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TheRoborock S8 Pro Ultrapromises so much, like automatic washing and drying for its mop, 6,000Pa of suction power, and smart navigation. Unfortunately, this vacuum fell short of its advertised expectations and reminded me of one of those major AAA games that releases before it’s fully finished.
With a $1,600 price tag, I thought the S8 Pro Ultra was going to be one of the best robot vacuums I’ve ever tested. When it works properly, it’s great. It pulls up a ton of cat fur, dust, and dirt, and mops my hard flooring disgustingly well. However, there were quite a few issues with the obstacle avoidance, mapping system, and other firmware-related features that got in the way of me loving this robot vacuum.
But enough dancing around my experience with the S8 Pro Ultra—let’s get into the full review.
Design and Unboxing: Remarkably Simple
I quite like the white design of the S8 Pro Ultra, though you can buy it in black, too, if that’s more your style. To me, the white design has a clean and modern feel, and you can easily see when it needs to be wiped clean of dirt and dust with a microfiber cloth.
Like most of the other robot vacuums I’ve tested, there wasn’t much setup. Everything’s neatly packaged inside a large square box, with layers of thick styrofoam separating important pieces.
The only physical setup I had to do was clip on the base piece at the front of the dock station and fill the clean water tank before my first mopping. The spinning side brush and mop cloth are both pre-installed on the vacuum, and the first dust bag is set up in the dock for you.
The App: Schedules, Remote Control, and Mapping
When you open the Roborock app (available forAndroidandiPhone) for the first time, you’ll need to pair it with your vacuum. This process takes only a few minutes, requiring your Wi-Fi password and any necessary firmware updates to be downloaded and installed. After the vacuum is set up, it’s time to do a quick map.
My first quick mapping session took 7 minutes for about 700 square feet, but it mapped my front room, kitchen, living room, entryway, and hallway as one giant room. If there’s a door separating rooms, the vacuum can easily tell it’s a different room, but if there’s just a doorframe or different flooring, it can’t discern that it’s a different room.
Luckily, you may edit the map in the app, but it’s kind of finicky. You can merge, divide, and name rooms. When dividing rooms, you have to be very specific about where you put the line to divide a room, or you’ll get an error message that just reads “Failed” without any further explanation. I had to stretch the dividing line across the entire giant room rather than being able to divide between two walls within the room. This resulted in a bunch of tinier areas that I had to merge after I was done dividing.
I tried to create another quick map but wasn’t able to do so until I changed the setting from Single Story home to Multi Story home. I got the same wacky result of one large area for five separate locations. When I tried to switch back to Single Story home, the app asked me which map I wanted to keep. So you can only have one saved map to backup, restore, and use to clean while in the Single Story home setting.
Every time you open the app, you’ll need to select a blue Enter button to access your specific vacuum’s settings. This is helpful if you have multiple Roborock vacuums in your home. Once you’re in the section specifically for your S8 Pro Ultra, you’ll see an overview of your last clean, with cleaning time, square footage cleaned, and your home’s map showing which rooms were cleaned. Then, at the bottom of the screen, you’ll see all the ways you may customize your cleaning sessions.
you may perform a full clean of your entire home, select rooms, or map out a square zone within a room if there’s a specific mess you need cleaned up. You can swap between mop-only, vacuum-only, and vacuum & mop modes, as well as customize modes for individual rooms. Any customized room cleaning settings will automatically be applied during every clean. OnRoborock’s website, it says you can “select WashVac routine in the Roborock app” to vacuum first and mop later, but I didn’t see this option in my app.
Related:Roborock S7 MaxV Plus Review: Expensive, But So Worth It
When selecting a cleaning mode, you may also set the suction power, scrub intensity, and route. Suction power can adjust between Quiet, Balanced, Turbo, Max, and Max+ when in vacuum-only mode. For scrub intensity, you can choose between mild, moderate, and intense.
