I tested the Roborock Q7 M5 robot vacuum – it's great if you're on a budget, but spending a little extra will give you an even better clean

Robot vacuums are sold as the ultimate time-saver by promising to take at least one household chore off your plate. In reality, having spent more than a decade testing them, they sit much more on a spectrum.

Some offer near hands-free cleaning, some need as much manual input as an upright vacuum, while others actually make the whole process harder. The Roborock Q7 M5 falls nearer to the latter.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been putting the budget-friendly hybrid model through its paces around my home, seeing how well it can handle a range of specialized tasks as well as the real-life impact of two children and a labrador living across three levels of mixed floors – to find out if it could be one of the best robot vacuums if you're on a budget.

One-minute review

The Roborock Q7 M5 cleans as well as you'd expect at this price point. Using it is a breeze – it has no issues navigating, and the smartphone app is intuitive and useful. But it occasionally misses debris when vacuuming, can smear stains when mopping, and requires a great deal of upkeep between cleans.

Instead, I'd recommend spending a little extra for the eufy 3-in-1 E20, the eufy X10 Pro Omni or the Shark PowerDetect 2-in-1 – all performed much better on test, and have more useful features such as actual self-cleaning or the ability to capture missed messes.

Roborock Q7 M5: Specifications

Roborock Q7 M5: Setup

Getting started with the Roborock Q7 M5 was straightforward, although not entirely without problems. In the box is the robot, its charging dock, a mop module with two mop cloth attachments, a moisture-proof mat, an adapter and the user manual.

The box is compact but each of these components comes wrapped in mixed plastics and polystyrene, with mixed recycling options. Plus it’s not immediately clear, out of the box, what each part is and the manual leaves a little to be desired. It’s full of diagrams and text, but it’s far from intuitive, with different components having random number and lettering labels. We’ve tested 82 of the best vacuums and robot vacuums, and this was one of the most confusing to get started with. For anyone new to robot vacuums, this could easily feel overwhelming.

Luckily, Roborock’s app fills this gap.

After plugging in the dock in a clear area with good Wi-Fi, as the manual suggests, I installed the app and paired the device by scanning the QR code found on top of the robot.

I then slid the dustbin and water tank unit into the robot, and attached the mop underneath using the Velcro strips. Once connected to Wi-Fi, the app (with the help of voice alerts on the robot) walks you through the setup and mapping process step-by-step. It took around 10 minutes to create a map of my downstairs, meaning the whole setup from start to finish only took around 15 minutes.

This map was detailed enough to identify rooms, hallways, and obstacles, and I was able to draw no-go zones directly within the app. There’s enough charge out of the box to create the first map of one floor, however if you want to run a first clean or map multiple floors, you will need to put it on charge, which takes around 30 minutes to get to 100%.

Overall, the setup was relatively painless but not as seamless as it could be. The app does most of the heavy lifting, while the manual and packaging let it down. For anyone comfortable with tech, it’s unlikely to be a problem, but if you’re less confident you may find the onboarding more daunting than necessary when adding to your smart home setup.

Roborock Q7 M5: Design and features

The Roborock Q7 M5 is a budget-friendly hybrid robot that offers vacuuming and mopping in a single device, via a detachable 0.50-quart dustbin that doubles up as a 0.37-quart water tank.

The robot measures 12.8 x 12.8 x 3.9 inches and weighs 7.28lbs, making it slim and light enough to move around, especially if the robot gets stuck somewhere, and means it will fit under most furniture. A raised LiDAR sensor – one of the most effective robot vacuum navigation types – sits on the top of the body, with bump guards and cliff sensors around the circumference.

The Q7 M5 doesn’t have a self-empty or self-clean dock, which isn’t a surprise at this price point but means you have to empty it yourself between uses.

Onboard controls are minimal, with just a power/clean button and a dock/stop button, It has a practical and functional aesthetic with a mix of matte and glossy surfaces. I tested the black model (it’s also sold in white) and its simplicity means it won’t look out of place in most homes.

The LiDAR system combined with the Roborock app gives the Q7 M5 a surprising level of control for the price. You can use it to identify rooms, spot and avoid obstacles, draw virtual boundaries, adjust suction and water flow levels depending on the floor types in different regions of the house and more.

You can even send it to clean specific zones, which is great for high-traffic areas or when spot cleaning in case something is spilled. Overall, the design is smart and practical and the features are well thought-out, but this robot doesn’t innovate much beyond the basics.

What is the Roborock Q7 M5 like to use?

Living with the Roborock Q7 M5 day-to-day was a mixed experience. On one hand, navigation is great. The LiDAR system means the robot doesn’t blunder around aimlessly. It cleans in logical, back-and-forth paths, avoids furniture well, and consistently found its way back to its dock. It also handled thresholds and uneven floors with ease, moving from hard flooring to carpet without needing help.

