I tested the futuristic Roborock Saros Z70 robot vacuum that moves objects out of the way with its mechanical arm – it cut my manual vacuuming by 70%

Having spent more than a decade testing home tech, I’ve seen my fair share of 'groundbreaking' features, but few have failed to pique my interest quite as much as the Roborock Saros Z70 and its mechanical arm.

As the first consumer robot model capable of tidying, vacuuming and mopping, the Saros Z70 promises to solve one of my biggest gripes with all of the other best robot vacuums I’ve tested – having to clear the floor of clutter.

The robot automatically spots and picks up items like socks, tissues, and lightweight shoes and either throws them away, or stores them in the correct place.

Of course, such innovation does come at a price so, I’ve spent the past four weeks living with the Saros Z70 to see if it lives up to the hype, and its unique offering is worth paying a significant premium for.

Roborock Saros Z70: Specifications

Roborock Saros Z70: Setup

Unboxing the Roborock Saros Z70 feels more like unpacking a major kitchen appliance than a home tech gadget. The box is huge and heavy – at 47lbs, I struggled to lift it myself – and inside is the robot itself, its multifunctional dock, mop pads, a starter set of disposable dust bags, power cables, and a cardboard container with QR codes for the arm to practice with.

It's one of the more difficult builds I've done for a smart home setup.

It’s not difficult to get everything out, but it is time-consuming, not to mention messy. Every roller, sensor, and mop pad is wrapped in sealed plastic with foam spacers, and it took me at least 10 minutes just to strip everything down and sort the packaging before I even had the chance to plug it in.

The dock makes up the majority of this bulk, taking up about as much space as a side table. It needs to sit against a wall with access to power, and enough room for both its built-in ramp and for the robot to maneuver in and out of.

It’s also worth setting it up somewhere easily accessible, too, because it washes mop pads with hot water and uses detergent, so you’ll be topping up its tanks occasionally.

Once everything is unwrapped, the setup largely lives in the Roborock app. Like other smart home tech, you’ll need to create an account, connect the robot to your Wi-Fi network and – in my case – download a firmware update before you can get started.

Roborock’s app is one of the best in the business. It’s intuitive, well laid-out, and full of customization options. It walked me through the Saros Z70 setup smoothly, with the robot being connected on the first attempt. Which is rarely the case, sadly.

Out of the box, the robot had around 80% charge and that’s more than enough to run the first mapping mission. Unlike Roborock’s older models, the Z70 uses its trademarked StarSight Autonomous System.

It took just under 30 minutes to fully map my 700 square foot ground floor – and the payoff is a highly accurate map with nooks and crannies, walls, furniture, thresholds, and individual rooms all identified and labelled.

This new system also means the Saros Z70 does away with the protruding sensors seen on other models, which can so often get stuck under low furniture. You can then divide spaces on the app into rooms, set no-go zones, and even assign cleaning preferences per room. It's a sophisticated map that should ensure your robot vacuum stops getting stuck.

If you want to, then use the OmniGrip arm, you need to activate it via the app, as well as define where objects should be relocated – such as tissues into a bin, socks into a laundry basket or shoes on a rack. Roborock includes a cardboard box with QR codes to act as a target, although you can set your own zones instead. It’s clever, but it feels slightly finicky.

Overall, the setup is straightforward but not quick. From unboxing to the first mapped clean took me almost an hour. That’s much longer than the average 15 minutes and means you have to set some time aside to get it all sorted.

However, once it’s done, you won’t need to revisit setup often – except perhaps to tweak object zones for the arm – so it’s short-term pain for longer-term gain.

Roborock Saros Z70: Design and features

On first impression, the Roborock Saros Z70 is sleek and modern. There’s no tall LiDAR tower; instead, it’s a matte-finish disc in black or silver with sensors, camera,s and bump guards fitted around its circumference. I tested the silver mode,l and it looks slightly dated compared to photos I’ve seen of the full black model, but this is a minor complaint.

Thanks to the lack of LiDAR tower, the Z70 measures just 3.14 inches tall, making it one of the slimmest high-end robot vacuums available. It slides under sofas, sideboards, and beds easily, and its 13.8 x 13.9-inch size means it’s compact enough to maneuver around table legs and corners without bumping or scraping, but robust enough to not feel flimsy or like it could get damaged.

At 10.18lbs, it’s also relatively lightweight, which makes it easy to pick up and carry between floors if you don’t want to rely solely on multi-floor mapping.

On top of the disc is a plastic flap that protects the OmniGrip arm, which sits inside a small hatch. The five-axis arm folds into place neatly when not in use. The flap then opens automatically, and the arm, complete with cameras, LED lights, and weight sensors capable of lifting objects up to 0.66lbs, extends on its own. Or you can manually control it via the app. Just above this hatch is an emergency stop button, which sits below a dual power and dock button.

