I recently reviewed the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra , which remains the best floor robot I’ve tested over the past year. I was excited about Roborock’s announcements at CES 2024 that they would literally be releasing a fleet of new robots this year. This week, I’m reviewing two of those robots: the Q Revo Max V and the S8 MaxV Ultra, both of which mop, vacuum, and fill and empty themselves. I’m happy to say that while the S8 Pro Ultra is still an incredibly well-built robot, there are improvements in both new robots that make these new releases worthwhile, without losing any of the features that made me love the S8. The Roborock Q Revo Max V ($1,199.99, available in April) is an upgrade over previous models, with extendable brushes that can hug a wall or corner, improved suction, and a new AI voice assistant that makes the experience more fun.

The unit itself is comprised of two parts: the base, which houses the vacuum bag, clean water tank, dirty water tank, and the entire cleaning mechanism for the robot, and then the robot itself. The overall footprint of the tower is slightly smaller than some of the robots I’ve tested recently, like the Ecovacs Deebot and Eufy X10, and was available in glossy white (it’s unclear if it will come in black). The actual bot looks similar to its predecessors: Roborocks are round, with a protruding round “button” on top. One of the reasons I like this brand so much is that the lids of their bots are magnetic, so they can easily be popped on and off for cleaning or accessing the bot’s internals (which you really only need to do for setup and possibly later maintenance).

One major difference between the S8 and Q Revo lines is the mop itself. The S8 line has a single mopping path, while the Q Revo has spinning disk mops, in this case two on the back of the robot. On the front are the rollers for vacuuming. The Q Revo has one roller and the S8 has two, but I didn’t find that the number of rollers correlates with vacuuming efficiency. The Q Revo was at least a little easier to unclog if something got stuck; access to the rollers involves simply turning the robot over and then squeezing two clips to release the cover. I found the process to be simple compared to other robots like Roombas, where it was often difficult to put the pieces back together. Roborock does a great job of making the ends different enough that you always understand how to put everything back together. The familiar spinning brush is also present to sweep dirt into the robot’s path, and it certainly seems larger than other bots, which should help it push more dirt closer to the wall. The water tanks each hold just over 4 liters of water. In the two weeks that I used the Q Revo on its highest setting at least once a day, I didn’t have to refill the water tank, which was an improvement over the S8 Pro Ultra and all the other bots I’ve tested recently.

I found the Q Revo easy to unbox and set up; something worth noting, given that I routinely set up and take down these robots, is that Roborock plans their packaging carefully and this tower required little more than attaching the docking ramp to the base, and it was ready to go. Setup was painless and took about ten minutes. There’s a Wi-Fi indicator light under the lid; you load up the Roborock app, press two buttons on the robot itself to put the Wi-Fi into open mode, and the app finds it within a few seconds. At that point, the app pushes out some updates and Wi-Fi connections are mostly hands-off. I didn’t experience a single connection dropout during my testing period, with the Roborock staying online the entire time. Notably, it came back online quickly after two power outages, which you’ll know because it announces itself via the voice assistant known as Rocky. (More on that later.) Like other LiDAR-based robots that use lasers for guidance and mapping, the Q Revo mapped your entire space within seconds of leaving the dock, which never ceases to amaze me. The map of your space is generated in the app, where you can manipulate it. On your first outing, you can choose whether you want the robot to clean or just map, and I always recommend sticking with the mapping so the robot is less likely to get stuck while it explores your space. Even though the LiDAR is instantaneous, the robot will still be roaming the space, almost confirming what the lasers saw.