The app is a standout, packed with useful features you should look for in a robot. Setting schedules, sending the robot to specific rooms, and marking off zones you don’t want it to enter is quick and intuitive. As is adjusting suction and water flow levels. I loved that I could save different settings for different floors and in practice, this level of control made the Q7 M5 feel smarter than other robot vacuums I’ve used in the mid-range price bracket.

However, while mapping and controls are strong, the actual day-to-day use left me underwhelmed. Noise-wise, the robot registered between 72 and 76 dB, on average, during regular vacuuming before spiking to around 80 dB when clearing large debris like cereal from hard floors, which is what you'd expect in one of the best upright vacuums. It was loud enough to distract my family from watching TV when in the same room and meant we had to be selective about when we ran the device. There is a setting in the app that stops it running between certain times though, so this is a small complaint.

The robot avoided most obstacles well, particularly furniture but it was less effective for smaller items like toys. On more than one occasion I had to rescue it from entanglement and because of the sensor that protrudes from the top, there was one sofa in particular that the robot would always get stuck under. So much so, I resorted to blocking access to this sofa if we were out to avoid this happening. Not ideal.

Plus, with the accuracy of its LiDAR, I expected the Q7 M5 to be better at spotting hazards, or even recognizing areas where it had got repeatedly stuck previously.

Cleaning times varied by room size but the robot managed my 700 square foot ground floor in around 65 minutes on standard mode. Battery life was strong too and it never ran out of charge during my tests, with the claimed 180-minute runtime being true to form. However, for comparison, the eufy Omni Pro S1, which we rated five stars, completed a 500 square foot vacuum in 30 minutes.

The mop module uses a washable microfiber cloth and Roborock recommends dampening it before each use. This adds another step before every run and initially seemed like overkill, considering the robot has a built-in water tank. However, having tried mopping with and without completing this step, dampening it beforehand does improve its performance.

Even though the onboard controls are minimal, in practice, you’ll spend nearly all your time in the app. This isn’t a bad thing. The app is intuitive and well laid-out, and far more flexible than button controls could ever be. Voice assistant support via Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri Shortcuts adds another layer of control (and convenience), although in my experience the app was the most reliable way to use it.

Despite these largely positives, the real sticking point was effectiveness. After test runs, I often found myself following up with my best Dyson vacuum. Whether it was sugar on hard floors, cereal dust on tiles, or sticky mop residue, the Q7 M5 didn’t leave my floors in the state I wanted.

Add to this the fact that everything from dustbin emptying to mop cloth washing is manual and the Q7 M5 ended up adding to my chores, not reducing them. While such manual features keeps the cost lower, it undermines the hands-free appeal that makes robot vacuums so attractive in the first place.

In short, the Roborock Q7 M5 is great at finding its way around, but less great at delivering results. It’s a robot that looks clever in the app but doesn’t quite translate that into real-world performance.

Roborock Q7 M5: Vacuuming

To test the Q7 M5’s vacuuming performance, I used three standardized debris types – sugar for fine particles, lentils for medium debris, and Cheerios for large debris. Each was scattered in quarter-cup amounts across both hard floors and carpet.

When cleaning hard floors, sugar was its biggest challenge. Much of the sugar was left behind after a single pass, and even after multiple runs the robot failed to capture it all. Fine dust tends to get pushed around rather than lifted, and the edge performance was especially weak, leaving visible lines of debris at skirting boards and corners.

Lentils were handled better. The robot picked up most on hard floors with only a few stragglers remaining around edges.

By contrast, instead of lifting Cheerios cleanly, the Q7 M5 crushed them, scattering crumbs and dust that it then struggled to collect. The result was messier than when I started and I would have had better luck quickly cleaning the kitchen floor with a brush. I even found myself spotting crumbs and dust for a while, even after manual vacuuming.

Results were better on carpet, across the board. Sugar was still problematic but not as bad as on hard floors, and lentils were picked up well. Cereal was better than on hard surfaces too, mainly because the crumbs and dust couldn’t fly about as easily. Yet it still wasn’t perfect and with the exception of the lentil test, I had to manually finish the job in each case.

One positive was consistency. Once a room was mapped, the robot covered it well in neat lines, rarely missing areas. But coverage means little if the suction and brush design can’t actually pick up debris effectively.

Beyond the standardized tests, pet hair was dealt with well. It only wrapped around the roller on days when my dog was shedding a lot and even then I never had to cut it free. I could just remove it with my hand, meaning that at the very least, this could be a good choice in our hunt for the best vacuum for pet hair. More expensive models such as the Shark PowerDetect 2-in-1 struggled more here.

Ultimately, the Q7 M5 proved average at vacuuming. It can manage everyday crumbs and dust on carpet, but struggles with fine particles on hard floors and makes a mess of large debris. For a product positioned as a convenient choice, I noticed I was still vacuuming with my Dyson most days to achieve a good enough clean, which was disappointing.

Roborock Q7 M5: Mopping

To test the Roborock Q7 M5’s mopping capabilities, I created two stains: a quarter cup of ketchup and a quarter cup of mustard to clean my laminate floor, dried slightly to mimic real spills. I then sent the Q7 M5 over each in Mopping mode. Instead of lifting the stains, both were smeared around, leaving sticky streaks across the floor. The mustard, particularly, ended up leaving a yellow tinge to the floor that I had to scrub twice to remove.

