In-Home review: Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra robot vacuum

Is a pricier robot floor cleaner really worth it? The answer will often depend on your home type, cleaning needs and the features you’d use…. Would a roving security camera or pet monitor be a plus?
This is the new Roborock S8 Max V Ultra, which is an automatic robot vacuum and mop with self cleaning abilities. It’s Roborocks’ flagship floor bot meaning it has absolutely all the bells, whistles, and toys you could want or need.. and a price to match.

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There are five key features that might be worth paying for…there’s a built in camera with three purposes, higher suction power, a special mini-side mop for edge cleaning, and both the use of a special detergent dispenser, and dirt detection in the bot.

In this review, I’m going to try it out in my home, I’ll run it through some cleaning tests and I’ll show you the results. We’ll talk about that advanced technology that gives it the higher price tag, and then I’ll wrap it all up with my pros and cons and let you know if I can recommend this Roborock floor bot for you.

What’s in the Box?
Inside the large box, you get the robot vacuum itself with the VibraRise Mop Cloth, dual rollers, and spinning side dust brush preinstalled. The charging dock known as the ‘8-in1- Rock Dock’ comes packaged with its own components including a clean water tank, dirty water tank, cleaning solution cartridge, and disposable dust bag, as well as a floor ramp and cord.

Setting up the machine is quite easy. You'll just need to attach the ramp to the base station and situate it near a plug. Then settle the bot into the dock and let it get charged up. Once ready open the Roborock app and follow the steps to connect your bot to your home Wi-Fi. I was set up and ready in under 10 minutes.
With this bot, you’ll also want to take the extra step of filling the special cleaning fluid tank, which is behind the panel in the front of the dock, next to the dust bag.

Your robot will want to go on an initial reconnaissance run of your house and it will be able to do this in just a few minutes. It uses the information from that recon, to build a detailed map of your house. Once the map is populated, you can use it to schedule cleanings, or initiate room specific cleanups.

I want to talk about some of the advanced technology in this bot. In part because a lot of it's really cool, and in part I think it helps understand why this spot costs more than some others.

With a built-in camera, the Roborock S8 MaxV can essentially ‘see’ and avoid obstacles and hazards.s I definitely found in my testing it is excellent at avoiding getting tangled up, and navigating gently around things like table legs and baseboards.

The Roborock S8 MaxV doesn’t just use the camera for object recognition either.
The second use for the camera is as a security rover.

Using the Roborock app, you can remotely connect to the vacuum and get a real-time feed of the camera’s vision. The interface is pretty cool as you can see a mini map of the house as well as some on-screen buttons for manually controlling the vacuum. You can set what are called target points around the house and simply have the robot rove around from point to point so you can see what's going on. It also has a pet locator where it will look around the house for your furry pals, and even an audio button so you can talk to your pets too.
The camera feed is very good, and the interface to use it is incredibly easy.

[Zimtstangerl]

Lovely smart home gadget presented by a lovely lady. Thank you for the detailed insights Erin. 😀

[MA-nmju]

Gettong one of these, it will keep my home clean and also work as an alarmclock! Lets go!

[EuleMiyu]

Perfect time, I'm just looking at getting a new cleaningbot and pet came would be a great plus.

[creatorbydefault]

Whoa, this would be helpful for my new place and lifestyle. Cheers for the idea from your great review.

[positive]

WHEW! Price is up there with the Dyson. HUMM!!! Not sure about this one. Thank you for sharing.

Hi Erin, I am impressed by the amount of time and effort you put into these reviews; thank you! About this robot vac, it is certainly NOT my mother's Hoover! RogerC 10/3/24

[qwer]

Great video! Thank you.
Do you happen to know or can you guess when we will see the Roborocks s9 ultra ??

[AnastasiaBurchick]

Is there a stand out robot that can handle high pile rugs and doesn’t do mopping?

[renees]

Would this work on multiple levels of your home?

[glitch_]

The next logical step is to add AI assistant features and a speaker/mic array so you can ask the vacuum the weather after it proudly greets you with a clean floor after your workshift. 😂

[investmentanalyst]

I have this, works nowhere near as good as the video. not even close. Dry stain on the floor? lol it won't get none of that crap off