One of the real innovators with robot vacuum cleaners, Roborock still has the desire to do things differently, as can be seen with its new flagship Saros line of cleaners, which includes the Z70, the Z10R and the Z10.
Armed and (not) dangerous
It’s the Saros Z70 that will grab the headlines, as it’s the first robot vacuum cleaner to have a robot arm that lifts up out of a compartment at the front. Strong enough to pick up a pair of shoes, according to Roborock, this arm can pick up loose obstacles it finds, so that the Z70 can clean areas other robots would just have to avoid.
An AI-powered camera, which is also used for obstacle avoidance, is used to detect the objects that the Z70 can pick up. There’s a choice of what to do, based on what’s detected: some objects can just be picked up, so that the robot can clean; Roborock says that you can tell the Z70 where to put any stray shoes that it finds.
In addition, through AI, the robot will learn about new objects, and users will be able to define up to 50 new items for the robot to handle.
For those with a bit of clutter around their house, the promise is the Z70 will allow for a deeper clean and help tidy up.
Trusted Reviews was invited to an exclusive preview of the Z70 in action. The model that we saw was a very early prototype, with the robot undergoing further AI model training in the lab. The final model won’t go on sale until March 2025.
In the demonstration, we saw the robot with a pile of socks in front of it, and you could see it spin around, identifying what it could pick up. Once locked onto a pair of socks, the arm comes up and out, picks up the bundle and holds them aloft, able to clean and move the socks elsewhere.
The very early model we saw had a few issues, missing socks or picking them up and dropping them, a bit like one of those arcade claw machines. But it is essential to repeat that this is a pre-production sample, months away from release; a newer version is being demonstrated at CES 2025, and the final version will be March 2025.
It’s fair to say that Roborock has a good pedigree when it comes to launching competent, reliable products, and it’s reasonable to assume that the Saros Z70 will only launch when it meets the required standards.
Robot arm aside, the Saros Z70 is a full-on flagship robot vacuum cleaner, with a rated suction of 22,000Pa.
This robot ditches LiDAR for the StarSight Autonomous System 2.0, an updated navigation system that first appeared on the Roborock Qrevo Slim. With no LiDAR dome, the Z70 can fit under more bits of furniture, cleaning further than many other robots.
An AdaptiLift chassis lets the Z70 lift up, allowing it to navigate thresholds and to clean deep-pile carpets, which is in addition to the 22mm lift on the mop pads.
There are dual spinning heated microfibre mop pads, which can automatically detach when for vacuum-only mode, a new anti-tangle brush bar and a FlexiArm side brush and mop for enhanced edge and corner cleaning.
Of course, there’s a self-empty, self-clean docking station. Prices have not been announced, but we’ll bring you those details when we have them.
Mostly armless: the Saros Z10R and Z10
Joining the Z70 is the Z10R, which is a very similar robot; this one has 19,000Pa of suction and doesn’t have a robotic arm. Otherwise, the specs are near-identical, so you’ll get the same basic cleaning and mopping experience, only with AI obstacle avoidance, rather than the robot being able to pick up items and move them.
Roborock said that it was moving to the Saros naming convention in order to simplify its product line-up, which had got extremely confusing. It does seem a little odd then, that there’s a Saros Z10 robot as well.
This is very similar to the Z10R, only it has 22,000Pa suction power and uses LiDAR for navigation rather than StarSight. With this model, the LiDAR dome can be retracted to let the Z10 fit under low furniture.
Both the Z10R and Z10 will launch in January 2025, with prices to come.
