Roborock Saros 10 Review: Overshadowed by Its Fraternal Twin

At the beginning of this year Roborock made the curious choice to announce not one but two flagship robo-vacuum/mops at the same: The Saros 10 and the Saros 10R. The Saros 10 is meant to be the successor to the previous flagship, the S8 MaxV Ultra. Of the two new vaccums it’s supposed to be the deep-cleaning specialist, with class-leading suction power, while the 10R has boosted AI intelligence for better obstacle avoidance in complex home environments. After weeks of testing the Saros 10, I can report that the Saros 10 is an improvement over previous generations in several ways, but essentially everybody should get the 10R instead.

Let’s start with the basic. The Saros 10 looks like pretty much every other robot vacuum out there, complete with a little LIDAR turret on top. The cool thing about this particular turret is that it can retract into the robot’s body when it has to go under some low-clearance furniture like a couch or coffee table. Other than that, it has cameras up front in between its bump sensors. Underneath it has a split roller brush (designed to avoid hair tangles) as well as one big, vibrating mopping pad, as opposed to the dual spinning mops you find on many other robovacs (more on that momentarily).

Roborock Saros 10

The Saros 10 is good, but the Saros 10R is better.

See at Amazon

Pros

• Best in class 22,000Pa suction
• Can climb over some obstacles up to 1.5 inches
• The self-cleaning dock allows you to go weeks without intervention
• Slightly improved obstacle avoidance

Cons

• Mop doesn’t get nearly as close to the edge as it should
• Expensive
• Obstacle avoidance still has room for improvement
• Noisy

(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=92b7b46b-43ed-4e0e-b21b-2c999302d9d7&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "92b7b46b-43ed-4e0e-b21b-2c999302d9d7" }).render("54612ab9a0fa4d14bdc41e22140d69fb"); });

Unlike the rounded base station of the Roborock Qrevo Curv (which I’ve been using since I reviewed it last November), the Saros 10’s dock is sharp and angular. It looks a bit more futuristic, but it also sticks out a bit more. It’s also pretty large at 18.5 inches tall, 16.1 inches wide, by 17.3 inches deep. The base features two large, cubic water tanks (one for clean, one for dirty), a compartment for the disposable vacuum bags, and a separate tank for cleaning solution (which is a nice upgrade from the Qrevo Curv, which required you to add a bit of cleaning liquid to the fresh water each time you refill). The bot and dock are available either in black or white.

The banner feature with Saros 10 is a whopping 22,000Pa of suction power from the vacuum, which exceeds any other robot vacuum that I know of (the Saros 10R comes close with 19,000PA and the Qrevo Curv has 18,500Pa). It did indeed pick up my infamous Snack Gauntlet on both hard flooring and carpet better than the other vacuums I’ve tested, and it even managed larger debris like pistachio shells better. It did well with small bits, too, like flecks of dried oregano and cracker crumbs. I wouldn’t say it’s night and day better than the Curv, but it’s definitely an improvement in the vacuum department. It did struggle to pick up things when they were very close to stationary objects (like a table or chair leg), though.

See at Amazon

Setup was pretty straight-forward. You basically just scan the QR code on the bottom of your robot within the Roborock app, and it pairs. It then completed mapping of my whole one-bedroom apartment in roughly 10 minutes. The map did require some editing, though. The mirrors on my closet doors made it think there was another room that didn’t exist. If you have low furniture you want it to clean under, you have to let it know to retract its LIDAR turret when it gets there. Strangely, it wasn’t great at identifying whether it was on hard flooring or a rug, which you think would be easy for it. The app could also give you more options for labeling furniture, but overall, I had everything read to go within 15 minutes or so.

© Brent Rose/Gizmodo © Brent Rose/Gizmodo © Brent Rose/Gizmodo © Brent Rose/Gizmodo © Brent Rose/Gizmodo © Brent Rose/Gizmodo

The Saros 10’s object recognition seems to be a marginal improvement over the Qrevo Curv. It maneuvered around shoes and slippers no problem. It also avoided slurping up a sock off the carpet, like the Curv did. Cables are these things’ Achilles’ heel, but the Saros 10 was smart enough to avoid power cables that I left on hardwood. It still sucked them up when they were on my patterned carpet, but I’m guessing due to lack of contrast. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to test it against the Saros 10R, which allegedly has even better obstacle avoidance (though Jorge still had some issues with power cords in our review). The Saros 10 also does a good job of lifting itself over thresholds and thick carpet lips up to heights of 1.57 inches (4 centimeters).

So, why do I say nobody should buy this vacuum over the 10R? It’s the mop. This is the fourth generation of Roborock’s “VibraRise” mopping system, which is a solid-state mop that vibrates rapidly like a SonicCare toothbrush and supposedly can exert more downward force. It also has a feature where if you select vacuum then mop, it will detach the mop and leave it in the dock, so it doesn’t accidentally dampen your carpet. And the mop actually mops about as well as the spinning versions found on the Qrevo Curv and Saros 10R, at least in the places it can get to, and there’s the rub.

© Brent Rose/Gizmodo

The Saros 10R and Qrevo Curv both have one mop head that can extend out from under the robot’s body to get all the way up to a wall or even slightly under an overhanging oven or fridge door. The Saros 10’s vibrating mop cannot extend outward, so it can only clean what’s directly under the robot. I put out a bunch of dried spices close to a wall and a corner in my kitchen and set it to vacuum only to see how close it could get. Shockingly, the Saros 10’s mopping trail stopped a full four inches shy of the wall, and a whopping 8 inches away from the corner. That’s bad. Like, fatal-flaw bad, as far as I’m concerned. By comparison, the older Qrevo Curv’s mop actually made contact with the baseboards and came within a very respectable 1.5-inches from the corner.

I’ll also say that the Saros 10 is louder than the Qrevo Curv, both while vacuuming, but even more noticeably when it’s self-cleaning back at the dock. When it empties its dustbin into the bag it’s pretty jarring, and even the cleaning of the mops is pretty loud (though I do like that it washes them with 176-degree F water to sterilize them and then uses warm air to dry them).

See at Amazon

Obviously, the lack of true edge-to-edge mopping was very disappointing, and it was a test I repeated just to make sure I hadn’t missed something. Because a robot vacuum is only as good as the places it can reach I have to strongly advise you to get a bot like the Saros 10R instead, especially since it’s the same price, has effectively all of the same features, and has better AI smarts. The Saros 10 is excellent on carpets (and vacuuming hardwood), but if you have to go back around your house with a manually mop the corners and edges it missed then it’s just not worth it.

{"@context":"https://schema.org/","@type":"Product","name":"Roborock Saros 10","review":{"@type":"Review","reviewRating":{"@type":"Rating","ratingValue":3.5,"worstRating":0,"bestRating":5},"author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Alex Cranz"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Gizmodo"},"datePublished":"2025-04-05T09:00:03-04:00"}}