The (high) price of vacuum perfection

Roborock is often seen as the market leader when it comes to building some of the best and most innovative autonomous robot vacuums. Its S7 MaxV Ultra is still seen as one of the most advanced robot vacuums on the market, thanks to its ability to mop and vacuums floors simultaneously, while requiring minimal human intervention, as well as its built-in camera that allows it to precisely identify obstacles. It’s been one of the first models on the market to come with a self-cleaning dock that houses two water tanks and can also wash the robot’s mop.

The brand has since released a more advanced model, the S8 Pro Max, which offers impressive cleaning efficiency, but comes without a camera and a slightly less precise obstacle avoidance system.

To keep its lineup up to date, Roborock has released the S7 Max Ultra, which is based on the S7 model, and therefore features most of the same design elements, but comes with better suction power and warm air mop drying, which are features closer to the S8 Pro Ultra’s. It’s yet another entry in Roborock’s ever-expanding roster, but the S7 Max Ultra stands on its own as a great smart vacuum.

Price and availability

The S7 Max Ultra is available in black and white on Amazon, Roborobock’s site, and at Target for $1,299 which is $300 less than the S8 Pro Ultra.

Design, hardware, what’s in the box

The Roborock S7 Max Ultra is Roborock’s sub-flagship model, which mimics most of the S8 Pro Ultra’s features, while foregoing some of them.This makes its design very similar to the S8 Pro Ultra’s, while its dock looks almost identical to the S7 MaxV Ultra’s.

The robot boasts a circular design, measuring 13.9-by-13.8-by-3.8 inches, which is slightly bulky, especially considering the top-mounted LiDAR dome. It’s still slim enough to fit under most furniture, though, allowing it to clean your floors effectively. The top part welcomes three quick-access buttons, as well as a flap that conceals the dust bin and HEPA filter, which avoid having to flip the robot upside down when changing the filter. The bottom part is also similar to the S7 MaxV Ultra, with a single bristleless brush roller, the VibraRise mop, and a side brush, along with the wheels and sensors.

Talking about sensors, the S7 Max Ultra doesn’t use an RGB camera, unlike the MaxV model, but a Reactive Tech infrared sensor, which isn’t as advanced as the S8 Pro Ultra’s Reactive 3D one. This means that despite being able to detect obstacles, it can’t tell what they are, and might miss smaller objects like cables.

The dock is also very similar to the S7 MaxV’s, which measures 16.7-by-19.9-by-16.6 inches and features two visible water tanks that look like ink cartridges and a single LED that lets you know when the robot is charging or when something requires your attention. The dock has a bulky and conspicuous design, and wouldn’t necessarily fit nicely with the rest of your home furniture.

Aside from this odd appearance, the dock is convenient, and the water tanks are very practical, as they’re easy to lift and replace and can be fully opened, unlike the S8 Pro Ultra’s. Their capacities are also generous, with the clean water tank being big enough to contain 3L, and the dirty water tank 2.5L. Next to them, the dust bag is housed under a plastic cover, making it fit more harmoniously with the water tanks.

Just like other high-end docks, the Roborock S7 Max Ultra’s comes with a plastic receptacle to prevent the mop from humidifying hardwood floors, and also helps dry it with warm air. It also features a small sliding brush that’s used to clean the robot’s mop, ensuring it’s left clean to maximize hygiene and prevent odor.

Both the robot and the dock feature solid plastics, and their built quality is excellent, as it should be for a product that costs over a grand. It should be durable and able to withstand minor bumps and daily wear and tear. The box doesn’t include replacement consumables, besides an extra dust bag and a cleaning brush. Given the vacuum’s price, Roborock could have made an extra effort to include these, even though both original and compatible consumables are easy to find online.

Setup, software, and features

When it comes to interacting with the S7 Max Ultra, you can use both the Roborock or the Xiaomi Home app, as well as Alexa and Google Assistant. When first setting it up, the robot explores its surroundings to create a map and automatically identify each room.

