It won’t have the name-brand cachet of iRobot’s Roomba or Samsung’s Powerbot, however the Roborock S5 can maintain its personal with each these robotic vacuums. The Roborock S5 comes with laser navigation, flooring mapping, and each vacuuming and mopping capabilities, so you’ll be able to deal with all of your flooring cleansing from the consolation of your sofa.

The Roborock S5 impresses proper out of the field with its shiny white end, a welcome change from the samey shades of black frequent to most robotic vacuums. On the highest is a button that prompts automated cleansing, one other for spot cleansing, and a 3rd for recharging, which primarily works just like the “house” button on different robotic vacuums, sending the Roborock again to its charging dock.

A turret on the highest of the vacuum homes the Roborock’s laser distance sensor and brings its complete top to about three.eight inches. A zero.6-liter dustbin is situated below a lid simply behind it. A cleansing device for the untangling hair from the primary brush is latched right into a slot proper subsequent to it—a considerate element as these instruments are simply misplaced.

On the underside are a curler brush and a single spin brush for edge cleansing, two essential wheels, and an omnidirectional wheel on the entrance. For mopping, the vacuum comes with a separate water tank and material that you just connect to the underside whenever you’re prepared to wash exhausting flooring.

Setup and utilization

One other welcome design element is the inclusion of a moisture-proof mat. You snap this onto the charging doc in order that residual water out of your mopping received’t drip in your flooring whereas the Roborock is recharging. You then simply plug the dock in and set the vacuum on its charging pins. Whereas it’s charging, obtain the Mi House companion app, add the Roborock, and comply with the prompts to attach it to your Wi-Fi community.

For the preliminary cleansing, I turned the Roborock unfastened on a 50-plus-square-foot space that included carpet, hardwood, and linoleum affected by all the things from pet hair to paper scraps. The vacuum methodically cleaned a small space of flooring totally earlier than shifting onto one other, building a map because it went.

Michael Ansaldo/IDG

It’s a decided little bot, too. The place some robotic vacuums will change route as quickly as their entrance bumper encounters resistance, the Roborock tried to push by means of most obstacles when it might. Generally, that really helped as when it encountered a pair of my child’s sneakers and simply pushed them alongside till they moved out of the way in which. It may be doubtlessly disastrous, like when it insisted on getting below a guitar stand till it met sufficient resistance to alter route simply earlier than tipping over an costly axe.

The Roborock had no drawback navigating the transitions between the totally different flooring varieties, nor did it get hung up on any furnishings. Its top prevented it from getting below my sofa and kitchen cupboards, nevertheless it left the wide-open areas freed from particles. That features wall edges, that are robust for some round vacuums. The spin brush deftly swept any grime into the trail of the primary brush so it might sweep it into the suction. And the entire cleansing took simply 21 minutes in keeping with the app.