Rating:
8/10
?
1 – Absolute Hot Garbage
2 – Sorta Lukewarm Garbage
3 – Strongly Flawed Design
4 – Some Pros, Lots Of Cons
5 – Acceptably Imperfect
6 – Good Enough to Buy On Sale
7 – Great, But Not Best-In-Class
8 – Fantastic, with Some Footnotes
9 – Shut Up And Take My Money
10 – Absolute Design Nirvana
Price: $1,160
Sarah Chaney
While my cats might hate Roborock’s S7 MaxV Plus vacuum, I love it. It is a bit expensive, but this robot vacuum is convenient, cleans really well (even fur!), and looks pretty good when it’s docked.
Here’s What We Like
Powerful 5100Pa suction
Immensely convenient
Lots of great features
And What We Don’t
Expensive
App isn’t super attractive
The S7 MaxV Plus comes with an auto-empty dock, which brings the total price to $1159.99. If you just want the vacuum, you could buy the S7 MaxV for $859.99. Then, if you change your mind later and want to buy the auto-empty dock, you could do so for an extra $299.99. It kind of stinks that if you purchase both up front, you don’t get any discount, but at the same time, at least you aren’t punished for spreading out the purchase.
With its powerful suction max of 5100Pa, compared to 2500Pa on the previous S6 MaxV model, I was excited to let this bad boy loose in my home. Almost everything about my experience with this robot vacuum was positive, but for now, let’s start with the setup process.
The Setup: Incredibly Simple
Sarah Chaney
Setting up the S7 MaxV Plus was pretty straightforward, and it only took me about half an hour to unbox everything and have the vacuum ready. When you first open the box, there’s a great Quick Start Guide that helps you put everything together quickly if you’re eager to get started. There’s also a more in-depth manual with further instructions on assembly and maintenance.
With the S7 MaxV Plus, you’ll receive the robot vacuum, the dock (with a disposable dust bag pre-installed), the base for the dock to fit into, a VibraRise mop bracket (with a mop cloth pre-installed), and of course, a power cable and manual. You’ll also get an extra dust bag for when your first one fills up.
You’ll have to replace dust bags and mop cloths as needed, but they’re relatively inexpensive. A 12-pack of dust bags costs $19.99, and each can last up to eight weeks, depending on how many people or animals you have in your home. For extra mop cloths, there are off-brand options that claim they’ll fit the Roborock S7 MaxV Plus, but if you want to mop cloths from Roborock specifically, a 2-pack costs $25.99.
There’s almost nothing to put together when setting up the S7 MaxV Plus. The robot comes pre-assembled, and since the dust bag and mop cloth are pre-installed, you only have to fit the auto-empty dock onto the base. You’ll use the app for the rest of the setup.
The App: Super Easy to Use & Remotely Control the Vacuum
Overall, the app is easy to use, but it’s not incredibly intuitive at first. You have to do some poking around to figure out all the available features, how to use them, and get the most out of your vacuum.
When you first open the app, you’ll see all the available Roborock devices in your home, which for most people would probably just be one. If you tap on the device, it opens up a screen where you can see how much cleaning area the vacuum has detected, its current battery level, and how many minutes it took to clean the last time you used it. From this screen, you can quickly empty the contents into the dust bag and make the vacuum start and stop cleaning.
You can also switch between a full view of your home, specific mapped rooms, or mapped zones. This makes it easy to instruct your vacuum to only vacuum the living room or a particular zone within the kitchen if there’s a mess.
One of the app’s best features is that you can create custom cleaning schedules. You can customize the time vacuuming starts, how often the schedule repeats, how intense the cleaning should be, and whether you want your entire home vacuumed or only certain rooms. Then, you don’t even have to worry about opening up the app and telling it to start cleaning; you can just go about your day and know you’ll come home to clean floors.
The S7 MaxV Plus uses reactive A.I. and a camera to avoid obstacles within your home. That A.I. plays a huge part in how well the vacuum can function, so I wouldn’t turn it off. But if you’re uncomfortable with having a camera on at all times, you could turn off these features within the app. You could always turn the cameras on when you want to vacuum and off when you’re not using the vacuum.
If you have carpets, you can turn on the Carpet Boost feature, which automatically detects carpets and turns suction power to maximum. Then, it’ll notice when it moves from carpet to hardwood or tile and revert to its less powerful suction. You can also customize the auto-empty settings and the volume and language of the robot’s voice.
Performance: Picks Up Pretty Much Everything
First, I’ll say that you do have to pick up items off your floor for the robot vacuum to function at its best. With robot vacuums, that’s always a given, and it’s on the instructions as well, but it’s worth mentioning here. I found this an easy motivator to keep stuff off my floors, so I could run the vacuum at any time without worrying about picking up cat toys.