You then have the liberty to merge and split rooms, rename them, and even create no-go zones and virtual walls. The app also lets you customize the floor type and cleaning sequence, as well as add furniture to personalize the map. If your house has several stories, or you plan on using the robot in different locations, it can also save and remember multiple maps for up to four floors and position itself automatically to find its way back to the station.

This allows you to clean a specific area or room, and even adjust the cleaning settings for each room, including vacuuming, mopping, or both. The suction power and scrubbing intensity can also be adjusted, together with the cleaning route, to prioritize speed of effectiveness.

The Roborock app displays the robot’s status and information related to the last cleaning cycle, such as the duration, surface cleaned, while plotting the cleaning path visually on the map.

Roborock fully lets you customize the robot’s settings to make it your own, which range from creating cleaning schedules, to customizing the mop wash frequency, intensity, drying duration, and even the robot’s behavior when it encounters a carpet.

Indeed, it can sense carpets and automatically lift its mop to avoid wetting them, or even avoid them altogether. You can even define off-peak hours for it to charge at specific times, helping you save money and reduce your impact on the grid.

Cleaning efficiency and battery life

When it comes to cleaning, the S7 Max Ultra is one of the most efficient robot vacuums we’ve tested, offering 5,500Pa suction power, which is almost as good as the S8 Pro Ultra’s 6,000Pa. It brilliantly cleaned my floors to remove dust, debris, dog hair, and much more, without any difficulty. While it offers several cleaning modes, ranging from quiet, balanced, turbo, max, and even max+, the first two are able to vacuum very efficiently and quietly, allowing you to have your floors vacuumed while watching TV or working, as the balanced mode produces only 62db.

I’ve even put the S7 Max Ultra to the ultimate test, as I asked it to vacuum the dining room after I inadvertently dropped half a jar of dried rosemary on the floor. To my surprise, there was not a single trace left of the rosemary after just a single pass, which confirmed the robot’s excellent vacuuming capabilities.

It’s also good at cleaning corners and meticulously sweeps them with its side brush to vacuum any remaining debris or dust. It does a great job on carpets, thanks to its bristleless brush and strong vacuuming power, which allow it to catch most of the debris trapped in rugs.

In terms of mopping, the S7 Max Ultra features a single vibration module, just like the S7 MaxV Ultra, which offers 3,000rpm scrubbing while applying pressure on the floor, helping it get rid of most stains. For better efficiency, the robot also returns to its dock to wash the mop based on a customizable duration or after cleaning each room, which avoids spreading dirt from a soiled mop all over the house.

It’s able to get rid of most daily stains, as long as you use it realistically. For testing purposes, I’ve asked it to clean dried soda and coffee stains, and while it managed to get rid of the first one, the coffee stain wasn’t completely gone after a single pass. With that in mind, I tried again with some detergent in the clean water tank — Roborock sells its own, but most non-foaming ones do the trick, and the stain was completely gone.

The S7 Max Ultra wouldn’t be the brilliant device it is without its navigational capabilities. Just like most high-end robots, it’s never gotten stuck and has always been able to position itself and move from room to room. It can even climb small steps between rooms and return to its dock without problems.

The robot’s built-in sensor can detect obstacles, which are displayed on the map using an icon. However, unlike the S8 Pro Ultra and S7 MaxV Ultra, the S7 Max Ultra isn’t able to identify what type of obstacle it encounters, but it can still avoid them and show them on the map. It’s not as precise as Roborock’s flagships models, though, and has at times struggled with cables, which it ended up carrying halfway across the house before they got tangled in its brush roller.

Besides small obstacles, though, its sensor has been able to efficiently detect shoes, plants, dog bowls and other objects, allowing the robot to clean around them without moving them.

The S7 Max Ultra’s 5200mAh battery offers about 180 minutes of cleaning in normal conditions, which is more than enough to clean a large area. In my usage, it managed to vacuum and mop 550 square feet in about an hour, with plenty of battery left. For the ones who live in a mansion, the robot can automatically return to its dock to charge up and resume its work when it’s powered up, ensuring it finishes its cleaning job.