We were excited to test this model after Roborock announced a robot that could pick up objects, and it was great to see this futuristic tech in action.

Flip the Roborock Saros Z70 over and you'll find dual spinning mop pads, a FreeFlow main brush, the roller and a single rotating wheel. The base of the robot is fitted with a so-called AdaptiLift chassis that helps it climb taller thresholds (up to 4cm) and lifts its mop out of reach of carpets, making it easy and mess-free to transition between floor and cleaning types. This is something that often trips up other robots, excuse the pun.

Beyond design, the suction spec is one of the Saros Z70’s standout features – offering up to 22,000 Pa. Far higher than the 8,000 Pa eufy Omni S1 Pro, which retails for a similar price.

Elsewhere, you can control the Saros Z70 straight out of the box with built-in full voice control. You don’t have to connect it to use voice assistants, including Alexa and Google Assistant if you don’t want to, just say 'Hello Rocky' followed by one of the pre-programmed commands, and the robot is ready to do your bidding.

That said, it is compatible with smart home assistants if you prefer to control it that way. I should note that not all of the pre-programmed 'Hello Rocky' commands are obvious, so it’s worth keeping the voice command card that comes in the box handy while you get used to them.

Alongside app and voice control, the Z70 also doubles as a mobile camera to improve your home security. Through the Roborock app you can watch it drive remotely around your home with its Remote Viewing feature.

If you need or want to, you can also take over the robot itself and even remotely control the mechanical arm, with the built-in Remote Control feature. You can even make video calls through its front-facing camera. In practice, this is a bit of a novelty, but for pet owners or frequent travelers, the ability to see and not just clean your floors could be genuinely handy.

Onto the dock and the Saros Z70 offers everything you need to clear and clean your floors in one place – hot water mop washing, warm-air mop drying, automatic emptying, and detergent dispensing. While simpler models still require manual mop removal or water tank refills, the Z70’s dock is almost entirely hands-off.

What is the Roborock Saros Z70 like to use?

Using the Saros Z70 day-to-day is a mix of wow moments with occasional exasperation. Its navigation and mapping is among the best I’ve seen, with the robot easily navigating wires, chair legs, and toys, rarely needing rescue. The maps it created of my home were accurate, and I could quickly send the robot to specific rooms or ask it to skip others entirely at the press of a button. Noise levels were surprisingly good, too.

In quiet mode, the motor never exceeded 51 dB, but even in standard mode, the Z70 averaged only 58 dB. This means you can still watch TV while it cleans and there were times I forgot it was running, and it just appeared over a threshold (making me jump).

Its noise levels on maximum suction, and when emptying the dock dustbag, are slightly more intrusive – at 65 dB and 68 dB on average respectively – but both were still much quieter than the best handheld vacuums. The robot’s voice prompts can be a bit chatty, but thankfully, you can tone them down via the app.

Then there’s the mechanical arm. It’s great in theory, entertaining to watch and feels super futuristic – with a slow and smooth stretching motion that makes you feel like you’re in a sci-fi movie – but in daily life, its limitations quickly became clear. It reliably picks up socks and paper, but only about half the time.

If it picks up anything larger, like my seven-year-old’s T-shirt, it tends to panic and move round in circles saying it’s “trapped.” This is because larger items block its sensors and cameras and it can’t “see.” In my youngest child’s room, a quick vacuum run became an almost staged performance, adding to cleaning time significantly.

This feature, while clever, feels more novelty than necessity right now. Plus, it’s painfully slow. I could go around an entire floor of my house and pick up everything off the floor in the same time it took for the robot to take a single item to the storage basket. What’s more, no matter which types of shoes I placed in its path – Crocs, soft slippers, flip-flops – it could never quite manage to pick them up. In fact, it rarely identified them as shoes and just thought they were obstacles to avoid.

In terms of the Remote Viewing and Remote Control features, both are useful if you want to check in on it while you’re away or if you get a warning notification that the robot is stuck somewhere when you’re out of the house. I used the Remote Control via the Remote Viewing screen a few times, largely to move the robot from wherever it was stuck, and for picking up awkwardly shaped clutter when the arm was struggling to grab it. Both are fun but are nice-to-haves rather than must-haves.

Interestingly, the most truly impactful features that are more than worth the extra money are those found in the dock. It handles almost everything and my favorite feature is the mop washing and drying. It’s genuinely a gamechanger. The only times you really need to intervene is when replacing the dock dustbag, or topping up and emptying the water tanks. That said, the dock dustbag hasn’t needed emptying in the whole time I’ve had this robot, which is four weeks and counting. You can even get away with only managing the water tanks around once a week, but if you want to avoid mold and mildew I recommend keeping on top of it more regularly.

