Roborock Saros Z70 Review: This Robovac's Robotic Arm Is a Swing and a Miss
Coming out of CES 2025, there wasn't a single product that generated more buzz than Roborock's Saros Z70 robot vacuum and mop, aka the one with the robotic arm.
Anybody who's used a modern robovac knows you need to tidy up before the robot can go in and take care of the little bits. The Saros Z70 promised to change that. With a robotic arm that emerges from the top of the vacuum, it's supposed to move pieces of garbage into a box and sort your loose slippers over into a dedicated zone. Unfortunately, not only does it fail to do that nearly every time, but it takes a step backward in its cleaning abilities, too. Not great, especially when we're talking about the most expensive robovac on the market ($2,600), by a lot.
At its core, the Saros Z70 is very similar to the Saros 10 and Saros 10R, the latter of which is currently our highest-rated robot vacuum. It boasts a whopping 22,000 Pa of suction power, which puts it at the top of robovacs. It has dual spinning mop pads (one of which can extend away from its body to get right up against walls), which can automatically detach and reattach in the base, depending on whether they're needed. There's a sweeper arm that extends off the side of it to get into corners. The Saros Z70 can vault itself over thresholds up to 4 centimeters (1.58 inches) tall. The base has two large water tanks, a small tank for floor cleaning liquid, and a disposable bag where all the dust and debris get collected. The mop pads are washed with 80-degree Celsius water (176 degrees Fahrenheit) and dried with hot air. Like the 10R, the Z70 doesn't have a 360-degree LIDAR turret on top, but it does have LIDAR beaming out from the front, in addition to cameras and other sensors.
Roborock Saros Z70
Putting a robotic arm inside a robovac is great idea, but the Roborock Saros Z70 comes up short in execution. Maybe version 2.0 will work properly.
Pros Genuinely cool and innovative robot arm
Genuinely cool and innovative robot arm Excellent, maintenance-free dock lasts for weeks
Excellent, maintenance-free dock lasts for weeks Intuitive setup and customizable app
Cons Robot arm fails to sort items as promised
Robot arm fails to sort items as promised Cleans worse than last-gen Roborocks
Cleans worse than last-gen Roborocks Buggy
Buggy Most expensive robovac by about $1,000
But of course, the main point of differentiation between the Z70 and any other robovac we've seen is the arm, which Roborock calls the OmniGrip. When the robot encounters an object that it recognizes as something it can clear, it announces, 'Sorting item,' and then a plastic panel on top opens up, and an articulating arm with a pincer pops out. The arm is then supposed to grab the object and sort it. The Saros Z70 comes with a small cardboard box with QR codes printed on all sides of it. You set the location of that box inside of a companion app, and the robovac is supposed to carry small items (like balls of paper or socks) over to the box and drop them in. If the Saros Z70 detects a slipper, it's supposed to pick it up and bring it to a footwear zone that you designated in the app. Currently, it's limited to recognizing slippers, socks, and balls of paper, but Roborock says it will be adding to those capabilities in future updates.
You'll notice I said 'supposed to' a couple of times. That's intentional. Unfortunately, the Saros Z70's performance was absolutely abysmal when it came to doing its special tricks. It actually did a fairly good job recognizing and picking up balls of paper (though it often failed to see them on my patterned rug), and in the odd cases that it missed, it would make a second attempt and grab it. The problem is in the sorting. I ran more than 40 tests with paper balls and the occasional sock, and it only managed to put a ball of paper into the sorting box once. Once! I worked with Roborock on this, experimented with different box placements, placed the zone in the app differently, and remapped my entire apartment. It was going so badly that Roborock sent me a replacement unit just to make sure that there was nothing wrong with mine. Nope. Each time, the robot would pick up a ball of paper, take it somewhere near the box, and drop it on the floor, usually within 18 inches of the box. It would look right at the box, then turn at the last minute and drop it on the floor. It was maddening.
