I tested the viral Roborock vacuum with a mechanical arm for a month – here’s my verdict

The Roborock Saros Z70<!–> is currently on sale at Roborock–> for $1,999 for Memorial Day, down $600 from the usual price of $2,599.

I’ve spent the past few years of my life turning my home into the closest version of the Jetsons’ house that I can get, bypassing the midcentury decor and flying cars. 

While I’m pleased to report that many of the predictions made by the 1960s sitcom have materialized over the decades, many remain unrealized. The biggest one? Rosie the Robot. 

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Thankfully, many companies are rallying behind the effort to create a household assistant robot. However, after being lucky enough to test the Roborock Saros Z70<!–> with a mechanical arm, I believe Roborock has a definite edge on the competition. 

While other companies have created different kinds of household robots, the Saros Z70 is a multifunctional robot that could be a stepping stone to the future of smart homes. 

The Roborock Saros Z70 is a premium robot vacuum and mop with all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a flagship, plus a mechanical arm to pick up objects. And I can’t dive into a review of this product without immediately focusing on this robotic grip. 

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When the robot vacuum is cleaning, it detects small obstacles it can handle and picks them up. The robot then navigates to a predetermined area to drop off the item. Then, the device returns to the spot the object occupied and resumes cleaning the area. 

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The Saros Z70 comes with a Roborock bin that you can place in your home for your robot to drop soft items into. It’s a rigid cardboard bin that looks like a small trash bin you’d see under a desk or in a bathroom. 

After your robot creates a virtual map of your home, you place the bin and you add it to the map in the Roborock mobile app. You can also add a larger area for your robot to drop off other items, like slippers and light shoes. 

The biggest question, of course, is: does the mechanical arm work as intended? After testing it in my home, I’m pleased to report that it does – at least the vast majority of the time.

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To test the OmniGrip mechanical arm, I set out ten obstacles around the house several times and ran full cleanings. I also did smaller area cleanings with fewer objects. The robot vacuum sees the object and gives a voice prompt to announce it’s going to sort an item. It deploys the mechanical arm and lines itself up to pick up the item. 

Once the arm grips the item, the robot travels to drop it off. It lines itself up with the bin or designated sorting area and releases the object, then retracts the arm. 

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In my tests, the Roborock mechanical arm picked up the intended objects 83% of the time. This is a great number for a robot that is effectively introducing this type of technology to the market. It’s also a great number when you consider that the robot’s initial rollout has a very limited number of items it can recognize and pick up. 

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Roborock says the Saros Z70 currently recognizes socks, sandals, crumpled tissues, and towels under 300g (about eight ounces), and that new sortable objects will be added continuously via firmware updates. When I only used the recognizable objects, the robot gripped and relocated 90% of the items. 

When I added other small obstacles, like shoes, small cups, and plastic film, it gripped 75% of the objects.

Also: This Ecovacs robot vacuum and mop is a sleeper hit, and it handles carpeting like a champ

As a robot vacuum and mop, the Roborock Saros Z70’s performance is outstanding – I have zero qualms with it. It is one of the best robot vacuum and mop combos I’ve ever tested. It has the best obstacle avoidance feature I’ve seen thus far, so it doesn’t get stuck on random objects, and it has an extendable mop pad to clean near edges. 

The robot also cleans quite thoroughly, much like the Saros 10 and Saros 10R, so you can count on it reaching pretty much every foot of your home. 

I did encounter some bugs with the robot’s OmniGrip performance, but I can’t fault Roborock for them. Aside from the fact that no robot vacuum is perfect (and this one nearly is), these bugs can be attributed to the fact that this is really new technology. 

Some bugs included the robot only vacuuming and “forgetting” to resume mopping after dropping off an object, and dropping objects that were hard to grip, like kids’ water shoes.

ZDNET’s buying advice

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The Roborock Saros Z70–>