In vacuum & mop or vacuum-only mode, you can use a Standard route or a Fast route, which learns the environment and adjusts its route for more efficient cleaning (but skips room boundaries and may miss certain spots). In mop-only mode, you can select a Deep route—for high-intensity mopping that moves in a Z-shape path and covers each area of the floor twice—or Deep+ route, in which the robot moves more slowly and makes less noise.
Within the deeper settings menu for the S8 Pro Ultra, you can manage maps and schedules, adjust settings for carpets, obstacle avoidance, and the dock, customize your robot’s voice, view your cleaning history, download and install firmware updates, and see a maintenance estimate for replacing certain parts on your vacuum. There’s also a remote control feature in here so you can move the vacuum around using arrows or a joystick.
By default, Reactive Obstacle Avoidance is turned on, which uses structured light and a 3D imaging algorithm to detect and avoid obstacles. Less Collision Mode is also turned on, which foresees walls and furniture in advance to reduce frontal collisions. Because I have two cats, I also turned on the Pet Details option, which is supposed to make the vacuum move in a way that improves obstacle recognition. Despite all these seemingly amazing features, I didn’t have the most optimal experience with obstacle avoidance—but more on this later.
Within the carpet settings, Carpet Boost is turned on by default, so the vacuum detects carpet and turns suction power to Max automatically, regardless of what suction power setting you choose when starting a clean. You can turn on Deep Carpet Cleaning, which goes back over carpets again after completing a room clean. Then, you can customize how you want the vacuum to avoid carpets, if at all, while mopping.
In the dock settings, you may adjust how frequently the mop pad is washed during a clean, from 10 to 50 minutes. There are also three different mop washing modes: Light (reduced cleaning time and water consumption), Balanced (balanced cleaning speed and performance), and Deep (higher water consumption and longer cleaning time). Auto-Drying is automatically turned on, but you can toggle it off or change the duration of drying to two, three, or four hours.
Then, you can toggle auto-empty on and off, and choose between four empty modes: Light (some residual dirt could stay in the dustbin), Balanced (balances emptying speed and performance), Max (suitable for large homes or more dirty environments), and Smart (the vacuum decides for you).
Within the robot settings menu, Do Not Disturb mode is turned on by default, with a start time of 10:00 PM and an end time of 7:00 AM. I changed the end time to 9:00 AM, but I think the default was 7:00 AM originally. When the vacuum is in Do Not Disturb, it won’t top-up water, auto-empty its dustbin, or call out voice alerts at full volume.
All in all, there’s a lot you can customize in the app for Roborock’s S8 Pro Ultra. But how well do these settings translate to real-time cleaning and overall performance?
Performance: Intermittently Effective
All of the Roborock vacuums I’ve tested have always mapped things and cleaned by using the bumpers. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s always a bit painful to hear the vacuum audibly slam into a door or a wall just because I know how expensive it is. The S8 Pro Ultra didn’t seem to bump into as many walls and doors as previous Roborock vacuums have, but it seemed to perform worse when it came to obstacle avoidance and getting stuck in odd places.
There are times the S8 Pro Ultra performs beautifully when avoiding obstacles. In a carpeted room, I placed two pairs of shoes, a small catnip toy, and two of my cat’s stuffed animals, one smaller and one larger. The vacuum went around both pairs of shoes and the larger stuffed animal and barely touched them. It mowed over the small catnip toy and pushed the smaller stuffed animal while trying to go around it, to the point that it seemed confused because the thing it was trying to avoid kept moving.
When it came to avoiding shoes that weren’t placed in the middle of the room, the vacuum consistently tried to push them out of the way. If anything budges slightly when bumped, the S8 Pro Ultra seems to think it should try to push it to clean underneath it. There were also instances where the vacuum had previously mapped the smaller stuffed animal during its clean, but when it would return to the dock, it would just push it out of the way.
Pushing stuff out of the way while cleaning isn’t as bad as getting tangled in cords or getting trapped—both of which happened during my testing. I had a thick cord for an upright vacuum laid out in a loose pile, and the S8 Pro Ultra didn’t avoid it and got stuck while trying to go over it. The vacuum also tried to suck up the rope cord on a bag, and I had to untangle it.
