Roborock S8 Pro Ultra review

Roborock’s S8 Pro Ultra is the best robot vacuum I’ve used. With 6,000Pa suction power, it performs better than its competitors, it’s packed with advanced features like multi-floor mapping, fast charging, top-of-the-range object avoidance and navigation, and it’s easy to set up and use.

But what sets this robot vacuum apart is how autonomous it is. With its rising brush and mop system, the S8 Pro Ultra can switch between mopping and vacuuming without needing physical input. If you want the robot to mop the floor, you don’t need to physically attach the mop pads as with other robot vacuum cleaners. It’s a game-changer.

Combine that with the dock that can self-clean, dry, refill, wash and empty the vacuum and mop, and you never have to think about the S8 Pro Ultra. Just set it up and let it do its thing.

The S8 Pro Ultra is one of the best robot vacuums you can buy. But be warned, a robot vacuum this good has a hefty price tag.

Price

The S8 Pro Ultra is a premium robot vacuum cleaner, making it a costly purchase at $3,000. 

With that said, it’s reasonably priced. If you’re looking for one of the best robot vacuum cleaners on the market, you need to expect to spend this sort of money. 

Other flagship robot vacuums like Ecovac’s DEEBOT X1 OMNI and the iRobot Roomba S9+ both cost $3,000 as well.

Performance

The S8 Pro Ultra is a performance powerhouse. It boasts 6,000Pa of suction power and is significantly more powerful than its main competitors. The Ecovac’s DEEBOT X1 OMNI boasts 5,000Pa of suction power, and the iRobot Roomba S9+ is nowhere near as powerful, with a max suction power of 2,500Pa. 

The S8 Pro Ultra is very good at picking up dust, debris and dirt, and I also noticed it was very good at picking up pet hairs. This is due to Roborock’s DuoRoller riser brush. These dual rotating rollers ensure the vacuum can pick up almost anything, whether on hardwood floors or thick carpet. 

With this system, debris and dirt get sucked up into the middle of the two rollers, then spat out into the dustbin. It’s effective and works very well. The dual rollers also help to minimise tangles with long hairs or cables. In my time with the product, it never got tangled or stuck.

Roborocks’s VibraRise 2.0 mopping system is included here as well. This not only mops the floor; it scrubs it at 3,000 times per minute and can achieve 6N of mopping pressure. That correlates to around 600g of force. While it doesn’t compete with good old-fashioned muscle power, it’s enough to clean a hardwood floor adequately. I was happy with the results but don’t expect it to be able to get rid of stains or hard-to-remove spills.

The best part about the S8 Pro Ultra is that both the DuoRoller riser brush and the VibraRise 2.0 mopping system can rise up into the robot. This means you can simultaneously have the robot mop hardwood floors and vacuum carpets without having to switch between modes manually. It’s brilliant, especially if you have a house with hardwood floors and carpet. 

With other robot vacuum cleaners like the Ecovacs DEEBOT X1 OMNI, if you want to mop the floor, you have to take the brush out and manually attach the mop. That is not the case here. The S8 Pro Ultra seamlessly switches between mopping and vacuuming, adding to the robot’s autonomy. You can leave it to do its thing without ever thinking about it. 

It’s also very accurate at differentiating a hardwood floor and a carpet. Not once did the robot unintentionally mop my carpet.

This riser system also means you can adjust how you want the S8 Pro Ultra to clean. Inside the app, you can set it to vacuum or mopping mode. You can set it to vacuum and mop simultaneously, or you can vacuum and then mop for a deeper clean. It works well, and it’s miles ahead of the competition.

The S8 Pro Ultra utilises Roborock’s PreciSense LiDAR system to navigate areas and uses Reactive 3D technology to avoid obstacles. It’s the most accurate robot vacuum cleaner I’ve used. It never bumps into anything and can recognise specific objects like wires, cables, shoes and obstructions with amazing accuracy. I never had it swallow up loose-lying cables, and I never had to pick it up and move because it got stuck. It also does a great job of getting close to walls and edges, ensuring it picks up everything in the room.

