Over the years, I’ve had to adjust my expectations for what a robot vacuum cleaner should be capable of. Originally, I had thought the goal was to have a robot that cleaned your floor. For example, if your floor was dirty or you spilled something, you would send the robot to clean it up. That is not the purpose of a robot vacuum cleaner, which is good, because robots are generally very bad at that (particularly if it’s a sticky mess).
What robot vacuum cleaners can be good at is keeping your already-clean floor clean. Sending them out regularly for maintenance means you notionally only have to do floor cleaning when something goes wrong, cutting down on labour.
However, depending on the level of chaos in your home, and the robot’s ability to recognise hazards, it can end up being like having a puppy that tries to eat everything and creates more problems than it solves.
My time with the Roborock Saros 20 has shown that it’s a robot somewhere between a helper and a puppy. When it was good, it was great. But it did not always live up to its potential during my months-long review period.
Table of contents
- First impressions
- Specifications and price
- Vacuuming
- Mopping
- Dock
- Navigation
- Who is the Roborock Saros 20 for?
First impressions
The Roborock Saros 20 has a much more stripped-back appearance than previous-generation devices. Its aesthetic is ‘black plastic, but make it nice’. It’s unobtrusive and will blend into most homes. Where some robots want to make a statement, the Saros 20 just wants to exist and get out of the way, and I actually really like that. There is a place for more architectural docks, but few people want to have to think about or interact with their vacuum cleaner.
The setup process was quick and easy, though it’s important to note that auto firmware updates are not turned on by default, so you will have to update manually. Auto update is an easy toggle, and your choice. But it is something to keep in mind.
Roborock Saros 20 specifications and price
| Price (RRP) | $2,999 |
| Warranty | 2 years in addition to your Australian consumer law rights |
| Official website | Roborock Australia |
| Suction | 36,000Pa |
| Mop washing | 100 degrees Celsius hot water mop bi-directional washing, 55 degrees warm air drying |
| Dust bin volume | 180mL |
This is a robot vacuum cleaner at the top of the robot vacuum cleaning price bracket. So it’s surprising to see older technology, like rotating mop pads, still in the mix. Maybe some people prefer them over a mop roller, which is used in the $2,499 Roborock Qrevo Curv 2. I used to be one of those people.
Another thing to call out is the extremely small dust bin. That won’t be a problem if the Saros 20 goes back to the dock to empty a lot. However, that only works if the dock has good enough suction to extract the debris each time, and that has not been my experience.
Vacuuming
With 36,000Pa of suction, this is a very powerful vacuum cleaner. With an empty dustbin, it was able to suck up rolled oats, little bits of popcorn, and dust with ease. Its little brush let it go up to selected edges of the floor and either clean up the dust that resided there, or at least spread it around the floor more evenly.
It did an excellent job of vacuuming my rug. It pulled a horrific amount of dust out of there, and I’m really impressed with how well it navigated around my coffee table’s legs.
But it really struggled with hair. I have the longest hair in my family; it goes down roughly midway between my chin and shoulder, so not super long. The Saros 20 has a split vacuum bar to stop hair tangling around it, and it’s very effective! I didn’t see any hair tangled around the bar!
That’s because the bar somehow turned the hair into giant hairballs that would get stuck and make the vacuum cleaner make weird sounds. It did make the hair easier for me to pick up, which isn’t nothing! But it’s also not the experience I expect from a $3,000 vacuum cleaner.
Mopping
The thing with rotating mop pads is that it’s not really all that different to wiping a very small cloth over your whole floor very quickly. The Saros 20 is not designed to clean up spills or messes or anything like that. It’s there to possibly get some sticky residue off the floor where your kid spilled honey, and get off the invisible bacteria (and then wipe it around the rest of the floor for 15 minutes until it washes its mop at the dock).
When this was the best technology available, it was fine to think about how it was kind of cleaning the gunk, but then also spreading it around the rest of the floor, because it’s not like I was going to actually mop that any time soon. But now that roller mop robots, which are constantly cleaning the roller, exist, it’s harder to go back to spinning mop pads.
Don’t get me wrong, these are the best spinning mop pads I’ve seen on a robot vacuum cleaner. They spin well, they are more absorbent than usual, and the Saros 20 can kick one pad out to get in the corner. It’s so cute, it always makes me think of the dancers in the musical Chicago rouging their knees.
But for $3,000, I just expect something a little more hygienic, with better moisture control.
On my honey residue test, where the honey had been on the floor for seven hours, the Saros 20 made the floor marginally less sticky.
In the kitchen, where there’s been some kind of residue on the floor near the dishwasher since yesterday, I think the Saros 20 made a minor improvement to it! Which is huge for a robot, because they usually have so little downward force.
Once I played with the settings, I managed to get the moisture level for my wooden floor to where the floor got clean, but the floor didn’t get too wet. I really liked being able to get that balance just right, and that made me feel more warmly towards the Saros 20.
Compared to the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI robot, which does not spot or scrub, but does have a roller bar and is $1,999, I think it will be difficult for a lot of people to justify spending the extra $1,000 to get spinning mop pads.
Dock
If a company is going to put such a comically small dust bin in a robot, it needs to be backed up by a dock that will properly empty it. That is not the case here, and it does the robot a complete disservice. I thought that the Saros 20 robot itself had terrible suction, leaving debris everywhere, unable to do the basics. But it turns out it was the dock’s fault.
The suction on the dock struggled even with simple dust bunnies. This meant that I had to periodically empty the dust bin on the Saros 20 manually during each clean, so it could keep vacuuming. Sometimes the dock managed to do the job, but not reliably enough that I don’t have to get involved.
Otherwise, the dock does its other tasks capably. It seems to do a decent job of cleaning the mop, and I’m grateful I at least don’t have to interact with that part.
Navigation
At this top of the range, I would expect the Roborock Saros 20’s map to be adaptable. The best robot vacuum cleaners work around your home’s setup, not expecting you to keep your home static for its ease, but acknowledging that the home is a dynamic environment. Kids build cubby houses out of couch cushions, and chairs get moved across the room. But if I move my desk chair out for the Saros 20 to clean, it refuses to even look under the desk, instead complaining its usual path is blocked.
The Roborock Saros 20 is good at making a map, but then bad at remembering all of the map exists. For a while, it just ignored my living/dining/kitchen area completely. Then, after getting it to remap, it would go to the living room, but only look into the kitchen before deciding it was too hard and heading back out. It’s relatable, but also not helpful.
The Saros 20 is really inconsistent about when it’ll be great and when it’ll be bafflingly incompetent, which is also something I read a lot in my school report cards.
For example, once it eventually worked out that my living room was a real place, it kept going under my TV cabinet and pulling its mopping feet off on the power cables, followed by crying plaintively about Error 54. I would then put the mops back on, only for the robot to immediately return to do the same thing.
But then it would go to my daughter’s play area, which looks like the toy department of a large shop exploded, and do a much better job. It carefully moved around everything, only occasionally pushing a block or stuffed octopus out of the way. It didn’t try to eat any books.
Though it did then refuse to even try to go under the dining room table, which is where the real horrors lie.
This is baffling to me because Roborock’s premium robots are usually excellent. I’m not sure what’s gone wrong here, and whether this is just my unit, or a symptom of a broader problem, but it’s very disappointing. Perhaps it’s something that Roborock might improve with future software updates.
Who is the Roborock Saros 20 for?
The Roborock Saros 20 is best suited for homes of relatively clean adults with a minimalist aesthetic, and who don’t move their furniture around much.
It’s not the worst robot vacuum cleaner on the market by a long way. But it doesn’t live up to the standard set by previous flagship Roborock robot vacuum cleaners, which makes it difficult to recommend spending $3,000, instead of getting a more affordable robot.
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