Robot vacuum giant Roborock has announced a new lineup of robot vacuums and floor cleaning devices at CES 2023. The new bots include what’s called the S8 series, which consists of three new or updated robot vacuums, plus a new Dyad Pro which is a cordless upright floor washer.
Roborock S8 Pro Ultra: Taking a Great Bot and Making it Better
Anyone who’s shopped for a robot vacuum in the last year has undoubtedly seen the Roborock S7 Max V Ultra. We reviewed it and found it to be a capable, if slightly unattractive floor cleaning system. Roborock appears to have listened to customer feedback and made some strong improvements to this model, now known as the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra with RockDock Ultra.
Among the two key improvements, we noticed: the visible plastic water tanks and dustbin on the RockDock (the charging base and self-cleaning station) have now been wrapped in a sort of shroud, making them a little less obvious, at least from the front. They are still clearly visible from overhead, but we appreciate the step in the aesthetic direction.
The other addition that consumers will likely be excited to learn about is that the docking station now adds warm air drying to the automatic cleaning of the mopping pad that the S7 was able to do. Drying the mopping pads helps keep mold and smells at bay.
Also improved is the vacuum suction power. While the S7 had 5,100 Pa of suction, the new S8 improves that suction power to 6,000, which is Roborock’s most powerful suction ever introduced in one of its botvacs.
The S8 keeps features like the Vibra-Rise mopping pad, which lifts the wet cloth off carpets and uses subtle scrubbing motion (‘sonic’ scrubbing, according to Roborock) to improve mopping performance.
New Roborock S8 and S8+
Like the S7, the robot by itself will be available without the Empty Wash Fill RockDock, and this option which comes with a simple recharging brick is known simply as the Roborock S8.
The next step up from that basic model is the Roborock S8+ which adds an automatic dustbin-emptying dock (without the self-cleaning or the mopping service).
Pricing
The S8 Series will be available for purchase on Amazon and Roborock Official Store in the United States beginning in April of 2023. They will retail starting at $749.99 (for the base model S8 (vacuum only). Pricing on the S8 Pro Ultra was not disclosed.
Roborock Announces Dyad Pro Upright Wet-Dry Vac: Substantial Improvements
After its launch just a year or so ago, Roborock has already upgraded the Roborock Dyad. Now known as the Dyad Pro, the new 2023 version now adds air drying to the roller cleaning brushes, improved edge cleaning (now able to get to within 1 millimeter of a wall or baseboard), and a cleaning solution dispenser. While older smart floor cleaners weren’t capable of handling cleaning solutions in their innards, most of the newer versions are finding ways to work around this, which makes sense since cleaning your floors with water only feels kind of incomplete.
Roborock Dyad Pro looks like an upright vacuum, and it’s cordless and handheld. With powered rollers, it can pull itself along, scrubbing up both wet and dry spills and filtering out dry debris that you would otherwise vacuum up first. Run it over the floor like you would an upright, then when you’ve finished, empty the dirty water tank, and the Dyad will run a cleaning cycle on itself to keep both the rollers and inner components from getting moldy or musty. The tank sizes on the Dyad Pro have also been increased slightly from 850ml/clean and 620/dirty to 900ml/clean and 770/dirty, which should give you a bit more cleaning time before emptying and refilling.
Battery life on the Dyad Pro is also enhanced, increasing from 35 minutes on a single charge, as found on the original Dyad now, to 43 minutes on the Pro model.
The original Dyad had pretty good cleaning capabilities, so we’ll be interested in getting hands-on with the Dyad Pro to see how much cleaning performance might be enhanced.
The Dyad Pro will be available for purchase on Amazon and Roborock Official Store in the United States beginning in January of 2023 for an MSRP of $449.99.