Late last year I decided to get back into checking out robotic vacuums with the Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow. Now a few months on, I have the Roborock Saros 20 by my side. Literally.
Before I dive in, a quick thanks to the Roborock team for making this one available for review well ahead of the launch date.
I covered my brief journey with robotic vacuum cleaners in my Qrevo Curv 2 Flow review. If you haven’t read it yet, the quick recap was that I had a different brand unit a few years ago, that required far too many interventions to get around my house because it couldn’t clear the 1.5cm rise into my kitchen. It got parked after a few months and that was it.
The Qrevo Curv 2 put all my trepidation to bed and it changed my experience on the role a robotic vacuum had in my home.
tl;dr
The Roborock Saros 20 is the new 2026 flagship that prioritises power and a slim profile over the specialized roller-mop of the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow.
The Highlights:
- Insane Suction: At 36,000Pa, it’s nearly double the power of previous models, making it a beast for carpets and pet hair.
- Ultra-Slim Design: By ditching the top laser turret for StarSight 2.0 (Solid-State LiDAR), it sits at just 79.8mm tall—fitting under furniture where others get stuck.
- Extreme Climbing: The AdaptiLift 3.0 system handles massive 8.8cm thresholds, solving the “stuck in the kitchen” problem for older Australian homes.
- Smart Home Future: Native Matter support means it finally plays nice with Apple HomeKit and Samsung SmartThings without workarounds.
- Maintenance: Mops are now washed in 100°C hot water (up from 75°C) for better hygiene.
The Trade-off:
- It is louder during self-emptying and pumping than the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow, and while it navigates brilliantly, it still occasionally tries to “eat” stray drawstrings or cables.
Bottom Line: If you have low furniture, high door sills, or shedding pets, this is the current gold standard.
Roborock Saros 20 vs Qrevo Curv 2 Flow: What has Changed?
The Qrevo Curv 2 Flow was the first Roborock to ditch pads for a continuous roller mop. It is the hard floor specialist that washes the roller as it works.
The new Roborock Saros 20 goes back to the traditional spinning mops, but it trumps the Qrevo Curv 2 in every other metric. Whilst the 20 kPA suction on the Qrevo Flow 2 is no slouch, the Saros 20 almost doubles it.
Design and Unboxing: A Slimmer, Stealthier Flagship
Where the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow was white, curvy with a rounded dome, the Saros 20 is more straight lines and comes in black. Also gone is the cover over where the water tanks reside. The Saros 20’s tanks are plug in / pull out directly into the top of the unit.
Size wise both units and docks are about the same. The Saros 20 visually looks more compact because it does not have the dome cover over the fresh and dirty water tanks.
Just like all the other Roborock units that I have reviewed, set up was straightforward. Just don’t leave your VPN running on your phone.
You need the Roborock app, an account, add the device via the QR code and follow the instructions to hook it up to your wireless network. If you have the option to, it is always good security practice to connect IoT devices to its own SSID away from your core network.
Roborock suggests that you should wash the mops three times before sending it to clean your house.
StarSight 2.0 and VertiBeam: The Next Gen of Navigation
The first thing it needs to do before actually cleaning your place, is to map it. I tried to find a way to transfer the existing maps I had with the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow to the Saros 20, but there was no option to.
Then again, the two robovacs uses vastly different navigation technology – the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow uses reactive AI, and the Saros 20 uses StarSight 2.0.
The below table lists out the key differences between the two:
StarSight 2.0 uses a Solid-State LiDAR embedded into the front and sides of the Saros 20. It has no moving parts and does not protrude above the robovac itself. In contrast the Reactive AI uses a spinning laser turret on top of the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow.
As a result the Saros 20 is ultra-slim at just 79.8mm, compared to the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow at 119mm – a 39.2mm difference!
StarSight is powered by ToF (Time-of-Flight) – a measurement of the time it takes for light to bounce off an object and return. This helps StarSight create an accurate 3D mesh of the environment, making obstacle avoidance predictive, rather than … Reactive AI which is more visual based.
