Roborock Saros Z70 Review: A Robot Vacuum with a Mechanical Arm?

The Roborock Saros Z70 is the first robot vacuum on the market with a mechanical arm that extends from the top to move objects out of the way. It’s also Roborock’s new flagship robot vacuum mop combo with all the latest bells and whistles. We bought one and have been evaluating it in various ways over several weeks, and in our Roborock Saros Z70 review, we’ll go over the pros, cons, and its large assortment of features.

We’ll also reveal whether the Z70 Saros made it to the Vacuum Wars Top 20 robot vacuums—and if we think the new robotic arm feature is a fad or must-have!

UPDATE JUNE 2025: Congratulations to the Roborock Saros Z70 for winning our Most Innovative Robot Vacuum Award for Mid-2025!

The Saros Z70: Evaluation and Performance

Omni-Grip Mechanical Arm

Let’s jump right into the new OmniGrip mechanical arm. This is a five-axis arm that automatically extends when the robot detects certain types of objects it has been trained to recognize using the front-mounted camera, depending on your app settings. 

The way it works is you first define two different areas on the map using the app. One is where you want to put general objects it finds, and the other is where to put the slippers it finds. The area for general objects can be used with or without Roborock’s included container. 

Once set up, it will pick up and relocate the objects while vacuuming and then continue vacuuming.

Object Detection and Picking Performance

Currently, the only types of items the robot vacuum can identify and grab with its mechanical arm fall into three categories: clumps, fabrics, and shoes. According to Roborock, future plans will focus on optimizing those existing items and expanding the types of shoes that it can handle. 

And we evaluated this in various ways. We did several runs with multiple types of slippers and shoes, as well as paper balls and fabrics. 

Using the app’s controls and camera, we conducted evaluations in manual mode, where you can pick up anything under 300 g (a little over half a pound). For us, it was hit or miss: sometimes, it would pick up the objects, and sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes, it would put the object in the right place, and sometimes it wouldn’t.

With slippers, it’s essential to note that the system is currently programmed to recognize only certain types of slippers, specifically what you might call slides. As noted earlier, they plan to support other types of shoes in the future. However, in our evaluations, the robot vacuum was not very successful with them. 

Unfamiliar Objects

We also tried it with objects outside its library, and it simply didn’t recognize them. It’s therefore limited to the items it was specifically trained on by Roborock. At least for now, which is pretty limited. 

So Roborock’s claim that you can “forget pre-cleaning” because the robot will pick up stuff for you isn’t going to hold true in many cases. Even if you only had socks, clumps of paper, and slides in your house, it would still only work about half the time.

So we found that this aspect of the Roborock Saros Z70 robot vacuum is great for early adopters and people interested in trying new things. But likely, it will be of limited practical use for most people.

Custom Object Training

Roborock is doing another really cool thing with the Saros Z70: they’ve announced you can train the obstacle avoidance system on custom objects!

We’re very excited about this and think it’s the future of obstacle avoidance. However, note that it’s only for the obstacle avoidance system. There are no plans to allow the robot to recognize custom objects for pickup with its omni-grip mechanical arm.

Mopping Ability

We found that the Roborock Saros Z70 has great mopping capability. It uses two spinning mop pads that can lift 22 mm to avoid wetting carpets.

It can leave those pads behind at the base when vacuuming carpets to further ensure they stay dry.

The Z70 also has an automatically extending mop pad for better edge coverage.

The Roborock Saros Z70 performed extremely well in our dried-on-stain mopping evaluation, earning the second-best score we’ve seen, at 139.  This is notably higher than Roborock’s other flagship robot vacuum in this lineup, the Saros 10R with 103 points, and leaps far above the average robot vacuum score of 93.

Additionally, it left behind only 0.7 g of water, which is below average— and that’s very good. 

This robot vacuum’s combined mopping score was incredible. It was better than the Saros 10R and certainly above the average robot vacuum mop combo we’ve evaluated.

Multi-Functional Dock

Another major advantage is the multi-functional dock. It not only empties the robot’s dust bin into a 2.7 L disposable bag but also uses 176°F (80 °C) hot water to wash the mop pads and self-clean the bin. 

It also dries the mop pads for a more sanitary experience and includes a detergent reservoir, which functioned well in our evaluations.