Maintenance and care

The main advantage of a fully autonomous robot vacuum is its ability to vacuum and mop while requiring almost no human intervention. Since Roborock is one of the brands that pioneered these products, it has mastered the technology better than any other manufacturer.

The dock does an excellent job at collecting the first in the dust bag, as well as cleaning the mop with clean water and collecting the soiled one in the dedicated tank. The warm air drying, introduced on Roborock models with the S8 Pro Ultra, is also very effective while producing little noise, which ensures the mop doesn’t smell from mildew residue.

As you can see on the picture below, the mop looks almost new, even after being used for a whole month.

Besides requiring you to refill the clean water tank once a week and emptying the dirty water one, there’s virtually nothing to do. Of course, just like any vacuum, you have to clean the robot and the dock about once a month, which will barely take you ten minutes. The bristleless brush ensures no hair gets tangled, and cleaning it is as simple as removing hair from its side.

It’s also recommended to remove and wash the mop once in a while, and to replace it with a new one after a few months.

Competition

In the S7 Max Ultra, Roborock has released a new product that competes with several other models, including the brand’s own S8 Pro Ultra ($1,600). The latter is even more advanced, offering more precise obstacle recognition, stronger suction power, dual bristleless brushes, and dual vibration modules for the mop. However, despite some better cleaning capabilities, it’s very similar to the S7 Max Ultra, and the price difference between the two may make the S8 Pro Ultra a better option if you don’t mind the extra bucks and require even better cleaning performance and obstacle detection.

When it comes to other brands, the Dreamebot L10s Ultra ($1,000) is a considerable option, thanks to similar cleaning features, including automatic mop washing and drying. It comes with a taller, slimmer, and better looking dock and an AI camera, providing better navigation and obstacle recognition. However, it comes with rotating mop pads (instead of a vibrating mop), which seemed slightly less effective. It also has a different approach to using detergent, as it comes with a cartridge that’s housed in the dock. It’s also not as good at cleaning its mop autonomously, so the S7 Max Ultra is probably a better pick.

Finally, the new Ecovacs Deebot T20 Omni ($1,100) is probably an even better option when it comes to mopping and removing stains, thanks to its hot water cleaning. It’s a much poorer appliance in terms of design, battery life, and water usage, however, so you should mostly consider it if you have a smaller surface to clean and need outstanding mopping performance.

Should you buy it?

The Roborock S7 Max Ultra is one of the best options when it comes to autonomous robot vacuums and mop combos. It’s probably the second best on the market after the S8 Pro Ultra, but also costs a bit less, while offering most of its features. If you’re looking for an excellent and reliable option to clean, vacuum, and mop your floors while requiring little human intervention and have the cash for it, the S7 Max Ultra should be your go-to option.

That being said, bear in mind that if you have kids at home or tend to forget a lot of objects on the floor, the S7 Max Ultra’s navigation system may not be able to identify all obstacles, and isn’t able to categorize them, which may hinder the experience. In this case, you may prefer a model with an AI camera, such as the Dreamebot L10s Ultra or the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra.

Also, if you have thick carpets at home, the S8 Pro Ultra offers better cleaning efficiency on these surfaces thanks to its dual bristleless brush rollers.

The S7 Max Ultra presents a compelling choice for anyone seeking an autonomous cleaning solution. With its robust suction power and warm air mop drying technology, this vacuum robot offers nearly all the cleaning prowess of the more expensive S8 Pro Ultra, but at a lower price.

Its cleaning efficiency is quite impressive, and it handles a variety of surfaces and debris types remarkably well. Moreover, its autonomous navigation system is sophisticated enough to effectively clean around obstacles, albeit with minor struggles on smaller, tricky items like cables.

The Roborock S7 Max Ultra is one of our favorite autonomous robot vacuums and is an outstanding option for most people. It’s quite pricey,, but given its capabilities and autonomy, it’s worth every penny.