roborock Q5 Max+ Robot Vacuum with Self-Empty Dock, Upgraded from Q5+, 5500 Pa Suction, DuoRoller Brush, Hands-Free Cleaning for up to 7 Weeks, PreciSense LiDAR Navigation, App & Voice Control

I have used several vacuum robots, from plain jane to fancy smancy! This one is a mid grade that gets the job done, easy to operate and maintain. The mapping is a breeze, the floors look amazing and I can get other chores done while it cleans. This one has the option to set no-go zones and avoids obstacles on and off the map.

I am so pleased with this vacuum! I’ve owned a few robotic vacuums and mops from another well known brand, and this Roborock absolutely blows them out of the water.The mapping technology is pretty smart. It cleans in neat rows without missing spots, and navigates well around furniture, obstacles, and zones I’ve designated as off limits. The house mapping function allows me to choose which rooms I want cleaned and when. Other robotic vacuums I’ve owned were constantly getting stuck and needing my help. This one never needs my help or supervision. The only times it’s gotten stuck, it was my fault for leaving something tangly on the floor.After ten months of almost daily use, it’s still in excellent shape and functioning great. I have a long-haired cat, and I myself also have long hair, so that’s really saying something!The app was confusing to use at first, and the user experience for dealing with the house layout within the app could use some improvements. It does sometimes also get “confused” when I switch between different floors of my house. All of that said, the vacuum’s performance is so good and the experience is so much better than other brands that I still feel it deserves closer to a five-star rating than to a four-star.The value for the price of this product cannot be understated. Comparable vacuums that perform this well cost 4x the price of this one.Overall, I’m extremely happy with this purchase. When I’m ready to purchase another robotic item from my home, I will definitely choose this brand again.

We have this robot's dock in our kitchen, and off of the kitchen, 12 feet or so to the left of the dock, there is a step down into the family room. Even though the dock has been in the same location since we first unboxed this robot, and the robot knows it has not moved from the dock since it last "went home," the robot does an "establishing location" every time it leaves the dock for a new mission. More than half the time when it does this, it makes a beeline directly towards that family room step, and careens off of it. We've set up "no-go" zones, and an invisible wall, and everything else we can to make it avoid this hazard. As soon as it leaves the dock, it announces "establishing location", and proceeds to launch itself directly over the step. My wife has commented that we don't know why it's lost its will to live, as it certainly seems to attempt to self destruct regularly. I've had to rescue it from the bottom of the step so many times, emptying the dust bin on the cheap robot honestly feels like less work. When it does stop at the top of the step, and realizes it where it is, it announces "invisible wall or no-go zone detected. Please move robot." We'll take the robot back to the dock, restart it, and...there it goes again right off the step.Our other complaint is how buggy the phone app is. Often times we'll have to completely close out of the app and reopen it multiple times to get the control screen of the robot to load, and things like selecting 1 or 2 passes, or the vacuum level, requires you to swipe to a different screen and back to be able to adjust the settings. Modifying the map to add no-go zones, pops a box somewhere far off the screen, requiring you to zoom way out, find it, and carefully drag it to the location you'd like it. If you happen to accidentally tap outside of the box, the box locks, you're no longer able to edit it, so you must delete it and start over again. It's like playing the old Operation board game. The Tuya Smart app that the cheap robot uses always worked flawlessly. You also can't disable its tendency to try to "jump" obstacles. We have a stationary bouncer for our child, with a flanged outer ring on its base. The robot will run up on this ramp and get stuck. It will then back up and Dukes of Hazard itself over the ring into the inner space. Once there, it can't get out, due to the vertical inner edge of the ring, so it cries for help after moving around under the bouncer for 20 minutes, trying to find an exit. I've established no-go zones for this, but we tend to move the bouncer to different areas in the house, depending on what we're doing, so we're left with sections of floor that don't get swept, and a stuck robot.A firmware update to make the robot trust that the dock location, which is saved in the generated map, is valid until proven otherwise when leaving the dock would alleviate 99% of our frustration. The robot knows if it's been picked up or moved. Why it has to establish its location every single time a new "mission" is initiated, when it returns and leaves from a fixed point on the saved map every time makes zero sense. When my wife's frustration leads her to donate this to the local thrift store, we'll be looking at a different manufacturer than roborock.

For context, my house is a battlefield between white tiles and two animals who shed like crazy. It doesn't help that it often rains and gets muddy where we live, and I love cooking and baking, which creates all sorts of messes in the kitchen. This is an environment for a professional cleaning crew coming in every other day (or every other hour) rather than a $400 vacuum-mop combo. Perhaps I should not have expected this robot to leave my house sparkling clean. This model may be better suited for less demanding homes, but it still performs an acceptable job with everyday cleaning.Pros: very, very quiet compared to our old Roomba. Self-emptying dust bin function during vacuuming (very helpful with all the pet hair). No issues connecting to wifi (Roomba decided to be feral and never connected). Once my geriatric millennial mind figured out the app, dividing rooms, and different cycles, it was easy to use. It does a decent job when it comes to everyday cleaning.Cons: battery life -- at full charge, the robot will mop in the deep clean mode about 100m2 (1076 square feet). It also needs to be fully charged to vacuum the same surface in balance mode. This means I cannot vacuum and mop in one go. It's okay for mopping casual messes, but I still need to use Swiffer for any tougher stains. No alert that the water tank is empty.