Generally speaking, the Saros Z70 is at its best when it’s left to run scheduled routines in fairly open spaces. Its navigation and dock features, coupled with its advanced sensors, make the robot accurate and reliable with minimal human effort and there’s a strong chance that anything you don’t like or want to change can be managed in the brilliant app. Just don’t expect miracles.

Roborock Saros Z70: Vacuuming

To put the Saros Z70’s vacuuming through its paces, I ran six tests, three on carpet and three on hard floors – sugar for fine debris, lentils for medium debris, and cereal for large debris. Each test involved scattering a quarter cup of each food stuff across the floor, including edges and corners and recording two runs.

When cleaning hard floors, the Z70 did well with sugar, collecting almost everything in a single pass. It did leave a faint trail in one corner, though a second pass caught it. With lentils, it impressed even more, pulling nearly everything in on the first attempt with very little scatter.

Cereal was the weakest of the three. The side brush sometimes flicked Cheerios across the room, and the suction pulled a few pieces halfway through before spitting them back out. A repeat pass usually fixed this, but it wasn’t spotless and often involved me having to finish the job with my best Dyson vacuum.

Carpet was a similar story. The Z70 picked up most of the fine debris, but I could still see granules left behind in the fibers. Lentils fared better, although it took two slow passes for a clean sweep. The cereal run was, again, the most frustrating, with large pieces occasionally getting dragged or half-chewed before being spat back out. Even weeks after the test, I’m still finding Cheerios stuck in parts of the vacuum or dock. This is where that headline-grabbing 22,000Pa suction didn’t quite live up to what I was expecting.

Pet hair was another weak spot. While the robot can grab surface fur easily, it struggles with embedded hair in rugs and thicker carpet unless you set it for a Deep Clean. This is easy to do and it works really well but I feel like, at this robot’s price, I shouldn’t have to.

After two weeks, I found myself still reaching for my upright vacuum to properly lift pet hair. Hair tangling is also an issue. Roborock’s “Zero-Tangling” brush didn’t quite live up to its name and twice in three weeks I had to stop, flip the robot over, and clear strands. This is far from a disaster, but it’s also far from the hassle-free experience I expect when looking for the best vacuum for pet hair.

Day-to-day vacuuming is much better, though. The Z70 genuinely slashed my manual vacuuming by about 70%. I could leave the robot to run and come back to visibly cleaner floors, especially in the kitchen and hallway. On average, I was still hauling out my main vacuum once or twice a week to finish what the Z70 couldn’t or to just deep clean carpets, but I usually run the vacuum twice a day minimum so this was a huge help.

Roborock Saros Z70: Mopping

To test the Roborock Saros Z70’s mopping skills, I poured a quarter cup of ketchup, and a quarter cup of mustard to clean my laminate floor. These thicker, sticky stains are a good way to see whether a robot mop can scrub or if it simply drags mess around.

With ketchup, the Z70’s dual spinning mop pads removed around 80% of the stain on the first pass, but a faint red smear remained. The robot returned for a second pass, and after about three minutes the area looked clean. That said, on closer look under bright light there was still a faint red residue that I had to manually mop to fully get rid of.

The mustard was more of a challenge. The pads picked up some of the stain immediately, but the yellow streaks were spread out in a thin film across the surrounding area. After two passes, most of the obvious mess was gone, but I had a similar problem with residue as I had with the ketchup test. Also, while the floor didn’t feel sticky afterwards, there was a noticeable odor until I manually wiped the area with fresh water and, even now, the vacuum still has an aroma of mustard. Despite me attempting to wash it all from the wheels, mop cloths and underside.

Outside of these tests, everyday mopping was impressive. The Z70 automatically drops its mop pads for hard floors, applies consistent downward pressure, and can lift them out of the way when it senses carpet. In my kitchen, it handled dried coffee splashes and dusty footprints in one pass. In my hallway, it left a uniform shine with no visible streaking. I absolutely recommend it for day-to-day cleaning and stain removal.

One of its biggest advantages is how dry it leaves the floor. After a full mop cycle, I could comfortably walk across the floor in socks within about five minutes. There was no sticky film, and thanks to the dock’s use of hot water and detergent, the air carried a faintly “fresh” scent – closer to just-washed laundry than the musty smell some robots leave behind.

Overall, the Z70’s mopping performance is better than most hybrids I’ve tested. It won’t replace a deep manual mop for heavy, sticky spills, but for day-to-day maintenance, it’s thorough, quick-drying, and reliable. I spent noticeably less time reaching for a traditional mop and I loved the fact the dock handled most of the mop and water maintenance.