Dock

The S8 Pro Ultra comes with a relatively large dock measuring 42.4 (L) x 51.4 (W) x 44.9 (H)cm. I found it easy to place. However, you may need to pre-plan where you will put it.

The reason for its size is because the robot vacuum can self-empty, self-wash, self-refill, self-clean and self-dry itself. On the top of the dock, there are three compartments, one for dirty water, one for clean water and one for dust. It works very well. All you have to do is ensure the clean water is filled, the dirty water is emptied, and the robot will take care of everything else.

When it parks in the dock, it cleans the mops, dries it, empties the dirty water, refills itself and gets rid of the dust it picked up after vacuuming. Not only does it work seamlessly, but it’s also very cool.

Also, removing the dirty and clean water bins from the dock is easy. You don’t have to have a water source nearby. Just pull the handle, and the compartments pop out. Fill it up or empty it and then slot it back in. It’s that easy.

App

Using and setting up the S8 Pro Ultra is a doddle. All you need to do is download the Roborock app and add your robot. You can do this with a QR code. However, the app is good at identifying the robot on its own as well. 

It will run through a first-time setup in which the robot vacuum will navigate its way around the area and generate a 2D map of the room or rooms. From here, you can set times when you want the vacuum to clean, adjust how vigorous you want the mopping to be, how powerful you want the suction to be, the order in which you want the vacuum to clean and more. Be advised that higher suction levels make the vacuum significantly louder, but you do get a more vigorous clean.

The app is where you can monitor the robot vacuum as well. It will tell you if you need to add more clean water if the dirty water needs to be emptied and any other notifications you may need to see. It’s straightforward, and I found it much easier to use when compared to the Ecovac’s app.

Features

The S8 Pro Ultra also comes with several advanced features. The dock allows for 30% faster charging than its predecessor. This means the vacuum can charge quicker, allowing for more cleans per day. You can also set the vacuum to fast clean, limiting the suction power and mopping intensity and giving the area a quick do-over. Ideal if you have guests coming and need to freshen up the place a bit.

Unfortunately, the S8 Pro Ultra can’t go upstairs, which can pose a problem for some households. But you can set up multiple maps on separate floors to remedy this. I didn’t use this much as it requires moving the robot to other floors. But with that said, it works very well. You don’t have to move the dock. Just grab the robot, put it into a room and leave it to do its thing. 

There are also 3D mapping capabilities where you can add objects like beds, closets and couches to your 2D map. I didn’t have much use for this. It was more hassle than necessary, and I was more than happy with the 2D view.

Verdict

The Roborock S8 Pro Ultra is an impressive and feature-rich robot vacuum cleaner that justifies its premium price tag of $3,000. Its outstanding performance, versatility, and advanced features make it a top contender in the robot vacuum market.

With powerful 6,000Pa suction power, very good navigation abilities thanks to PreciSense LiDAR and Reactive 3D technology and a dock that allows for self-cleaning, drying, refilling, washing and emptying, the S8 Pro Ultra gets everything right.

The main attraction here is how autonomous the robot is. With its rising brush and mopping system, it’s a step ahead of the competition. The robot can seamlessly switch between mopping hardwood floors and vacuuming carpets without any physical input. This feature is a game changer, and after experiencing it, it’s a must-have, and competitors are lacking by comparison.

This expensive robot vacuum cleaner is at its very best when used in a location with hardwood and carpet floors. If your house or office doesn’t have this, you can probably get away with a more affordable robot vacuum cleaner like the Ecovacs Deebot X1 PLUS or the Ecovacs DEEBOT T9+. 

But if you are in a location with both hardwood and carpet floors, this is the best robot vacuum on the market. Once you’ve set it up, you’ll never have to think about it, it’s brilliant.