In everyday mopping, performance was better but not significantly so. The robot left my floors looking and smelling clean, removing light dust but failing with any sort of mark or stain removal. The lack of any real friction or pressure from the mop cloth means the mopping function largely just drags a wet cloth across the floor, rather than scrubbing. The plus side was that the floors dried quickly, as they don’t get that wet.

Roborock claims the water flow can be adjusted in the app, and this does make a small difference, but even at higher settings, it didn’t remove stains as well as I’d have liked. The mop doesn’t dry itself either, so it must be removed and washed after each run, which adds another layer of maintenance.

Compared with competitors that have oscillating mop pads or self-cleaning docks – such as the iRobot Roomba Combo j9+ – the Q7 M5 feels rudimentary. For light surface dust, it just about suffices, but it’s certainly no substitute for manual mopping. In fact, after using it I often had to mop by hand anyway.

Roborock Q7 M5: Cleaning and maintenance

One of the big appeals of robot vacuums is that they cut the time you spend cleaning. Unfortunately, with the Q7 M5, I ended up spending more time not only cleaning my floors, but cleaning and maintaining the robot itself.

The dustbin fills quickly. By only holding 0.50 quarts and in a busy house full of people, dust, debris and pet hairs, we found ourselves emptying it every three or so cleans. Similarly, the 0.37-quart water tank is enough for a large kitchen but needs emptying after each use to avoid dirty water sitting in it for too long and leading to mold and mildew.

For all the convenience that comes with having a combined dust and water tank, you can’t just switch from one to the other in a single session because the dust and water mixes. This is highly unpleasant to clean and dispose of. In fact, I recommend cleaning and properly drying the water tank before vacuuming – and vice versa – if you don’t want to deal with what I can only describe as a sticky, dusty paste.

The mop cloth must be washed and air-dried after each time it mops the floors, too. The physical act of doing so isn’t difficult – you can just remove the cloth, rinse and put it in the washer – however, because of its poor performance, any wet spills (including the ketchup and mustard from my standardized tests) have a tendency to work their way into the roller underneath. This was not only unpleasant to manually clean, it also meant that I found marks on my carpet for a couple of days following the test because I’d failed to get rid of it all from the roller before setting it on its next vacuum cycle. This undermines the convenience factor significantly.

By comparison, higher-end models with self-cleaning docks can go days or even weeks without needing hands-on maintenance. With the Q7 M5, intervention is needed every time. If low-maintenance convenience is your priority, this robot will disappoint.

How does the Roborock Q7 M5 compare?

At $240-300, the Roborock Q7 M5 is the most affordable robot vacuum we've tested (that's still readily available online).

The Dreame D9 Max Gen 2, sold for around $150-300 depending on promotions, offers similar navigation and suction strengths, although mopping requires the same level of manual upkeep. We're still working on our review of this model but its price puts it at the same entry-level range.

Doubling in price is the eufy X10 Pro Omni, our favorite mid-range robot vacuum. It surprised us on test with good vacuuming and mopping abilities, and if you buy a $21.99 replacement roller from eufy, it never wraps with hair.

Should you buy the Roborock Q7 M5?

The Roborock Q7 M5 looks smarter on paper than it performs in real life. Its LiDAR mapping and app are genuinely impressive for the price, giving you room-by-room control, no-go zones, and customizable suction and water settings that rival expensive models. Navigation is reliable, and on carpet it manages crumbs and medium debris without much fuss.

However, where it falls down is its consistency. Fine dust on hard floors, larger debris like cereal, and anything beyond light surface dirt it struggles with. Mopping is basic and tends to smear rather than scrub, and because there’s no self-cleaning or self-emptying dock, you’ll be emptying the bin, washing the mop cloth, and cleaning the rollers by hand after almost every use. Noise levels are also higher than expected, which makes timing your cleans important if you don’t want to be disturbed.

At $240-300, it undercuts premium rivals by quite some margin, and if your goal is accurate mapping paired with a good app and complementary cleaning skills, it delivers. But for busy households, pet owners, or anyone looking for a truly hands-free clean, you may find it adds to your plate rather than clearing it.

How I tested the Roborock Q7 M5

I tested the Roborock Q7 M5 over two weeks in a family home with hard floors, carpets, two children, and a dog. I ran standardized vacuuming tests using sugar, lentils, and Cheerios on both hard floors and carpets, and standardized mopping tests using ketchup and mustard stains. Noise levels were measured with the DecibelX app.

I also used the robot in everyday cleaning, tracking how often I needed to vacuum or mop manually. Maintenance was monitored by recording how frequently I needed to empty, clean, or untangle the robot. This combination of controlled tests and real-world use allowed me to achieve good insight into its performance and practicality.

For more floorcare inspiration, read our tested guides to the best Dyson vacuums and the best vacuum-mop combos.