably more often than the Samsung, which seems to make more or better use of its built-in camera to avoid obstacles.  As for object identification, it's going to make a lot of silly mistakes, like mis-identifying my arm with "89%" certainty as a piece of fabric.  The maps the Roborock makes look very pretty and detailed with lots of lines and shapes compared to the bare Samsung maps - but the Samsung never needs a new map made every few weeks or months. The Roborock's maps are good to start with but eventually, over a period of weeks or months of everyday use, the Roborock loses its place - it starts to go into places where it is not supposed to, and the cleaning history starts to show that the Roborock needs remapping (recalibration).  In other words, the Roborock starts to wrongly place itself on its own map.  Eventually the Roborock will start to move into no-go zones, past invisible walls marked on the maps it created weeks or months ago.  This happens even if you take good care not to move the docking station, and to clean the sensors regularly.  So you'll find yourself instructing the Roborock to re-map your house and you'll have to reinsert all the no-go zones and invisible walls anew.  A real waste of time.  Roborock is good at advertising fluff, a lot less good at matching that advertising fluff in real operations.

2. Accessories like the side-brush are really optional. The Roborock side-brush doesn’t really sweep, try it with-OUT the brush and you’ll see there’s no difference in terms of what actually gets sucked up when the Roborock cleans the room.  I’m not even sure if the main brush makes any difference - ultimately, the mopping function and the suction are what matter to make the vacuumed space clean.  So with the Roborock again, it’s marketing fluff and not a whole lot of substance - they could have just dispensed with  the brushes, the vacuum would work just fine.

3. Cannot manage unevenness like a door-railing set in the floor.  The wheels get stuck. No better than generations of robot vacuums before it. I’m not talking about ledges, which earlier generations of robot vacuums also avoided.  I’m just talking rails set in the floor for sliding doors.

And that’s it! The 3 main negatives with the Roborock S7 Max Ultra.  

Current as at February 2024.