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VPNs for ad-blocking You can also find it as low as $639 from online retailers like Catch. The premium Roborock S7 is compatible with the brand’s upcoming Auto-Empty dock which is set to release in 2021. Other premium robot vacuums might feature advanced mopping features, like Narwhal’s self-cleaning system, or a vibrating mop pad for extra elbow grease. However, the most common upgrades you’ll find are simply better vacuum brushes, more dust/water capacity, longer battery life and more suction power. Upgrading from the S6 Pure to the S7, for example, will get you 2,500pa suction (compared to the S6 Pure’s 2,000pa), a vibrating mopping pad, and automatic mop lifting (more on that further down). Honestly, my house is a bit of a maze and there’s no shortage of obstacles, baby toys, cables and curious cats. My first instinct was to cut the Roborock some slack; it felt like the least I could do was lift the dining room chairs off the floor, but I thought I’d throw the S6 Pure in the deep end. For a few minutes, I observed its behaviour as it timidly sussed out its surroundings. For those few minutes, it spent a lot of time in the kitchen and when I left it to its own devices, I didn’t have a lot of faith in the little scrubber’s skills. My house is filled with nooks and crannies where dust and debris gather, small gaps between poorly installed floating floorboards and other home DIY nightmares, it’s incredibly tough to clean thoroughly. An hour or two passes while I’m click-clacking away in the office downstairs before I decide to take a short break and grab some water. When I return to the kitchen, the linoleum kitchen floor is more or less spotless, the crumbs and junk under the fridge, gone (thanks to the S6 Pure’s extended spinning arm). I investigate a little further and find that the S6 Pure has diligently vacuumed every room upstairs (except the bathroom), only to be tripped up on the last leg by a rogue pair of wired iPhone earbuds under the bed. This small betrayal on my behalf is a good reminder to pick up after myself. It doesn’t catch everything every time and the results are occasionally inconsistent but even if when the S6 Pure doesn’t score top marks for cleaning, it still makes the daunting task of vacuuming a much easier (and shorter) chore. That last feature is particularly handy if you live in a multi-level house. It allows the Roborock S6 Pure to distinguish between upstairs and downstairs areas. The one thing it’s missing is any kind of full bin indicator, though that feature is only available with select brands and isn’t even available in the premium Roborock S7. Those raw numbers are meaningless without some real-world context but thankfully, the proof is in the (dropped) pudding. I ran the Roborock S6 Pure through the gauntlet with an obstacle course of fine powders and larger objects to test its mettle and it passed the bar with flying colours. It was most efficient at cleaning up small debris. For this test, I used red lentils, which the S6 Pure devoured in a single run, leaving the carpet below spotless. Its spinning brush whipped a few lentils across the room when it first approached the pile but it managed to collect these later in its trip leaving nary a stray lentil in its wake. Like any vacuum, robot or otherwise, you’ll have to occasionally free the S6 Pure’s brush from tightly bound hair strands and string but, thankfully, it comes with a brush and cutting attachment for easily removing such things. Comparatively, the S6 Pure’s dustbin is par for the course but it’s still a chore to empty so regularly (especially if you’ve got animals inside). As I mentioned, Roborock is releasing an Auto-Empty accessory but so far it’s only confirmed to be compatible with the premium S7. On its first attempt at mopping, the S6 Pure wasn’t delivering much water on its own volition; a thin wet streak followed in its wake so I gave the pad a quick rinse to speed the process up. Besides that, there are other inconveniences to using the mop. Roborock suggests you only let the S6 Pure mop for around 60 minutes before washing the pad and there isn’t an auto lift for the mop, a feature in other models that detects carpet and lifts the mop off the ground. With the S6 Pure, you will need to manually set boundaries around the carpet if you want to mop. This is more or less the same mopping performance you get with the Ecovacs Deebot U2 robot vacuum, but that model is also a lot cheaper at $399. In our tests, the S6 Pure put out between 60.5db 61.5db on average, which is roughly as loud as the fan on my oven rangehood set to low. The only thing louder than the hum of the vacuum itself is the S6 Pure’s voice, which plays to let you know when it’s docking, charging, lost and more. Out of the box, the loudspeaker is turned up to the max. For everyday use, it kind of needs to be loud so it can be heard over the vacuum itself but if you do want to dial it down a notch, you can do so in the app. You can also change the voice and language of the robot. Unfortunately, none of the fun options (like Robot and Baby) are available in English.
