Roborock Saros Z70 Review: The Perfect Robot Vacuum Cleaner?

Design and setup of the Roborock Saros Z70

I admit, I haven't looked forward to reviewing a robot vacuum cleaner as much as I did in this case for a while now. Roborock announced the Roborock Saros Z70, a robot vacuum cleaner with a robotic arm, creating headlines out of nowhere at the beginning of the year.

Measuring 38.1 x 47.5 x 48.8 cm, the docking station is not particularly large, but it is comparatively wide. It contains a 4-liter water tank and a 3-3.5-liter wastewater tank. Roborock also crammed all the maintenance functions you would expect from a premium model. The docking station has a suction function, hot water for mop washing, hot air for mop drying, and an automated detergent supply. A cleaning detergent was not included in the package.

Setting up the Saros Z70 proved to be child's play. Connect the docking station to the mains, fill up the fresh water tank, add a detergent of your choice to the detergent tank, and push the robot vacuum cleaner into the docking station. The Roborock app is available as an app connection. You can download it from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. To set it up, you need to register with your email address and establish a Wi-Fi connection.

Once the setup is complete, you can send the home appliance out for mapping. The Saros Z70 does the mapping in a careful manner. Furniture and other obstacles were accurately detected and displayed accordingly in the app.

The Roborock app in detail

In my opinion, the Roborock app is one of the best apps available for robot vacuum cleaners. The software is clearly laid out, despite Roborock packing in countless features for the luxury home appliance. Let's begin with the main menu. It is here you will find all the quick settings for the suction and mopping levels. You can choose between four suction levels (five in "Vacuum only" mode) and three water flow rates. You can also set the navigation mode — i.e., how narrow the robot vacuum cleaner's paths should be.

If you were to take a look at the other settings, you would find numerous options for setting the behavior of the robot vacuum cleaner on carpets, how the extendable individual parts should be, and how to adjust the navigation in greater detail. There are also the usual settings related to the maintenance functions of the docking station.

Functions for the robotic arm were far more interesting. You first have to activate the robotic arm before it launches into action. To do this, press the power and emergency buttons simultaneously for three seconds. From there, set a storage zone for shoes and the box that comes with the package. The entire experience is very similar to adding a no-go zone to the scanned map. You can then decide whether the robot vacuum cleaner should clear away objects. You can also choose not to use the robotic arm at all.

Finally, there is some good news for smart home enthusiasts. As the Roborock Saros Z70 is Matter-compatible, the app provides you with a pairing code to add the robot vacuum cleaner to Apple HomeKit.

Suction and mopping performance of the Roborock Saros Z70

The Saros Z70 shone across the board regardless of the tasks we threw at it. During the entire review, the premium home appliance showed no weaknesses when vacuuming. The suction power was simply phenomenal. The type of dirt the robot vacuum cleaner was supposed to pick up proved irrelevant. Roborock packed a whopping 22,000 Pa into the robot vacuum cleaner. It is always impressive to see how huge the leaps in suction power are in such a short space of time. For comparison: The S8 MaxV Ultra (read review), Roborock's top model 2024, has "only" 10,000 Pa.

If you have a lot of carpets in your home, there is good news. The suction result on carpets is flawless. It doesn't matter whether the robot is cleaning fine particles such as sand or coarse dirt. You can also activate carpet depth cleaning in the app. This allows the robot vacuum to increase the suction power on carpets if it is not yet at the highest level.

Tangled hair was not an issue with this Roborock robot vacuum cleaner. Even the side brush was designed in such a way that no animal or human hair can get tangled up here, either. After the robot vacuum cleaner worked its magic in our test area, we actually didn't find a single strand of hair in the main or side brush.

Those who rely on the Roborock Saros Z70 should, according to the manufacturer, enjoy 100 percent edge coverage. At least, that was what the extendable side brush and the swivel mop were supposed to ensure. The extendable side brush fulfilled its purpose flawlessly. The home appliance intuitively extends the individual part into corners and hard-to-reach areas.

The two rotating mops ensured excellent mopping performance. A brilliant feature of this robot vacuum cleaner is that the docking station fills the robot vacuum cleaner's water tank with warm water. The home appliance, therefore, had no problems removing damp and slightly dried ketchup stains. In corners, the home appliance extended the right-hand mop in the direction of travel to guarantee the aforementioned complete edge coverage. During mopping, carpets were spared from the mopping equipment. The Saros Z70 lifted the mop pads by a full 22 mm clearance before it moved onto carpets. The result here was flawless as well, without leaving any traces of damp carpet edges.

The battery life proved to be amazing in a positive manner. After the robot vacuum cleaner was active for 30 minutes in "vacuuming and mopping" mode, it still had a whopping 84 minutes of battery left on the clock. This is a new high for robot vacuum cleaners! In this respect, the Saros Z70 is clearly ahead of the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete (read review).

An unexpected weakness was discovered in the navigation and obstacle detection. Roborock relies on the industry-new "StarSight System 2.0". While the robot vacuum cleaner has integrated obstacle avoidance technology on the side, it still ran into obstacles at a surprisingly regular rate. This was particularly noticeable with table legs just about every single time. The Ecovacs Deebot X9 Pro Omni does navigation better. The robot vacuum cleaner remained unimpressed by cables, as these were reliably detected and avoided in everyday use.

Robotic arm put to the test: Is this a practical add-on or a waste of time?

I never thought this day would come, but I took some socks and a towel for the robot vacuum cleaner to test out its robotic arm. Basically, the robotic arm can lift socks, shoes, or towels with a maximum weight of 300 g and take them to predetermined places. The package came with a collection box as a storage location for scattered socks and towels.

The Saros Z70 identifies such objects and takes them to locations that were previously specified in the app. The robot vacuum cleaner has two cameras: one in the arm and one at the front to increase precision when gripping objects off the floor. If you prefer, you can control the robotic arm manually, but I don't think the gripper arm is really practical for everyday use. After the home appliance picked up the test towel, it covered its lens, which, of course, made it blind as it no longer knew where it was or where the storage box was located. It would be much cooler if the robot vacuum cleaner were to be able to pick up microfiber cloths to wipe its lens clean. After about a minute, the robot's search for the box was completely interrupted.

The robot arm is also not convincing when it comes to socks. Yes, the object is picked up without any errors. But our socks didn't end up in the box either. Instead, the robot placed them in front of the box.