Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra review: Is this feature-packed robot vacuum worth the hefty price?

Pros

• Vacuums and mops at the same time.
• Hi-lift mop head to clear carpet.
• Cleans its own mop with hot water.
• Can clean right into edges and corners.
• Speedy.
• Reliable mapping and easy to use app.
• Remote camera access and control.
• Obstacle detection and avoidance.
• Ability to climb small step thresholds.
• Voice activated cleaning.

Cons

• Extremely expensive at $3,298.
• No floor cleaning concentrate included.
• Has to regularly return to dock to wash mop head.
• Dock uses bags.

Features

The S8 MaxV Ultra is a hybrid robot vacuum that can mop and vacuum at the same time. It has an auto-empty dock that will empty the onboard dustbin, refill the mopping water tank, wash the mop head with hot water and dry it too. Ecovacs was the first manufacturer to introduce this type of system with the Deebot T20 Omni but it had teething issues, and Roborock has executed it better. The T20 Omni doesn’t have an onboard water tank like the S8 MaxV Ultra does, so it has to return to its base more often when mopping hard floors.

The S8’s dock has two large water tanks: one for clean water that washes the mop head, the other for collecting the dirty water. Dust is collected in a disposable bag, which is a plus point for those of you with allergies, but I much prefer not having to buy consumables for my vacuums.

There is also a small refillable reservoir for floor cleaning detergent concentrate. I was expecting to find a small bottle of cleaning solution in the box, but Roborock decided to be tightwads and not include a sample, instead expecting you to buy a bottle of its proprietary Omo solution for $30. It’s worth noting you don’t have to use detergent, and most mopping vacs just use water anyway.

The S8 MaxV Ultra uses LiDAR (which stands for light detection and ranging) navigation to map your home and a camera to detect and identify obstacles, such as cables and pets.

Using the camera as a remote viewer, you can also spy on family members and talk to them whilst you drive the robot around the house using the navigation controls in the app. If you are concerned about privacy, there’s a sticker over the camera stating, “To protect your privacy, images captured by Reactive AI for obstacle recognition are processed onboard and immediately deleted.”

Setup and design

At 470mm tall, the dock is sizeable but not quite the height of some Ecovacs’ offerings (the Ecovacs Deebot T20 omni dock is 108mm taller). It’s mainly matt grey with a glossy panel that hides the dustbag. When you need to replace the bag, you have to remove the panel completely, which can be fiddly – we think it probably would have been better as a hinged design.

Mirroring the two-tone dock, the bot has a matt grey crescent shape on the top with a glossy black finish on the other two-thirds. It’s worth noting that glossy bots tend to show up dust and dirt more, though, as you can see in the photo below.

The S8 MaxV Ultra looks like other robot vacs, but there are some subtle differences on the underside. Roborock has introduced “DuoRoller”, a twin roller vacuum system similar to iRobot’s patented dual rollers
(the patent expired last year). Twin rollers supposedly grab more dirt off the floor – we’ve found iRobot models perform better on carpet, so there may be some truth in this.

Roborock’s S8 MaxV Ultra also has an extra small disk mop on the side, making it particularly effective at cleaning edges and corners.

Mapping and the app

Setting up maps in the app is easy – you can either do “quick mapping”, or a full “clean & mapping”. We took the former option and the mapping of our 55m² top floor, consisting of a kitchen, lounge, hallway, bathroom and one bedroom, took only 7 minutes. It pays to be on hand when doing this first map in case the bot gets stuck under a sofa or eats some cables. The S8 does have the ability to recognise obstacles, such as cables, note their location on the app, and avoid them in future.

Once mapping is complete, the app will divide up rooms and name them as it sees best, but you’ll likely need to do some editing and renaming – we ended up with a dining room in the hallway, a living room in the kitchen, and a kitchen in the hallway the size of a cupboard!

Luckily editing rooms is a simple task, with the options to merge, divide and rename in the app. You can also create “no-go zones” and add furniture to the map. You can then send the bot to clean around and under that furniture – very useful if you have messy eaters in your family but don’t want to perform a whole room clean for localised mess.

If you have another floor or separate area you need to map, you can enable “multi-level” in the Manage Maps/Home Layout section. Then take the S8 to the new level and it will map the new area.

The only complaint I have is it’s not intuitive how to switch maps from one level to another.

