Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra Review

The Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra is arguably the most intelligent and convenient robot vacuum on the market, and a step ahead of almost all others.

Performance Comparison

The performance results of the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra are below, split into six metrics, each weighted based on their overall significance. The S7 did an exceptional job across almost all test metrics.

Navigation

The Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra did an incredible job in our first, most heavily weighted test metric. This set of tests accounted for 30% of each robot's overall score, based on its relative importance. After testing so many other models in our control room, the S7 MaxV was refreshing to watch.

Its navigation trials began with a quick mapping feature that took all of 30 seconds before it was ready to navigate around and clean a room. When it started working, its intelligent censoring, mapping ability, and programming became apparent. During use, the S7 MaxV Ultra made adjustments to the original quick mapping to improve accuracy and measurements. It also made minor adjustments to paths it navigated and, most impressively, would speed up on straightaways and open areas but return to slower, more conservative movements around objects.

The unfortunate house training accident is also no problem for the S7 MaxV Ultra. It was able to accurately detect both the small and large simulated fecal matter in our poo-avoidance test and easily avoids them without contact. The S7 also does a great job of recognizing shoes and other objects that can be difficult for robot vacuums to detect.

The S7 MaxV also returns to its docking station with ease. It takes the quickest route and is undeterred by tight places, narrow paths, or obstacles, all while never bumping into anything. It makes a slow approach to the docking station with little to no stuttering or need for abrupt adjustments.

Home Coverage

The Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra continued its incredible performance in our home coverage test, which is weighted to 20% of the overall score. It was exceptional across almost every test and evaluation for this metric, with some room for improvement on just a few minor things.

The S7 MaxV Ultra allows you to set up multiple rooms and even multiple stories, making it robust for large and unique spaces. It also respects barriers very well, which can be set via an app in the form of no-go-zones, walls, and furniture.

With regard to single room coverage, this robot is smart. It does a great job of identifying obstacles, making tight maneuvers where necessary, and speeding up and slowing down in the appropriate spaces. It also dynamically updates maps with obstacles. The S7 MaxV Ultra can detect the presence of new obstacles and even take a picture of the object for mapping and avoidance. During testing, it recognized one of our tester's feet, went the other way, then was able to remove the obstacle from mapping after our tester had moved out of the area. We were super impressed by this cutting-edge software.

Carpet Cleaning

The Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra is an excellent carpet cleaning robot and a leader in the field on our third test metric, carpet cleaning. When faced with rice spilled onto the carpet, the MaxV has no problem cleaning the mess. It completely cleaned rice from the short pile carpet but did leave behind a couple of grains on the high pile carpet.

After a near-perfect performance cleaning rice, we moved on to our oatmeal challenges. On short pile carpet, the S7 MaxV Ultra left a few whole oatmeal grains and finer bits behind, and a couple of grains also went for a ride before dropping off a couple of feet away. It did a better job on high pile carpet, leaving behind very little whole grains and a little dust.

The MaxV Ultra returned to great performance when challenged with cereal, picking up almost all cereal on low pile carpet.

On our final carpet cleaning challenge, flour, the Ultra did a near-perfect job, requiring the discerning eye of our testers to see where fine residue remained. Its performance lifting flour was significantly better than others. For the carpet cleaning metric, the MaxV Ultra led the pack with very few close competitors.

Hard Surface Cleaning

Hard surface cleaning proved to be more difficult for the S7 MaxV Ultra than carpet cleaning, but it still managed to produce above-average results. In our first challenge, our robot left rice behind. While it didn't pulverize the rice into rice dust or make a bigger mess, it simply struggled to pick up each and every grain — but did get most of them.

After a less than amazing rice challenge, the S7 MaxV Ultra surprised us with perfect performance on our oatmeal challenge, leaving behind no dust or debris whatsoever. It could not perform as well on our cereal challenge, where it struggled to get over the individual cereal pieces and clean the floor, but it attempted to speed up as if to try and run over or get on top of the cereal. Regardless of the interesting effort, it simply could not tackle cereal.

Lastly, the S7 did a great job cleaning flour and extracting finer flour dust from the small cracks in the hard flooring.

Pet Hair

One of the few disappointing performances we saw from the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra was in its ability, or more accurately its lack of thereof, to pick up pet hair.

For such an incredible and intelligent machine in every other aspect, it was quite surprising that the S7 MaxV Ultra earned one of the lowest performances our team awarded to products in the test group when it missed 95% of the hair used in the test. We aren't certain of the cause, but we think this model might be designed to drag pet hair around the carpet rather than suctioning it.

Convenience

The Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra sets the standard for robot vacuum convenience. Not only does the S7 MaxV Ultra offer an exhaustive list of convenience features, including in-app remote controls, virtual barriers, spot cleaning, adjustable suction power, accessory life tracking, a history report, scheduled repeat functions, and multilevel cleaning maps. And its docking station takes convenience to the next level.

The docking station for the S7 MaxV Ultra is not just for charging, but it also bags dust with a 3-liter capacity — one of the largest capacities we've seen. The bagging system means less continued maintenance emptying a robot's internal storage, and while this isn't revolutionary, its capacity is larger than most.

What is more revolutionary is that the S7 MaxV Ultra incorporates a mop that no other models we tested have, so its feature and performance do not factor into its overall scoring. Why bring up the mop? Well, the docking station has a reservoir too! This improves the convenience of the extra feature.

As competitors introduce similar features and we continually update our process, we'll be sure to incorporate a series of mopping challenges.

Should You Buy the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra?

If you have the money to spend and don't specifically require incredible pet hair pickup, then the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra is a great purchase. However, if pet hair performance is important to you, or you are simply looking for a more budget-friendly option, there are a few other models worth considering.

What Other Robot Vacuums Should You Consider?