Roborock Qrevo S

Verdict

With a lot of the same features that appear in Roborock’s high-end vacuum cleaners, the Roborock Qrevo S is excellent value.

It can mop and lift its mop pads for carpet; it uses its camera to avoid obstacles; and its app is brilliant. Compared to the higher-end robots, the Qrevo S loses out on the ability to use detergent, doesn’t mop with warm water, and its edge and carpet performance is a little off the pace. For those with mostly hard floors, this vacuum cleaner is brilliant value and capable of cleaning very well.

Introduction

What is an entry-level robot vacuum cleaner today? The Roborock Qrevo S might fall under the company’s entry-level range, but the range of is on par with much more expensive models, with a self-empty and self-clean station, AI object avoidance, and automatic mop lifting. In fact, you get a whole range of features and power that would definitely appear on high-end robots.

The main difference comes down to suction power and edge cleaning, with the Roborock Qrevo S falling behind the best robots in the business. However, given the exceptional low price, this robot remains a brilliant choice.

Design and Features

• Self-empty and self-clean station
• Dual microfibre mopping pads
• Smart object avoidance

Unboxing the Roborock Qrevo S, it’s clear that this isn’t just a standard mid-range robot vacuum cleaner and comes with all of the added frills that you might expect on a more expensive model.

The obvious stand-out feature is the self-clean and self-empty docking station. As with similar robots, such as the Eufy X10 Pro Omni, the dock is quite large and tall (521x487x340mm), as it takes two 4-litre tanks: one for clean water (for washing and filling the robot’s 80ml tank) and one for dirty water. Both are clearly marked, and pull out easily for refilling or emptying.

There’s no option to add detergent into the mix, as you can do with the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra or the Eufy Omni S1 Pro, and the Qrevo S is a water-only mopping machine, using cold water.

The dock also takes large 3-litre dust bags, which are large enough to hold dirt for up to seven weeks, after which they can be removed and dumped.

There’s a small bin inside the robot, which you won’t need to manually empty, although it is worth cleaning it out once a month and cleaning its filter.

Measuring 350x353x97mm, the circular Roborock Qrevo S has a similar footprint to most of the competition. It isn’t quite as tall as many robots; I found that this model could easily get underneath my corner sofa, whereas many other robots I’ve reviewed either can’t get under or get trapped underneath.

On the front of the robot there are two buttons: one to start a clean and one to send the robot back to the dock. Realistically, that’s all the manual control you need, with finer control taken care of with the app.

Flip the Roborock Qrevo S over, and the layout is quite familiar: there’s a single side brush for getting dirt out from the edge, dual microfibre cloths for mopping, and a single rubber brush bar, which Roborock says is designed to reduce (but not stop) hair tangling.

The mopping pads can lift 10mm off the ground when carpet is detected, which is enough to deal with most shortpile carpet. If you’ve got deeper carpets, then the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ may be a better choice: this can lift its mopping pads for shortpile carpet or detach them for thicker carpets.

Unlike the recent S8 MaxV Ultra, this robot can’t lift its brush bar off the floor to prevent marking a freshly mopped floor.

Fine control over the Roborock Qrevo S is via the Roborock app, which is home to all of the company’s other robots. That’s good, as you get the same (well similar) premium experience for the Qrevo S as you would if you’d bought the range-topping S8 MaxV Ultra.

Once the robot has been added, it needs to perform a quick mapping run. Thanks to the LiDAR dome on top, mapping is very quick to do, and takes just a few minutes. Multiple maps can be stored, although the Qrevo S does have to be carried between floors.

Once the map has been created, I could configure the rooms the way I wanted them, plus set no-go and no-mop zones. This robot also supports furniture placement, where you can add common furniture, such as beds, tables and sofas, to the map.

That’s more useful than it sounds, as each item of furniture can be selected as a cleaning zone. That makes vacuuming up after a meal easy, as I could just select the table and set the robot off to clean.

Otherwise, the Roborock Qrevo S can be set to clean everywhere on the map, specific rooms, or zones that you mark on the map.

For these cleaning tasks, there’s an option to vacuum and mop at the same time, mop only or vacuum only, and I could choose the mop intensity, vacuum power and if I wanted to – one or two passes.

Routines let you set up common tasks, such as cleaning around the table after a meal, or vacuuming first and then mopping later. They’re handy shortcuts if you’ve got specific jobs that you’d otherwise have to spend time manually configuring each time.

More in-depth settings let me set how often the mopping pad should be washed and cleaned. Note that this robot can’t detect how dirty its pads are, and return on-demand. There’s also an option to turn on Reactive Obstacle Avoidance, which uses the front camera to spot and avoid common problems, such as pet mess.

This camera can’t be used to spot stains and focus on that area, which is something that the S8 MaxV Ultra can do.

Once the Roborock Qrevo S has completed its task it returns to its dock and empties its bin, then cleans its mopping pads with fresh water before using warm air to dry them.

Performance

• Excellent mopping
• Edge and carpet performance could be better
• Neat and careful navigation

Using my standard jobs I set the Roborock Qrevo S a series of tasks, starting with the carpet test, which has flour added to it. With the robot set to two cleaning passes, the results were good, but the 7000Pa suction power falls behind the best in the business, and there was still quite a bit of mess left behind.

After running another cleaning run, the results were better, but there were still traces of dust left behind. For standard spills, the Roborock Qrevo S does well, but if you want deep cleaning, a robot with more power, such as the S8 MaxV Ultra, is better.

On my hard floors, the dust was picked up flawlessly with the robot set to run two cleaning passes. Not a trace of dust was left behind.

Next, I sprinkled flour up to the kitchen’s plinth. Here, the Roborock Qrevo S struggled to get in, leaving a clear line behind after two cleaning passes. The S8 MaxV Ultra, with its pop-out mop and side brush, did better, as did the Eufy X10 Pro Omni, which can swivel its back around to get its mopping pads up to the edge.

To see how well the Roborock Qrevo S coped with hair, I added strands of human to the floor and let it pick them up. Turning the robot over, I could see all of the hair wrapped around the roller, and I had to untangle it. The S8 MaxV Ultra, with its dual contra-rotating brushes, does a better job with hair and didn’t get any tangled.

To test mopping performance, I added some stains to my hard floor and let them dry, and then gave the Roborock Qrevo S two passes over the mess. My dried-on coffee stain was removed with ease.

I had the same success with the dried-on red wine stains, which the Roborock Qrevo S dealt with easily.

Next came my tougher dried-on ketchup test. Here, two passes removed almost all of the mess, but there was a stubborn sticky bit that got left behind, which I had to tackle manually.

Finally, I had my mud stain, where I used a teaspoon of soil mixed with a teaspoon of water, and then rubbed into the floor. This then contains a stain that needs to be mopped and smaller particles that need to be vacuumed. After two passes, the stain was still highly visible; after four passes it was better, with just the outline of the mess. I had to use a manual hard floor cleaner in the end.

I measured the robot at 58dB, making it relatively quiet as far as robot vacuum cleaners go.

Battery life, from the 5200mAh battery, is quoted at 120-minutes, based on the lowest vacuum power setting. In real use, the vacuum cleaner could managed two passes of the Trusted Reviews Home Technology lab (similar in size to the ground floor of an average home), with power left to tackle some spot cleaning jobs.

I found navigation to be excellent. Having left down some traps, including shoes, cables and some fake pet mess, the Roborock Qrevo S managed to avoid them all.

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