But StarSight is not the only trick up the Saros 20’s sleeve. Roborock also uses “VertiBeam Technology” to scan the surrounding with vertical light patterns. This is a breakaway from the traditional horizontal plane scanning of Reactive AI.
What does it give you? VertiBeam can detect “floating” obstacles that confuse standard AI, like the edge of a suspended cabinet, the thin legs of a designer chair, or a stray power cable hanging off a table.
The Roborock App
Whilst the Saros 20 is the star of the show (pun intended), the Roborock app is really the MVP.
I was really impressed by the functionality provided by the Roborock app when I did the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow review. My impression has not changed.
After the Saros 20 does it’s orientation run around your home, you can use the Roborock app to make useful changes to the map.
No you can’t adjust the size of your rooms and magically make your place more palatial. But you can create or merge rooms, label areas, look at where furniture is, adjust the flooring type if necessary – never had to do that yet, and set no-go zones or create invisible walls.
Invisible walls? Yes! If you want to stop your robovac from going through an area, say through the back of an open desk. Rather than setting a no-go zone where the unit doesn’t go into and not clean, you use an invisible wall. This allows the unit to clean right up to the wall, but not travel through it to the other side.
Through the app you trigger the cleaning process – do you want just a vacuum? Vacuum and mop at the same time? Or the gold standard of vacuuming, followed by mopping? Do you want to do the whole house? Or just the kitchen and dining area after dinner?
You can answer all these questions and set it up in the app so that your Saros 20 is doing exactly what you want.
Performance: Putting 36,000Pa Suction to the Test
So after all that, is the Saros 20 any good in use?
In a word: brilliantly.
Honestly if you run the Saros 20, just set the suction power to high. You want to use the 36,000 pa suction power that is on tap to trap dirt, and in my case, a lot of white cat fur and some kibble crumbs.
This combined with the lower profile allows the Saros 20 to get around under my cupboards where the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow couldn’t. These were areas that I always had to manually clean with the Roborock H60 but no more!
The AdaptiLift 3.0 system can tackle thresholds up to 8.8cm in height, my measly 1.5cm lift into the kitchen area did not even register as a speed bump. The only downside was that it kept trying to hump some trays and shorter storage boxes I had on the floor until it learned not to.
The mopping performance was no slouch either. Whilst the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow is more suited to hard flooring, I did not see the Saros 20 smearing any mess around.
Unlike the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow where you have to mix it yourself into the clean water tank. the Saros 20 has a dedicated internal compartment for floor cleaning solutions. The dock will automatically inject it in the correct ratio. A word of warning – Roborock advises against the use of “sudsy” third party cleaning agents which can clog the internal lines or damage on board sensors.
Maintenance and Self-Cleaning: 100°C Hot Water Mop Wash
Mop cleaning with the Saros 20 uses 100°C hot water, a step from the 75°C with the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow.
Whilst the water tank looks a little smaller, the specs says at least the clean water tank is the same size at 4L. The dirty water tank is 3.0L, just a half litre smaller than the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow.
The dust bag remains the same at 2.5L.
Inside the Roborock app, you can set schedules for it to run automatically, in which mode and what rooms. This is great if you have a fairly regular routine – leave home at a certain time, dinner at a certain time. Set and forget and let the Saros 20 take care of the floor maintenance for you.
Smart Home Integration: Matter Support and Home Assistant
Whilst Roborock has it’s own voice assistant, Rocky, and had integration with Google Home and Amazon Alexa.
In 2026, Roborock has introduced Matter protocol support. This adds native support for Apple HomeKit and Samsung SmartThing, on top of the existing supported smart home platforms. Apple users can rejoice as they move away from Siri Shortcuts. Noting that this will require a Matter Hub to bridge that connection.
There is of course, my favourite smart home platform – Home Assistant.
In the past month I have been deep into fixing and optimising my Home Assistant node in preparation for some projects I have in mind for DRN. It dovetailed neatly with the arrival of the Saros 20 at my place.