There are four main options for cleaning in the app.

1. Full sends the bot to clean all the rooms on a map.

2. Rooms allows you to specify which rooms you want cleaned and in what order. Rooms will have numbers to indicate the order of cleaning. Tapping on the small icons under each room number brings up options where you can change the suction power, cleaning intensity and cleaning passes.

3. Zones allows you to move and resize a rectangular box on the map to specify a localised area to clean, again with options for cleaning passes and intensity as above.

4. Routine allows you to create a specific cleaning order, using your preferences from the full, rooms and zones options. So, for example, you could send the bot out to vacuum the lounge and kitchen first, then do the mopping second, and set the intensities for each room separately.

On the app, we also find buttons for changing dock options like how often the mop is washed, or the bin is emptied, and for setting the default power, scrub intensity, cleaning count and route of the S8 MaxV Ultra. It’s slightly confusing having similar options in multiple places, but for basic operation it’s reasonably intuitive, and overall Roborock’s app is one of the most refined apps out of the robot vacs we’ve trialled.

Voice assistant

Saying “Hello Rocky” activates Roborock’s inbuilt voice assistant. I was expecting its reply in a gravelly New York accent (“Yo Adrian”), but instead I was greeted with a pleasant female voice. Rocky accepts a range of commands from “start cleaning” and “run a full map clean”, to adjusting settings such as vacuum power. Rocky isn’t the smartest assistant on the block, though, so it pays to check the recognised commands in the app first, otherwise it won’t understand you. One thing currently missing is the ability to tell Rocky to clean around furniture such as the kitchen table after dinner. Hopefully, future updates will add this and other functionality.

In my opinion these voice assistants are game changers, as you don’t need to get out your phone and load the app to do the cleaning, or if you notice the bot is getting stuck on something you can quickly ask Rocky to pause whilst you rectify the situation.

Vacuuming and mopping

The test lab recently put the S8 MaxV Ultra’s cheaper sibling, the S8 Pro Ultra, through its paces, and we found it performed excellently on hard floors but poorly on carpet, despite sharing the same upgraded ”DuoRoller” system as the MaxV.

We’d expect better performance from the S8 MaxV Ultra, though, as it boasts an extra 4000Pa (Pascals) of suction over the pro. In the real world you won’t be disappointed with the performance unless you have particularly dirty carpets – robot vacs are intended to be used more regularly to keep on top of dust and dirt, but every now and then you’ll want to grab your standard vac for a deeper clean of your carpets.

The S8 MaxV Ultra is a speedy little bot and noticeably faster at cleaning than our S7. It’s more nimble too, skipping around obstacles with ease. But be warned if you have a lot of mopping to do – the bot regularly has to return to the dock to wash the mopping pad, which takes about 3 minutes. As robot vacs are intended to be set and forget devices this isn’t really an issue unless you are waiting for the bot to complete its chores so you can return any furniture you may have moved.

The mop also has to be washed before the cleaning is started too. Overall, our 24m² kitchen diner took 23 minutes for vacuuming and mopping together including three mop washes: one at the start, one about 15 minutes in and one at the end. A rule of thumb for this model is it takes about 1 minute per m². The frequency of mop washes can be increased from the default of once every 15 minutes up to once every 25 minutes.

I’m pleased to report that the S8 MaxV Ultra can climb over low steps – we have a 20mm step into our bathroom and the bot managed to get over it after a few wiggles.

Cleaning corners and edges is another strong point for the S8 MaxV Ultra. The mop-edge roller does a fine job of mopping close to the skirting boards, but there’s more – the single swisher brush mounted on a cantilevered arm flicks out when a corner is approached, thus getting closer into the corner than other bots would.

Whilst cleaning you also have the option of “complimentary cleaning” – if you spot an area that needs an extra clean you can move a box over it, and the bot will head there for a spot clean before returning to its original task.

Should you buy the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra?

Robot vacs is a fast-moving category with improved models regularly being released, so dropping over three grand on one seems unwise considering it could easily be superseded in the not-to-distant future. However, if you do have the funds for the S8 MaxV Ultra you won’t be disappointed with its design and performance, and you’ll be buying into a brand that has fine-tuned its user experience to be one of the best available.

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Thanks to Joe Shi at PB Tech for the loan of the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra.