Roborock Q Revo - Feels like a 10 year technology jump

My first robot vacuum was the Neato Botvac Connected. When that died I switched over to iRobot, thinking I was buying the cream of the crop in robots. They invented the segment. Those were the most horrific, frustrating robots on the planet, and they are what I'll be comparing the Q Revo to. The Q Revo feels like a 10 year jump in technology compared to my old S9+ and M6 duo.

Setup was a breeze. Snap the "runway" onto the dock, followed the instructions and it immediately connected to my Wi-Fi with zero drama.The Roborock is easily half the volume of the S9. Even on its max setting, you can comfortably watch TV or have a conversation. Where the S9 was like a tiny 747 taxiing around your house, the Q Revo is comparatively silent. So quiet, I thought it was broken at first. The video in this review is the robot in "balanced" mode.

The mapping capabilities are incredible. It took me DAYS to map my house with the iR gear, and they had to be mapped separately. The mop wouldn't traverse thresholds and lacked carpet detection, I modified the thresholds to make it happy and it still fought me every now and then. The robots slowly mapped, each on their own, until finally, days later, we got usable (but ugly) maps out of both of them.

The Q Revo created a gorgeous map of my 2,000+sqft house IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. And you could watch it build the map, live in the app. The map can be switched from 3D to 2D, and when it's done you have the option to add furniture, floor type, and direction of flooring so it never mops against the grain.

Thanks to Lidar instead of a vision based camera system, the robot can run in complete darkness. No more leaving lights on when I leave so my vacuum isn't blinded.A linked clean vac/mop run of the my main living areas was a 6 hour affair with the iR bots. They couldn't run at the same time, so the mop had to wait for the vac to finish (or they would get their docks confused), including any breaks it took to charge.

Since the Q Revo can do both at the same time, the same run takes about 90 minutes. It has no trouble in rooms with area rugs, easily switching from vacuuming/mopping to just vacuuming once the ultrasonic sensor detects carpet. It can also automatically up the suction to Max+ on carpet for deep cleaning.

The large clean/dirty water tanks mean less filling and more mopping. Although the clean water/debris tanks of the robot are smaller than the S7/S8, this only means it will have to return to the dock more frequently to fill up/empty, not a huge deal.Pretty much anything you can think of can be done in the app, which is very well designed and easy to figure out.

Do not disturb modes, scheduling, mop washing frequency, duration of drying cycles...All easy to find and adjust. Instead of dragging a dirty mop pad around your house, it will return back to the base to wash and rinse the mop at an interval of your choosing (default is every 15 minutes). You can set room-specific settings as well, for example the majority of my house is set to balanced mode and medium water use, but my guest room is set to max suction and more water, because pets frequently hang out in there.

All of this is done automatically once you set it up. Want to clean rooms in a specific order? Set up a routine with multiple tasks in the order you want them done. Vacuum the guest room, vac and mop the kitchen, then mop the zone around the dining table. Easily configured in the app. Pin and Go is a great feature where you can tell the robot to clean a spot just by tapping it on the map.

You can also remote control the robot through the app.As far as cleaning performance, there are plenty of YT videos on that with data on grams of crud removed and stickiness mopped up. I'll say it leaves my laminate clean (using just water) and sucks up dog hair and kitty litter just fine. I have no complaints.As far as obstacle avoidance, I haven't really tested it yet.

It does successfully see things like desks, large dog bones on the ground and other bigger detritus, but luckily it hasn't had to avoid any droppings. My house is not robot proofed by any stretch. There are dog toys, cat toys, cords, and sandals on the floor at any given time. It hasn't gotten stuck yet. The roller did get jammed once when it sucked up a dryer sheet.

I would assume it would only get better with future software updates.There is honestly no comparison to the S9 and M6. Those bots feel like they came from the dollar store compared to the Q Revo.

This is the first time in the history of me using robovacs that I truly feel like I'm living in the future. I did a lot of research before buying this, even comparing it to the S7 MaxV and S8 Pro Ultra, and unless you absolutely need the pinnacle of obstacle avoidance, I don't see the S7 having any major benefits, and I'm not sure the S8 has any, either. The robot, dock and app are very well designed.