The Roborock Saros 10R Is Convenient to Use, but Struggles With Large Debris

Goodbye, LiDAR tower

Credit: Amanda Blum

The main gimmick of the Saros 10R, the lack of LiDAR, is evident on the robot itself. While the Saros 10 has a retractable tower to house its LiDAR sensors, the 10R has gotten rid of the tower altogether, resulting in a sleeker and slimmer robot. While many robots are making a slow transition away from LiDAR by augmenting it with onboard cameras and AI, Roborock's 10R pushes towards a LiDAR-less future, relying solely on cameras.

As someone who only five years ago had to watch my Roomba bump into everything to figure out where to go, LiDAR has been a game changer for me, allowing my robots to build detailed maps quickly. Still, I admit that the addition of AI-powered cameras has been a welcome addition. Instead of simply measuring distances based on light, as LiDAR does, every image captured by these camera is constantly analyzed. Your robot is watching both for objects to move around and surfaces that need different treatment, as well as boundaries like walls and furniture. Maps have become far more detailed, because of this, with recognizable surface detail. The 10R is no different in this respect. I can not explain how awestruck I was at how fast the 10R built a stunningly accurate map of my house. While it took five minutes to get every detail of each room (still shockingly fast), the majority of room mapping finished up in two minutes. Score one for AI.

A premium looking dock

Credit: Amanda Blum

There's a downside to living with a floor robot—they come with large docks. While you could try to hide your dock away somewhere, the closer it is to the area you'll be cleaning the most, the more effective it is. Robots aren't lightning fast on their best day, and if there's a juice spill, you don't want to wait twenty minutes for the robot to mosey over to clean it up. As a result, I think it's better to learn to live with your towering robovac docks. While Roborock has tried to layer appealing designs onto its docks in the past (such as with the Curv), the Saros line is truly beautiful. The mirrored surface of the tower face has no buttons, no latches, and is smooth and simple. The 10R is only available in black, but as with many 2025 robots, almost every part of the dock can come apart for easier cleaning. Also, an internal, removable tray for automatic mop pad washing sits in the base, and there's an onboard receptacle for cleaning fluid that is, blessedly, refillable (plenty of other vacs instead opt for proprietary and expensive one-time-use cartridges). These details might feel small, but they add up to contribute significantly to your long term happiness with your robot. Cleaning fluid being automatically added to each mop cycle will make them more effective, and being able to keep the base clean will mean your robot gets cleaner, too.

A full slate of premium robot features in the app

Roborock has done a great job over the years of giving the user lots of functionality in its app, without the app getting bogged down with options. You're never more than two screens away from home in the app. There's a robot settings screen where you can access most of the robot's options, and they're organized well. Schedules, maps, robot settings and dock settings, etc. While most robots will work well out of the dock with no fine tuning, it's nice to have easy access to finer controls (which, given how much you're paying, you should at least try to use).

Once you dig into the app, you'll find some genuinely useful features. Roborock has Pin and Go, which allows you to set a pin on your map, to which the robot will immediately go and clean. Remote control means you can manually navigate your robot out from any place where it might be stuck, like under the couch. You can tell the dock to empty the robot again, if you think it missed something the last time. You can check in on what kind of life is left in each of the replaceable parts. You can set an intensity for the mop and vacuum, or tell the robot how many times to sweep through an area. Yes, you can also create schedules as you would for any other smart device, but there's some more specific settings, too. One new tool allows you to designate a "pet feeding area", where the robot will sweep with more diligence. While this is funny to me because the area around my dog's dish is spotless (because dog), I designated the kitchen as my pet food area, and the robot spent extra time cleaning it.

AI and lower suction power deter a decent vacuum

using SmartPlan to clean the floor, the robot left a literal trail of debris behind. Credit: Amanda Blum

I recently wrote that suction power isn't the most important feature in a robot vacuum, and I stand by it. However, the functional design of the Saros 10 and 10R (the sweeper, the roller and internal pipe and chamber design) is exactly the same, except for the suction. The 10R has less Pa (20,000 vs the 10's 22,000 Pa), and I suspect it makes a difference. I tried the 10R using the "SmartPlan" feature, which simply uses AI to decide how much suction to use on the vacuum or how much water to apply for the mop. After many sweeps, I was disappointed. The vacuum was leaving behind so much debris it left a literal trail behind the robot as it moved. When I switched to manual control, it appeared the smart feature was using the lowest possible setting on the vacuum. When the robot swept back through on maximum power, most of the small and medium-sized debris got picked up just fine. The 10R doesn't love big debris, though—it missed multiple small pieces of mulch, a fortune cookie paper, and of course, pet toy floof, which is the bane of all robot vacuums. Here, the Saros 10 performed better.

The 10R worked its way into small spaces robots usually don't attempt. No other robot has gotten into the space between my planters like this. Credit: Amanda Blum

I did like the redesigned sweeper on the Saros line, which features two arms instead of three, and seems to be more effective at digging debris away from the edges of walls and under thresholds and other objects. I also liked that despite the size of the 10R, it wasn't afraid to get into small areas, which many robots avoid. If it could fit, the 10R gave it a go, and that meant the floor ultimately looked cleaner, without a band of debris around objects, particularly those that are close together. I attribute this to the improved navigation features, because the 10 did not have the same function. For instance, I have a grouping of planters on one end of one of my rooms, and most robots avoid the entire area. But the Saros 10R made a real go of slipping into a few of the bigger gaps.

Spinning mop pads are only okay

After mopping, there's still grime left behind, but the surface is mostly clean. Credit: Amanda Blum

Most robots these days, including the Saros 10R, come with two spinning pads for a mop. You'd think, rationally, that two spinning mops would be better than one singular mop pad. But the feature that made the Roborock S8 line superior was its vibrating, singular mop pad. I don't know why it works better than two mops—it must be the vibration and how much contact the pad makes with the floor. It wasn't until I tested the Saros 10, which also has a singular mop pad, last month that I remembered how much more I liked a singular pad, because they truly do a better job at scrubbing. Particularly if you have uneven surfaces, like tile with grout or a texture or wood floors with grain. The twin spinning pads just don't seem to dig in as much to get out grime.

Credit: Amanda Blum

Both Saros 10 models also have a chassis that lifts itself up in front, exerting pressure on the mop pads to help them dig deeper. But while I saw the feature at work on the 10, I never noticed the 10R using it. Even after multiple passes with the 10R, some basic grime still remained behind on each mopping cycle, despite the mop being on the highest cleaning settings. Muddy pawprints were mostly removed on the first run, but multiple passes were needed to make the floor feel truly clean. One thing the twin pads can do that a singular mop pad can't, though—stretch out from under the robot on a flexible arm. This meant that the mop heads were able to get closer to walls and objects. Again, it wasn't a total wash. The mops did an okay job, but there was nothing to write home about.