There’s this one narrow spot in my front room between a chair and the wall, and for some reason, the S8 Pro Ultra consistently gets stuck in here. I recently testedEcovacs' Deebot T20 Omni, and it never had an issue in this spot. Because of the way the S8 Pro Ultra uses its bumpers and tries to push things out of the way while cleaning, it pushes itself too far and wedges itself between the baseboard and the chair. When the Deebot T20 Omni approached this same spot, it barely touched the baseboard or the chair, realized there wasn’t enough space to proceed forward, and backed out.
Related:Ecovacs Deebot T20 Omni Review: An Effective Self-Cleaning Robot Vacuum and Mop
The S8 Pro Ultra kept coming back to this spot and getting stuck. One time, it was there for about 10 minutes before I got a notification saying it was stuck. When I tried to pull it out a little bit so it could have an easier time rotating, it wedged itself again immediately. I had to pull it out about three times before it finally decided to move on.
I put a pack of water bottles here to prevent it from getting stuck again, but the vacuum still spends more time than I’d expect here trying to push past the water bottles. At least it doesn’t get stuck with a barrier here! you may also set no-go zones in the app, so this is another option, but if there are multiple spots, the vacuum could get stuck in your room, it’s a bit annoying to set up multiple no-go zones.
At the beginning of my time with the S8 Pro Ultra, it would go the long way around to start vacuuming my front room. There’s no door between the front room and the kitchen, which is where the vacuum started. For some reason, it went through the kitchen, living room, and entryway to get to the front room, rather than just hopping over the threshold right next to the dock. A firmware update seems to have fixed this odd choice because the vacuum doesn’t do this anymore, but for a good four to five cleans, this is the path it would take to start cleaning in the front room.
Though it does bump into walls, doors, and other objects, the precision of its lines while gliding along a wall is pretty great. Using the Max and Max+ suction power settings for my carpet did a fantastic job at cleaning, and the Moderate intensity mop setting made my hard flooring look shiny and feel clean. Roborock recommends its proprietary cleaning solution for better cleaning, and says you shouldn’t use any other cleaner for risk of gunking things up. A full bottle costs $18.99, and I wish Roborock included a small sample bottle so you could see if you like it before buying.
The Deebot T20 Omni from Ecovacs I mentioned earlier did a better job of obstacle avoidance and not getting trapped, but the S8 Pro Ultra came out on top with a few things. Roborock’s vacuum handled a rug with fringe ends swimmingly, whereas the Ecovacs' vacuum got tangled and dragged it across the floor. The S8 Pro Ultra also does a better job of reestablishing its position when away from the dock and not getting higher-pile carpet wet when cleaning in vacuum & mop mode.
Cleaning 743 square feet in 88 minutes in vacuum & mop mode with Max suction power and Balanced scrubbing intensity drained the battery from 100% to 19%. The S8 Pro Ultra, and other Roborock vacuums, return to the dock as soon as the battery dips below 20%, even if there are only a few square feet left in a full clean. When I resumed the clean after the vacuum had charged, it took two minutes to finish the clean. I wish there was a way to send the vacuum back after it hits 10% or 15% if you have a smaller home that only needs a little bit extra battery life to finish a full clean.
Then, the Do Not Disturb feature is handy, but there are a few instances where it could backfire. If you start a clean late at night and the vacuum returns to the dock to charge after 10:00 PM, it won’t auto-empty when the Do Not Disturb period is up in the morning unless you send it off on a clean and return it to the dock. If it returns to the dock to charge because the battery dropped below 20%, it won’t auto-resume cleaning in the morning—at least not with the current firmware update.
When it’s not getting stuck or confused, the S8 Pro Ultra performs well. It does a great job at picking up cat fur, hair, dust, and dirt, and the dirty water returned to the tank tells me that it mops effectively. If obstacle avoidance and other firmware issues improve, this would be a stellar robot vacuum.
Maintenance: Mostly Hands-Free
After the first clean, the side brush was so full of hair, and it was pretty easy to clean. The brush doesn’t pop out because it’s held in place with a screw, so I just used the scissors on a pocket knife to cut it away.