Roborock Saros Z70: Cleaning and maintenance

One of the Saros Z70’s biggest selling points is how much of the routine it takes off your hands. The multifunction dock empties the dustbin, washes the mop pads with hot water, dries them with warm air, and even dispenses detergent. It's super easy to avoid common robot vacuum faults as it maintains itself well.

It works great and it made me realize how much time I spent before manually filling and emptying buckets and maintaining mops. Of course, it doesn’t remove you from the equation entirely, but it’s enough to be noticeable.

Even though the built-in dustbin is tiny at 0.19 quarts, the dock’s 2.8-quart bag solves that, lasting roughly six to seven weeks in a medium household. And if the integrated dustbin becomes too full mid-clean, the robot will go back to the dock, empty the bin into the dustbag and then resume its session.

After each mopping cycle, the cloth pads are flushed with hot water and they come out fresh and odor-free, even with daily use. Drying takes a few hours but is fully automatic, a big step up from earlier docks where damp pads quickly turned musty.

You’ll still need to roll up your sleeves occasionally. Long hair wraps around the roller brush, despite Roborock’s “Zero-Tangling” design. Over three weeks, I had to cut strands away twice, not bad, but not tangle-free. The side brush can also snag threads. The filter is washable and needs rinsing every couple of weeks, depending on dust levels.

Both the app and manual have clear guides for removing rollers, pads, and filters, and everything clicks in and out without tools.

Overall, the dock gets rid of most day-to-day chores by dramatically reducing both the physical and mental load, which means when you do need to intervene, it doesn’t feel that bad.

How does the Roborock Saros Z70 compare?

At $1,600-$2,600 (depending on promotions), the Roborock Saros Z70 sits firmly in the premium tier of robot vacuums.

The eufy Omni S1 Pro undercuts the Z70 at $1,499 and impressed us with its balance of vacuuming and mopping. It handled pet hair better and never once wrapped with fur in testing. Its mop pads also self-clean, though without the hot-water wash and drying cycle on the Z70 dock. Its 8,000Pa figure sounds modest compared to the huge numbers promised by the Saros Z70 but in real-world tests it picked up debris on carpet reliably. If you want consistent deep cleaning at a lower price, the S1 Pro may be the smarter buy.

Elsewhere, the Roborock Saros 10R is effectively the Z70 without the mechanical arm, coming in at around $1,300-$1600. It has an almost identical dock, mop system, and StarSight sensors, but its larger internal bin makes it less dependent on dock emptying. What it lacks is the novelty arm but if you don’t see this as essential – and for most people it won’t be – the 10R offers a similar experience for almost $1,000 less.

That leaves the Z70 in a strange position. It’s more futuristic and has a host of features that just about warrant charging the extra money for, but in terms of raw cleaning performance, especially on carpets and with pet hair, it falls short of cheaper models. You’re paying a premium for innovation and the “wow” factor, not necessarily better results.

Should you buy the Roborock Saros Z70?

The Roborock Saros Z70 is, without doubt, one of the most innovative robot vacuums I’ve tested. Its StarSight navigation is superb, its dock takes care of nearly all the messy upkeep, and its slim, tower-free design makes it easy to slot into most homes. On hard floors, its vacuuming and mopping performance is good, although not excellent, and the mop drying feature is a standout that keeps things fresher than other rivals I’ve used. If you’re tech-savvy and want to experience the future of home robotics, the Z70 delivers plenty of “wow” moments.

Yet innovation doesn’t always equal performance. The OmniGrip arm is more novelty than necessity right now and carpet performance and pet hair pickup are weaker than some cheaper competitors, which, when you’re spending more than $2,000, is a bit galling. For spacious, open-plan homes with mostly hard flooring or with fewer inhabitants, the Z70 makes sense and could genuinely reduce your day-to-day workload. For busier, cluttered households, or if you need deep carpet cleaning, you may find better value elsewhere.

How I tested the Roborock Saros Z70

I tested the Roborock Saros Z70 over a four-week period in my family home with a mix of hard floors and carpet, two children, and a dog. To measure vacuuming performance, I ran a series of tests, including scattering sugar for fine debris, lentils for medium debris, and Cheerios for larger debris across both hard floors and carpets.

For mopping, I made ketchup and mustard stains on my kitchen floor to see how well it could mop away larger, wet and stickier stains. Noise levels were then recorded using the DecibelX app throughout these tests.

Alongside these controlled trials, I used the Z70 for everyday cleaning, tracking how often I still needed to reach for a manual vacuum or mop, and making a note of how clean the floors looked after runs. I also kept track of how often I had to empty the bin, cut hair from rollers or manually maintain the robot and dock.

Next, browse our tested picks of the best Dyson vacuums and the best Shark vacuums.