roborock Q8 Max Robot Vacuum and Mop Cleaner, DuoRoller Brush, 5500Pa Strong Suction, Lidar Navigation, Obstacle Avoidance, Multi-Level Mapping, Perfect for Pet Hair

Before this robot I had one with a dirty water tank, that mopped but did not vacuum first. Hair and grime would get stuck inside the tank and would not come out.This one is really the next level of tech. It builds a map, that later can be divided into rooms and given names. The map and the current progress can be seen on the app, with the portion of room that was done showing as highlighted in real time.The cleaning pad just slides out from underneath without lifting the robot. Very easy to clean. Same for the bin having holding the dust and cleaning water.It takes 5-10 minutes to do a room, which is very efficient.If the floor is very dirty, a single pass won't be enough, but if used regularly, the floor are left very clean. The pad better be cleaned after each room, but that is as easy as running one's fingers over the pad under running water.The app can be used to tell it where to go. The app also shows the battery level, and allows customizing of amount of water that is dispensed (the default left too much water behind).Lovely product that is fun to use.

Let's begin with the cons:1) No clean base. You need to empty the small dust bin every few days, instead of emptying a bag every two weeks. If that's a non-starter for you, then don't buy this vac.2) As with all combination vac/mops, the mopping performance is not good. As above, this is what I expected.3) Although the room mapping is fantastic, it does not have the most advanced AI, and so it is more likely to ingest charger cords and doggie droppings if it encounters them. At this price, that is not surprising and I don't know how well the very expensive AI robots avoid these hazards, only that they claim to.Onto the pros:My previous vac was the iRobot Roomba i7+. My ex wound up with it. The Roomba was a much more expensive vac, especially with the clean base. While the Roomba's clean base is fantastic, the Roborock S6 Pure beats the Roomba in every other way, by far. The very first time I used the Roborock, it created a very detailed map of the entire first floor of my house. The iPhone app displayed the map and made it very easy to assign rooms, so I can direct the vac to "Clean Kitchen," for example. Setting up "keep out zones" is far easier and more effective with the Roborock. Huge plus to Roborock there! Also, you can set up several floors of maps, so you can carry the vac upstairs and it will map out and clean that floor without losing the first floor map. The Roomba didn't seem to be able to do that very well.The second huge improvement over the Roomba i7 is the efficiency. The Roomba just sort of bounces off the walls at random until it thinks it's covered an entire room. And it bangs into objects very often, even in mapped-out rooms. The Roborock, by comparison, methodically cleans rooms in long, straight lines. The result is that it doesn't miss spots and it cleans in far less time than the Roomba. Also, I don't hear it constantly banging into things. When it goes back to base, it's direct and it mates immediately. The Roomba would take forever to get to the cleaning base and even longer to line itself up to the charger pads. Then, the Roomba would empty itself into the clean base with a ferociously loud fan. Because of its efficiency, the Roborock finishes cleaning with more than 50% battery life left. The Roomba would need to return to dock, charge for a very long time, and then continue cleaning.The third huge improvement is the noise. The Roborock is drastically quieter than the Roomba, and when you add in the faster vacuuming time, this is great for people who work at home... or anyone, for that matter.As for smaller details: I have only hardwood floors, so I can't comment on carpet performance. I do have a dog, and the Roomba's brush, while easy to clean, definitely caught much more dog hair, and so despite the clean base, I had to frequently remove the brush and remove a substantial amount of hair from it. The Roborock catches far less hair in its roller. Big plus to the Roborock in this respect. Removing and cleaning the brushes is similar, although the Roborock has some tiny pieces which need to be reassembled correctly. The Roomba brush is a little bit easier to reassemble, but this is a minor issue.Neither the Roomba i7 nor the Roborock S6 Pure have premium object avoidance. They will suck up charger cables, small socks, and other small obstacles if they encounter them. My big fear is doggie droppings. Although I haven't had this catastrophe yet, i don't think either vac will avoid sucking up and splattering doggie dirt and making a major mess. Otherwise, it's a great vac to have if you have pets. Maybe not an un-housebroken puppy, though. There are the super-premium, AI robots which are said to be able to avoid dog droppings, but I don't know if they work.Overall, I highly recommend this product. I wish that they had a clean base option for it; I will definitely buy a clean base if Roborock releases one for this robot.

Overall, I am incredibly impressed with this robot's abillity to navigate in my house. I have it run every night at 2:30 in the morning, and it's quiet enough that it doesn't disturb anyone, and then I empty it in the morning. The fact that it can run every night makes up for the fact that it is not a supremely powerful vacuum. It is not going to replace a Dyson in the suction department.Its ability to navigate and get around obstacles and make its way back to the base is really, really impressive. Its movement path tends to be very effective and efficient, and it vacuums the entire downstairs of my house in just about an hour.The robot makes its own maps of the house, which I can then divide into areas and annotate with room names, and it will update these maps as objects move around. It handles change very impressively.The maintenance stuff is pretty simple. It seems to have a pretty well-designed brush and roller system so that even if it did get caught up with animal hair or string or something, it hasn't included tool for cutting that stuff out, and the beater bar is easily accessible and removable. Also, the robot has very specific error messages that are very accurate, so it will say that it's thinks something is caught up in a brush, or that it can't move because of wheel is off the ground, or some sensor is dirty. It's not at all like those messages that seem to be everywhere now in technology that just announce that something went wrong, with no further information.However, if you're looking at this for its mopping function, know these things ahead of time. One, the mop function is no more sophisticated than the robot dragging what is essentially a wet washcloth behind it while it goes over a given surface. And that you must manually add and remove the mop cartridge for the given area you want to mop. That is, it cannot turn mopping on and off, and in fact is not aware at all that it even has the mop attached. The mop cartridge itself is a water tank that has something like a washcloth velcroed to the bottom. It dribbles water from the tank onto the washcloth, but in reality, this washcloth is barely damp in the locations where the water is supposed to be coming out, and you can see that when the robot is supposedly mopping, it's not even wet on the floor behind it. This is with the tank set to the high water flow setting. There is also no action involved with the mop, like it doing any scrubbing, and you are forbidden from putting any kind of cleaning product into the tank, so it really is just plain water being dragged on a maybe damp washcloth. At best, this will pick up dust, and some dirt, but not much else. Also, while the weaker vacuuming is made up for by the fact that I can run it automatically every night, since the mop is a manual intervention operation, I can't use frequent repetition to make up for the crummy mopping. As it is now, when I want to mop, I spray pretreatment on to anything I see on the floor that looks like it's not going to budge, then I have to make the robot go into the kitchen, then I wet the washcloth part of the water tank in the sink, attach the water tank, tell the robot to clean that one room, and then catch the robot before it goes back to the base which is on carpet, so I can remove the water tank, not like it actually makes the carpet wet at all. The most evidence I have usually that the floor was mopped is the fact that the washcloth on the water tank looks somewhat dirty.