Roborock S7 Robot Vacuum and Mop Hands-on Review: Less Chores, More Productivity

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If you're someone part of the pandemic shift to transit your workspace from the office to the home office, while the move will have its upsides, you will most probably have noticed challenges that you did not anticipate. Whereas most offices would have been kept clean by a cleaning crew that comes in unnoticed after hours, one of the challenges of working at home is that the general cleaning of the office now rests squarely on your own shoulders.

Sure you can hire a cleaning person of your own, but not everyone has enough financial flex to do so, and definitely not everyone likes to have strangers access their own private living space.

Roborock presents a viable solution in the form of the S7, which will not only vacuum but mop your floor for you. It's designed to keep the floor pristine and can do so with you being there to oversee the process. We've already awarded the Roborock S7 a Best of CES 2021 badge, but we're going hands-on to see if it is truly as good as the automated vacuum/mop it promises to be.

Sweeps, Vacuums and Mops

The biggest selling point of the Roborock S7 when we featured it for CES 2021 was that it's not just a robot vacuum cleaner, but it's one of the first devices to combine automated vacuuming and mopping together. And to see it in action in real life is quite an experience.

Sweeping

Starting with the sweeping action of the S7, it has two 'brooms' if you'd like: a spinning arm on its front right side to sweep corners (The one place that the circular robot will have no way to reach otherwise), and also a rolling pin style main brush that does the brunt of picking up the dirt.

What's missing is any signs of a bristle. Instead both brooms are made of rubber arms and fins, which feels more durable and will also stay in shape longer than the traditional bristle.

Vacuuming

Then there is the vacuum that is rated to create 2,500 Pa worth of suction, which as a comparison is 1/10th of the brand's own stick vacuum H6 that produces up to 25,000 Pa. But this kind of suction power is sufficient for the maintenance job that the S7 was created to do, which is to keep the floor free of dust and debris through consistent cleaning schedules, as opposed to irregular heavy cleaning sessions.

Mopping

Finally, the mop, which is the highlight of the S7 as it not only passes over the hardfloor with a static moist cloth, but it has a section that reciprocates at a high frequency to create a scrubbing action that can pick up much more than a simple pass would.

The mop has a water reservoir that keeps the cloth moist automatically, and the cloth is removable to be washed and reused. For people whose home office has a hard wood floor, tile, or other sort of hard surface, the mop will keep the floors even more dust free than only sweeping and vacuuming.

Check Price

It's worthwhile to note that the S7 is not designed to mop up or to sweep up large spills, but it's for maintenance purposes, which makes them perfect for home office situations where you won't be finding too much of a mess, rather than say, in a house that needs to deal with mess from toddlers and frequent food spills.

Large Wheels for Challenging Terrains

The Roborock S7 is equipped with large wheels that have treads that look like it's ready for some off-roading. What's impressive was the wheels at full extension can lift the whole vacuum roughly 35 mm (roughly 1 1/4 inch) off the floor, which when combined with the large wheels really give the robot the maneuverability to handle smaller obstacles.

I've watched (with amusement) the S7 roll over rugs and climb over power cords consistently with some fancy maneuvering moves. But when it does hit something larger or end up in an awkward position and become immobilized, S7 connected to the house WiFi will send a rescue request to your phone.

Advanced Vision and Mapping System

Once you connect the S7 with the Roborock App, you'll be able to control the robot from your smartphone. A very interesting feature of the app is that it displays what the device sees with its onboard LiDar system, which plots out a plan of the room in the app. The S7 then makes a more precise virtual plan by going around the room and feeling out the outer boundaries with its front bumper. Once the whole room is mapped out, you can also mark manually the areas you'd like the floor to be vacuumed and/or mopped.

After the virtual boundaries are established, the S7 then proceeds to meticulously clean the area in parallel lines like a baseball field lawn mower. The A.I. also has its own 'divide and conquer' strategy. Even though we have an 40 square meter open space in our office, we found that the S7 marks off a 20 square meter space, cleans it, then proceeds to explore a new uncleaned space. Watching the S7 clean the floor gives me confidence that it will do a proper job each time, without cutting corners, literally.

Quiet and Cleaning Incognito

Though the S7 has only a fraction of suction power of a conventional vacuum, it's operation is proportionately much quieter. Using a Sound Meter app just to get an idea of how loud it is, while our office noise level is at 20 db, the S7 operating sound measured to be around 50 db - the noise level of a quiet conversation, while the H6 operates at a conventional vacuum noise level of 70 db. The quiet operation means even if it's operating during the work hour, it won't cause too much disturbance, and if you schedule it to clean after hours, it's daily cleaning operation will be done completely out of sight.

Final Verdict

To have the same level of focus while working from home is not easy, and we need all the help we can get to clear away distractions. The Roborock S7 presents itself as an excellent and effective helper with its advanced mapping system and its ability to operate incognito autonomously. The addition of its mopping function to its already excellent sweeping and vacuuming ensures that your workspace is maintained even cleaner and is an environment you want to work in, always.

Following up with the badge we awarded Roborock S7 for CES, after our hands-on experience we have decided to also award it as our recommended home productivity cleaning gadget.

Sam is a production engineer turned tech writer who specializes in seeking out gadgets that enhances productivity while still looking sharp. This is a contribution to an ongoing IBTimes review series on gadgets for Home Productivity.