Roborock has had official support for Home Assistant for a while – props for that as not all vendors look kindly on this platform. With the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow, I got some basic integration going on the dashboard.
However I took a much more technical look with integrating the Saros 20. Without turning this into a full blown HA integration documentation, what I can say is – I welcome the official support, but beyond the very basics, it is not really for the faint hearted.
You need some technical skills and willingness to learn YAML to make it really useful. I did invest a few days at this, but I am really happy with the outcome because it could do something the Roborock app could not, and I made the interface simpler for my needs.
In the diagram below, you can see that I have a card for the Saros 20.
It has all my rooms in separate buttons, and a whole house button.
Below the buttons are chips for:
- child lock (great for stopping the cats from activating the Roborock!)
- battery level indicator
- volume level
- mop intensity
- return to dock
The buttons will honour the mop intensity request. If mop is set to off, it will not wash the mops prior to heading out to the room to vacuum.
When the room is completed, it will update the last cleaned value inside the button.
But my favourite part of putting all the hard work into the coding? Home Assistant will detect if my partner is away from home, and trigger a vacuum of the master bedroom.
Or if it detects that everyone is away from home for ten minutes, it will start a full deep clean of the house – vacuum first, then mop. It will also send me a notification of each step so I know it is working hard whilst I am out.
Unlike the Roborock app where the schedule is time based, I have used my Home Assistant platform’s knowledge of where members of the family is as the trigger for cleaning.
And oh, the card opens up to show a map of the house and where the Saros 20 is in real time when it’s running. Pretty nifty!
One thing that I can’t control from Home Assistant, but can through the Roborock app, is the Charging Mode. If your electricity plan has off-peak rates or a free use period, then you can configure your Saros 20 to only fully charge during those lower cost periods.
It’s worth noting that Roborock will charge any time if it needs to maintain minimum power, and/or complete a cleaning task.
What Could Be Better? Noise and Obstacle Handling
This isn’t so much for me, but Miss Arraiya made a complaint so I have to honour my princess’ wish to make it known.
The self-emptying of the onboard dustbin is quite loud. It is quite a bit louder than the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow. It startled Miss Arraiya the first few times.
You do need to occasionally check on the internal dustbin, I have found that there has been times where it didn’t or couldn’t empty, despite hearing the noise for it.
The noises it makes when pumping water to clean the mops are also louder. But these are all transient.
Despite Vertibeam, it does have a tendency to grab something that is hanging off the bed with drawstrings and run away, eventually getting itself jammed.
A couple of times it has gotten lost under my bed with, spinning around and not finding a way out. Admittedly there is a few things stored there which is probably not helping.
Also my daughter’s Roborock plushie no longer is a twin to our Roborock, but she still loves her Robobo all the same.
Final Verdict: Is the Roborock Saros 20 the Best Robot Vacuum of 2026?
I did a lot of comparison between the Saros 20 and the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow in this review. Both devices are exceptional units to have in your home.
The suction power of the Saros 20 is unparalleled, and is one of the most powerful on the market right now. As a full package, the Saros 20 is best suited for home with:
- high thresholds (up to 8.8 cm)
- low furniture
- lots of carpet, or pet hair
The Qrevo Curv 2 Flow is better for homes with lots of tile or hardwood where the SpiraFlow Roller Mop will be more suited.
Having the Roborock Saros 20 in my home, along with the additional work done with integrating it into Home Assistant with automation routines and scripts has really made a solid performing robotic vacuum cleaner work smarter.
Whilst what I did is not for everyone, the support for the mainstream version such as Google Home, Apple HomeKit and Amazon Alexa with Matter protocol will offer a much more convenient way of keeping your home clean.
And if you are like me, thinking that I need a spotless floor with no clutter before you can start – you don’t. The Saros 20 is smart enough to navigate around obstacles and start helping you keep the floor clean.
The Roborock Saros 20 has a RRP A$2999 and is available from Roborock Australia.
DRN would like to thank Roborock for providing the review unit ahead of official launch.