There was also hair tangled at the ends of each roller brush, and cleaning these was an even easier process because you don’t need a knife or scissors to cut away the hair. You take out the tray piece and remove both brushes. Then, each brush has end pieces that pop out and let you slide the tangled hair off in a clean circle.
I checked the dustbin inside the vacuum after the first clean, and although it was pretty full, it still had room when I compressed the dust clump with my finger. However, during another clean, I don’t think the dustbin was fully emptied because there were dust clumps stuck in the roller brushes. These ended up coming out on the carpet behind the vacuum as it headed back to its docking station.
When it was about 75% of the way back to the dock, it stopped and announced that the roller brushes were jammed—after it had left a trail of dust, litter, and dirt behind it. When I pulled out the roller brushes, there was a huge clump of dust and fur that hadn’t made its way into the dustbin to be emptied. I looked in the dustbin just to be sure, and the dustbin was almost empty. I’m not entirely sure what went wrong here, but this was a one-time occurrence during my testing.
Emptying the dustbin into the dock’s dust bag is a really loud process. Obviously, I’d expect some noise because it’s a vacuum, but this auto-empty process into the dock is louder than other robot vacuums I’ve tried in the past. I wish there was a feature to auto-empty as the dustbin becomes full throughout cleaning, and not just at the end, because what’s the point of continuing to clean if there’s no room to effectively suck things up?
Related:Don’t Let Your Robot Vacuum See You Naked
The RockDock Ultra advertises “a totally hands-free cleaning experience,” and it’s only partially true. The dock will wash and dry your mop pad, pulling clean water from the tank when it needs it and returning dirty water to another tank. You’ll need to regularly top off the clean water and empty the dirty water tank after every mopping session. The S8 Pro Ultra estimates that a full water tank can mop a max range of 3230 square feet on the default mode, so if you choose a stronger mopping mode, you’ll have to fill the tank more often.
The vacuum is supposed to auto-empty itself into the dock at the end of a clean. When it works, this is a hands-free process until you need to swap out the dust bag inside the dock. When it doesn’t work, you may have to go pick up dust clumps the vacuum left behind or send it out for another clean. Roborock says a dust bag can hold up to 7 weeks of dust and dirt, but doesn’t outline what cleaning conditions this number takes into account.
Roborock has routine maintenance recommendations for everything on the S8 Pro Ultra, with estimated times to clean and replace. Here are a few of the parts that require the most maintenance:
Then, there are a lot of parts you’re instructed to “clean as required,” so it’s unclear how much hands-on maintenance you could be doing on a regular basis. Some of these clean-as-required parts include the omnidirectional wheel, dustbin, robot sensors, charging contact areas, dirty water tank, water filter, and air duct.
Should You Buy the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra?
I really wanted to love theRoborock S8 Pro Ultravacuum, but it’s not the worth-every-penny-of-$1,600 that I hoped it would be. Having tested the S7 MaxV Plus, I had high hopes that this vacuum would be even better at object avoidance, mapping, and not getting trapped, but it’s not. Granted, the S8 Pro Ultra has a slightly different naming convention, so maybe it’s not supposed to be the next in the Max series, but for $1,600, I expected some improvements over a cheaper model.
There are a ton of perks to this vacuum, but it seems like each one could be met with a downside. It’s fantastic at pulling up pet fur with its dual roller brush system, but it only auto-empties at the end of a clean and won’t tell you when the dust bin is full. It does a superb mopping job and manages to keep even high-pile carpet dry with its mop-lift system, but if you leave it unattended while it’s cleaning, it may get trapped.
Luckily, the hardware aspects of the S8 Pro Ultra work really well. It’ll wash and dry its own mop pad, scrub your floors until they shine, and put every bit of its powerful 6,000 Pa suction to work. This vacuum just needs some firmware updates to improve the new obstacle avoidance system, make maps easier to edit, enable in-app customization for auto-empty and low-battery features, and make the learning AI smarter so it doesn’t consistently make the same mistakes.