Most people who want to invest in a robot vacuum are probably interested in how loud it is. It is a vacuum, so it’s not quiet, but it wasn’t so loud that I couldn’t talk to my husband while the vacuum did its job. When you’re vacuuming with a traditional vacuum, you usually can’t talk to people unless you’re screaming. So compared to my standard vacuum, the Roborock S7 MaxV Plus was quieter. On hardwood or tile floors, it’s even quieter because it increases suction on carpet, which is primarily what I have in my apartment.
I blocked off certain areas so the vacuum couldn’t reach them—like the bedroom, bathroom, and office area—for two reasons. First, I didn’t want to pick up stuff off the floor. Second, I wanted our cats to have a place to run away and hide because they don’t like vacuums.
Sarah Chaney
As it ran, I could hear it actively sucking stuff up, and our carpets visually looked cleaner after only half an hour. Our carpet is that classic flecked, brown material you find in many apartments, so it’s not as easy to tell a dirty carpet from a clean one, but it looked fluffier.
In our kitchen, however, we have hard laminate flooring; the vacuum had no issue moving from the laminate in the kitchen to the carpet in the rest of the apartment. The Roborock S7 MaxV automatically detected when it was on the carpet, which lifts the vacuum a little and boosts the suction power.
In the half-hour or so it took to clean the allowed areas of the apartment, the battery drained by about 30%, and it sucked up a lot. I have two cats, and they shed a lot, so there was quite a bit of fur in the dust bag and under the removable roller on the bottom of the vacuum. The cover and the red roller pop off so you can easily pull out what was collected underneath without having to unscrew anything. There was quite the tuft of cat fur when I cleaned the bottom and looked at the dust bag.
I waited a week or two to vacuum so there would be a lot of dust and cat hair to suck up, and the Roborock S7 MaxV Plus handled it swimmingly. It picked up almost as much as my traditional “pet” vacuum. That said, I went back over my carpet with the conventional vacuum after the Roborock finished cleaning and still picked up some cat fur. It wasn’t too much, though, and I was impressed by how good of a job the Roborock did.
If you have its smart features turned on (the default setting), it’ll automatically detect when it’s finished cleaning, return itself to the dock, and empty the contents into the dust bag. After each cleaning session, you can see the route the Roborock took in the app. Overall, it mapped the apartment well and covered almost every space it was allowed to enter, maneuvering well around furniture and other obstacles.
Maintenance: Automatically Empties Itself & Easy to Clean
Sarah Chaney
As mentioned earlier, the Roborock S7 MaxV Plus automatically empties its contents into the dock when it returns after each clean. With a traditional vacuum, you have to manually empty the container and possibly even switch out vacuum bags, depending on your model. Not having to do this part, at least as frequently, was incredibly convenient. The 3L dust bag can hold up to eight weeks’ worth of dust; if you have pets or kids, you might need to change it more frequently.
What’s nice about the dust bags is that they’re disposable and close themselves off when you remove them from the dock. So if you have bad allergies or just don’t want to breathe in dust and dander, this is an excellent feature. When the Roborock empties itself into the dock, it gets pretty loud but lasts only about five seconds. The sound it makes when emptying is much louder than when the Roborock is vacuuming.
The only thing you have to do manually is clean out the fur from beneath the roller when there’s overflow, but it’s effortless to do. And if you’re scheduling vacuum sessions regularly, you might not have to manually clean it out very often. A rubber contraption with spider-like legs also collects human hair for easy removal.
Verdict: A Great Option If You’re Looking For a Robot Vacuum
If you’re after a quality robot vacuum cleaner, Roborock’s S7 MaxV Plus is an excellent option. It has added so much convenience to my life, and I love being able to control the vacuum with my phone and Google Assistant. The thought of vacuuming used to instill so much dread in me, but not anymore because I’m not the one vacuuming! And even though I still have to occasionally clean the carpet with the traditional vacuum, I can do so much quicker and with less junk to empty each time.
While it does cost a pretty penny, it’s worth it for all the extra features and suction power you get. Compared to the other robot vacuum most people are familiar with, the Roomba, the S7 MaxV Plus is slightly more expensive. And if you’re after an excellent robot vacuum that won’t break the bank, there are other options, but they won’t be nearly as powerful, and you might have to empty the dust bin manually throughout a clean.
Rating: 8/10
Price: $1,160
Here’s What We Like
Powerful 5100Pa suction
Immensely convenient
Lots of great features
And What We Don’t
Expensive
App isn’t super attractive
