Roborock have a number of autonomous vacuums in the market. My colleague recently reviewed the Qrevo Master and gave it high praise. Unfortunately, my relationship with the lower priced Qrevo S is a little more complex.

 

First impressions

The Qrevo S is about as pretty as a robot vacuum can be, with the kind of smooth white design aesthetic that tells you it was probably pitched as something like “The robot vacuum Apple would design”.

The accompanying mandatory mobile app is really a pleasure to use, and through the entire first set-up process you will feel like you are in confident hands.

 

Set up

The first time the Qrevo S runs, it will scan and map your whole house, roaming around like a new pet cat. Much like a new pet cat, you are expected to follow the Qrevo S around the house as it’s getting accustomed. If, like me, you have stairs in your house, this is quite important so that you can intervene to ensure the thing does not topple to its doom.

I was hasty in my setup, and didn’t bother opening up all the kids’ bedrooms and letting it do a complete scan. Later on, I came to regret this as my Qrevo had a neurotic lack of self-belief in its ability to reach some of these distant lands once the pathways were clear (something I had to train it out of at least once by physically carrying it to the newly unlocked rooms).

Once you’ve got the entire floor mapped, you can mark No-Go zones on the map (like the stairs, in my case). If you’re an OCD nerd like me, you can go further, deeply customising the map of your house by adding more detail to the map to help it understand what all the different rooms of the house are.

You can also scan multiple floors, if you have them, which the Qrevo S will identify as being separate maps. All of this setup represents a bit of an investment of time, and I am sad to report I found it deeply satisfying.

 

In Use

At this point you might be wondering, how much does the Qrevo S suck? 7000Pa is apparently the answer, which sounds like a big number, but in my experience results in some pretty noticeable pieces of dirt and lint left un-vacuumed around the house. I would describe the final cleaning result as okay. It feels like it does about as good a job as a teenage boy would do, if you could convince one to vacuum. It’s not going to impress anyone, but it still beats doing it yourself. You can also adjust the suction power, and set the Qrevo S to go over every surface twice, which results in a better outcome (but drains battery faster).

The Qrevo S also comes with double mops, which actually do a great job of mopping the floorboards. The first time I ran the Qrevo S, it also did a great job of mopping the carpets. In retrospect this is pretty confusing, because ever since then it’s done a good job of identifying when it’s on carpet, and respectfully lifting its mops into the air accordingly.

The real killer feature of the Qrevo S is the fantastic AI and sensors that help it navigate the house. If there is a space small enough for it to fit into, it will fit into it. It is adept at identifying and navigating around hazards, and if you help it form a complete scan of your house, it will be able to pick its way around very easily. If it gets picked up and plonked somewhere, it’s always very clever at identifying where it is, and how to get home to its dock.

Speaking of the dock, this is where the Qrevo will periodically return to empty itself, refill its water, and wash its mops. Much like a builder who lets his own house fall into disrepair, the Qrevo S leaves its home dock in a pretty ugly state, you will need to periodically clean it out.

 

Other features

I should talk about the mobile app – it comes packed with very smart features, and just about every kind of deep customisation you can think of. My favourite feature is the ability to program “routines”. An example it comes with, “After Meals”, is handy to use if you just need to vacuum and mop the kitchen, for example. This is the one I use the most frequently, and it actually does a good job of making my kitchen a less disturbing place to be in.

You can also choose to vacuum just a specific area of a room – this is handy if you’ve spilled something. I actually employed it for exactly this purpose, to clean a spill in the kitchen, and it was pleasing to finally feel like Gary Oldman in the Fifth Element.

 

Issues

I have exactly one problem with the Qrevo S, but it’s a biggie.

As the vacuum moves around the house, it sucks all the dust and hair up into its little internal compartment. When it’s full it returns back to its home dock, and you hear a loud rushing blast as the small vacuum has its contents sucked up into the main dust bag in the dock. In my experience, this process was more miss than hit. I have found that after a full vacuum of one floor of the house, I have to flip the Qrevo S vacuum onto its back, open up its insides, and use my fingers to fish out huge stubborn clumps of dust. If I fail to do this, the Qrevo S’s suction gets worse and worse until it basically stops working.

For all the Qrevo S’s smarts, it is surprising what its AI and sensors are not capable of. It doesn’t know if it’s successfully emptied itself properly into the dustbag. Maybe if it just kept blowing a little harder, it would empty out. It also doesn’t know if it’s actually vacuumed up all the dust in the house, needing to be told to do a second go-over. And it doesn’t realise if it’s been mindlessly pushing dust around, in its wake, forming unsettling hairballs that get left behind in the hallways.

At this point I feel obliged to give a caveat that I live in a house with my partner, four boys, a dog, and two cats. One of the cats is long-haired, and is probably a key contributor to the ugly grey clumps that the Qrevo S seems to be permanently getting stuck in its gullet. So your experience with the Qrevo S may differ from mine; but to be honest, for a device with a $1499 RRP, I expect it should be able to handle pretty much anything that gets thrown at it, man or beast.

On the subject of price, the other thing that has to be mentioned is the hefty price tag on the official Roborock Qrevo S dust bags, which retail for approximately $13 per bag from the Roborock store. Much like buying a printer, you really need to factor consumables like this into your budgeting.

 

Conclusion

I feel conflicted sharing my negative experience of the Roborock, because the fact is that it’s still one of my favourite members of our household. It has done a solid job of keeping my house looking clean, and even with the annoying need to get my hands dirty and scrape out its insides, I will continue to use it. But personally at this price point I expected the Qrevo S to work a lot more reliably.

Thanks to Roborock for providing the Qrevo S unit for this review.

 

Specifications
  • 7000Pa suction
  • Battery Type:
    • 5200mAh Lithium Ion
    • Runtime – 180 min (Quiet mode)
  • Dual Spinning Mops with Self-Washing
  • Robot weight: 11.56 kg
  • Robot dimensions: 13.78*13.9*3.80 inches
  • Dock dimensions: 13.38*19.17*20.51 inches
  • Suitable area to vacuum: 300sqm
  • Smart features:
    • Obstacle Avoidance
    • LDS Laser Navigation