Performance with slippers was even worse. In most of my tests, even though I could see in the app that the Z70 correctly identified them as slippers/footwear, the robovac would just bump into them and nudge them around. A few times, the arm would emerge and it would pick up the slipper, but then it would look around for a second and put the slipper right back down where it was. I tried it with three types of slippers and a shoe on both hardwood floors and carpet, and it had a zero-percent success rate.
This is tremendously disappointing. It seems that Roborock is aware of these issues and has already issued a statement about fixes planned for June and July firmware updates, but I can only review this product as I'm testing it, and unfortunately, my reservations about the Z70 extend beyond the arm (no pun intended).
One of the key differences between the Z70 and previous Roborocks that we have loved is a new vacuum brush design. Units like the Saros 10R, Saros 10, and Qrevo Curv all feature a roller brush that's split in two in the middle, and the system did exceptionally well at picking up debris large and small, as well as remaining tangle-free even when dealing with long hair. The Saros Z70 has a brush that is just one single roller with a smaller diameter, I'm guessing to make more room for the arm that lives in the robot's body. Unfortunately, the new brush simply doesn't work as well. In my Snack Gauntlet Test (patent pending!), it was more prone to crushing Goldfish Crackers and Cheerios and leaving crumbs behind, whereas the previous units slurped them up with little difficulty. It did even worse with pistachio shells. While that's a tougher challenge, the units with the split brush design still managed to choke them down. With the Z70, they just got pinned between the brush and the floor, preventing the roller from spinning at all. It just dragged them around and made a horrible sound until I came and rescued it. I also found that the Z70's mops were more prone to dripping and streaking than previous Roborocks I tested.
The Saros Z70 also appears to have more difficulty with navigation than previous Roborocks we've tested. It often takes slow, inexplicable routes. One time, I used the voice command (which works with Google Home, Alexa, and Apple Home, but also has its own mic and works independently), 'Hello Rocky, clean the kitchen,' and it only cleaned the front two-thirds of my kitchen. When I used the app to have it try again, it also only cleaned the front part. This is after it had no issue cleaning my kitchen more than a dozen times over the last two weeks. I had to command it to clean a special zone at the back, and even then, it didn't get nearly as close to the corner or the edges of the wall as it's supposed to. The Z70 was also pretty hit and miss when it came to avoiding power cords.
This is personal preference, but I think the dock is a bit more of an eyesore than it was on the Qrevo Curv or Saros 10 (though it's effectively the same as the 10R). The water tanks at the top aren't covered, and it's just a bit more visually obtrusive. I've also noticed that the Z70 tends to bump into and grind along walls a bit more, which has created some white marks on its front bumpers where paint has rubbed off onto it—I don't love that. The Z70 is supposed to have 'Intelligent Dirt Detection,' which will cause it to go back and re-clean an area that it senses as particularly dirty, but I never saw this happen, and it often left messes in its wake, then returned to the base declaring itself finished.
There is a first-person view remote control mode, which you can use to manually pick items up and move them around, which is fun, but ultimately it feels like a novelty. It's so slow that it's not something you'd ever really use when you're home.
The real nail in the coffin here is the price. The Z70 was set to debut at $2,000 dollars, which would already make it the most expensive robovac on the planet. But between the initial announcement and the actual availability, Trump's tariffs hit, and boy did they hit hard. As a response, Roborock raised the price of the Saros Z70 to a staggering $2,600. That is a full thousand dollars more expensive than the Saros 10R, and it doesn't do basic cleaning as thoroughly based on my tests. I have a hunch that the engineering team spent so much time trying to get the OmniGrip working that it didn't have the resources dedicated to make sure it got the fundamentals right.
If it sounds like I'm disappointed, it's only because I'm really, really disappointed. Robovacs are suffering from sameness. They're all practically clones of each other these days, so I was excited to see something so different finally come through. The Saros Z70 was a huge swing, and I love it when companies do that, especially when it could represent a lot of added convenience for the consumer. Unfortunately, Roborock's first attempt is a swing and a miss. There's potential there if the bot really can improve via software updates, and I hope that it does (though I still have concerns about the new roller brush), but as it is right now, I can only say that the Saros Z70 massively underdelivers on its promises.
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