Hardware and Design

The hardware on the robot itself is solid. It has a slim height of 3.14 inches (the same as the 10R), allowing it to fit under more furniture than the typical 4-inch robot vacuums.

It comes with an automatically extending side brush for better corner coverage, which worked well in our evaluations. Additionally, it features a newly designed Free-Flow main brush that sweeps up debris on both hard floors and carpets.

Like most Roborocks, it was exceptionally good at sweeping up debris of all sizes from hard floors and carpets.

Just like the Roborock Saros 10R, the Z70 has a front lifting mechanism that raises the front wheel to clear high thresholds. Roborock says it supports up to 40 mm if the threshold is tiered or around 30 mm if it’s not.

Obstacle Avoidance

The Saros Z70 uses a 3D Time-of-Flight system with a camera, referred to as StarSight Navigation, which is the same technology used in the 10R. It also uses the same VertiBeam Lateral Structured-Light system. 

In our obstacle avoidance evaluations, the Z70 Saros performed remarkably well, scoring 22 out of 24—significantly higher than the average score of 16.6. While that score was technically a little lower than the 10R (which scored 24), we suspect it’s a margin-of-error issue. If we ran the assessment more times, we think it would likely even out.

App Experience

Roborock produces one of the best robot vacuum apps on the market. It has every feature you could think of, including:

• Its own virtual assistant feature called Smart Plan 2.0, which adapts to your home’s environment.
• Control over almost all robot vacuum and auto-empty bin systems.
• Multiple floor plans, virtual barriers, and lots of pet-related features—such as video call and Cruise to check on pets. You can schedule these or run them manually.

Average Performance Notes

Our Roborock Saros Z70 review won’t be complete without discussing the cons. But before we get to those, it’s worth highlighting some areas where the Z70 was average. These are its navigation efficiency and battery life. 

The official battery life is 180 minutes, which is slightly higher than the average rate of 149 minutes. And it was just above average in our battery efficiency evaluations, where we observed it running for about 1.5 minutes per percentage point.  That is slightly better than the average speed of 1.3 minutes, and slightly lower than the Saros 10R’s 1.7 minutes.

The same applies to the estimated square footage per charge, with it covering 1115 square feet in one charge and the average robot vacuum covering 1015 square feet.

In terms of coverage speed and thoroughness, which we call Navigation Efficiency, it was almost exactly average – with a .7 square meters per minute across the board. So, it’s not great, but not terrible either.

Cons of the Roborock Saros Z70

The cons were mostly around its performance metrics.

Despite having considerable official suction power of 22,000 Pascals, the Z70 had lower-than-average suction measured at the intake, measuring only 0.3 Kpa, while the Saros 10R measured 0.6 Kpa and the average robot vacuum measured 0.8 Kpa.

At the same time, its airflow was right at the average amount – 16 cfm.

It also struggled with the carpet deep clean evaluation, where we assessed its performance with embedded debris, such as sand. In this evaluation it scored significantly below average, around 114th place in our rankings.

The 2½-inch flattened pet hair pickup evaluation (on carpet) was also well below average, picking up only 83% of the hair, in comparison to the average robot vacuum score of 92%. And its crevice-pickup assessment performance was subpar, too. Additionally, despite the introduction of a new active hair removal system, it still had tangled hair. It scored below average in our assessments.

Lastly, the internal dustbin is very small. It’s only 180 mL and the smallest bin size we’ve ever seen on a robot vacuum. Obviously, this is because they had to make room for the mechanical arm, leaving little space for the dustbin.

The Roborock Saros Z70 got extra points for its new Omni-Grip arm, excellent mopping ability, and outstanding obstacle avoidance scores. However, some practical performance metrics really hurt its overall score.

Roborock Saros Z70 Review: Conclusion and Recommendation

After tallying up all the numbers, the Z70 is currently ranking at number 12 on the Vacuum Wars Top 20 robot vacuums list. However, that number is likely to change by the time this article is published. While we have high hopes in the future for mechanical arms like the Omni-Grip – and we expect early adopters will love it – at this point in time most people will be better served by the Roborock Qrevo Edge or the Roborock Saros 10R. They offer many of the same features at a lower price and with stronger performance.