A Lean, Mean, Cleaning Machine

Roborock Saros 10R Review: Design

This is Roborock’s thinnest robot vacuum, standing only 3.14 inches tall. Notably, instead of a rotating LiDar turret that you often see popping out of the top of premium robot vacuums, the Saros 10R uses a new internal AI navigation system called the StarSight Autonomous System. It uses front and rear cameras and transmitters for room mapping and obstacle avoidance. More importantly, not having a bulky turret on top means the Saros 10R can comfortably fit under most furniture.

When you flip the Saros 10R over, you’ll spot an anti-tangle split main brush and a side brush that extends to sweep up dust and dirt around hard-to-reach edges and corners. And, of course, a pair of spinning magnetic mop pads. The parts are simple enough to remove for cleaning or if a cable or bigger bits of garbage get caught in them.

Much like the Roborock Qrevo Curv, the Saros can lift its own chassis to clear room thresholds and hop onto high carpets. In a house like mine, which is older and has gone through various renovations in the last 50 years, some robot vacuums can’t clear the threshold into the kitchen. They’d get stuck as they tried to make their way over the floor molding, often forcing you to come over and rescue them.

Whenever the Saros runs into one of these spots, you’ll see it angle itself up, pick up speed, and force its way over. It’s fun to watch—it looks like a little monster truck going over a bump at full speed.

Housing the Saros 10R is an absolutely massive dock. The sleek black monolith sits about 18 inches high and 15 inches wide. The self-charging and self-cleaning dock is a luxury condo for your robot vacuum.

Whenever the Saros is docked, not only will it recharge, but it will always empty its dustbin, and it will self-clean the mops using hot water and top off the unit with fresh water and a cleaning solution for its next assignment. You only need to worry about ensuring that the four-liter clean water tank and detergent compartment are full and emptying the dirty water tank and dust bag. For this review, I had it mop the floors daily, so I felt like a mechanic constantly checking all the fluids and dumping dirty mop water into the sink.

Roborock Saros 10R Review: Performance

The Roborock Saros 10R is an absolute beast when it comes to vacuuming. Whether on hardwood, tile, or carpet, it has no problem gobbling up pieces of cereal, dirt, and all other bits of crud you’d expect a robot vacuum to encounter. It did need to make a couple of passes on my kitchen tile, which has deep crevasses, to suck up all the crumbs. Overall, I was pleased with its suction power, especially in places that get extra dusty throughout the week, like the living room.

The Saros 10R mops as well as it vacuums. You can choose how much water is used for each mop run and even set it to re-mop an area once it’s done, for areas that are extra filthy. Everyone at my home uses the back entrance of the house, which enters the dining room, and there’s always a lot of dirt and snow tracked in; the extra mopping option was nice to program, instead of waiting for it to be done and commanding it to go again.

My issue with robot vacuums with camera navigation systems is that they tend not to take the most optimal cleaning patterns, often missing small sections of rooms. The Saros 10R was a thorough cleaner, regardless of your chosen cleaning pattern. It took a couple of attempts since it refused to go under furniture like the couch and dining table, for some reason. On the third, it found its courage and got under those spots with no problem, and I never ran into that problem again.

I was surprised at how well it mapped the entire first floor of the house. Once it maps out the space, it’ll mark objects like shoes, large bits of garbage, and TV stands. It’ll even take a photo of the obstruction in case it’s something you need to move. It’s important to have the spaces mapped out with proper names for rooms to make issuing voice commands much easier. It’s more natural to tell Rocky to clean ‘the office’ than ‘Room 2.’ What’s good is that you can set it per room or zone settings, so it knows never to mop in the office or to go into quiet mode when cleaning the dining room.

Regarding object avoidance, the Saros 10R does a stellar job of not getting caught on common pitfalls that foil other robot vacuums. It avoided shoes and toys with no problem. It notes various obstacles on the app map. Currently, Saros can recognize up to 108 items. The vacuum does a really good job of avoiding cables, though, for some reason, it will always hoover up a rogue ethernet and HDMI cable in my office, forcing it to get tangled up in front of my desk. It’s strange, because I left a similar cable in the center of another room (for testing purposes, not because I’m that messy) and it successfully avoided that one during every cleaning. For some reason, the thing feels compelled to eat my office cables every time. I did, for the sake of my sanity, pick up those cables.

Much like when I clean around the house, the Saros 10R takes a lot of breaks. Whether it’s to wash its mop or empty out its dustbin, if you have a lot of space, the robot tends to return to the dock after it finishes a room to clean and refill the water for mopping or to recharge the battery. One thing to note is that the more powerful of a clean you want, the more battery it uses, so a deep clean could take up the bulk of the day or night, depending on how big your space is.

There are a ton of extra features that can add to the cleaning time. These are mostly optional but come in very handy if you have a particularly messy home. I used the preset routines, like Deep Clean on the weekend, or After Meals, which cleans and sweeps up the kitchen and dining room after dinner.

You can set custom routines, which are different sorts of vacuuming and mopping power, however frequently you want. I mainly opted for a daily vacuum in the mornings, since it does get awfully loud; I’m usually locked away in my home office, but I can imagine how annoying it would be to have a noisy little bot sucking up dirt while you’re trying to get ready for the day.

What I like about the Roborock app is that it gives you a lot of settings to play with, which could be a little overwhelming if you’re just a person who wants a set-it-and-forget-it type of experience. You can use it without dealing with the more granular options. I got a kick out of turning the Saros 10R into my cleaning Terminator, assigning it to search and sweep up different rooms with different suction and mopping levels.

Remote viewing lets you use the Saros as a spy camera, in case you want to freak out your pets or, in my case, a curious toddler. It will even take pictures of objects so you can quickly see what’s in its way.  Again, all these features are great, but they eat up the battery, which means more trips back to the dock and less time cleaning.

I mentioned earlier that Saros 10R supports voice controls. Just say, “Hello, Rocky,” followed by the command, and you can skip using the app. The voice commands have been pretty hit-or-miss at acknowledging and doing the command, especially when the bot is actively cleaning, since it’s just too loud to hear you shouting at it.

Roborock Saros 10R Review: Verdict

The $1,600 price tag will be a tough pill to swallow for many. However, Roborock Saros 10R is an incredible robot vacuum with a lot of cleaning power and a ton of features that make it a worthwhile investment. It gets loud, and figuring out everything it can do can feel daunting. The Roborock Saros 10R is great if you have a big space with different floor surfaces. It gets to places other robot vacuums can’t and leaves your space thoroughly clean.