Roborock S6 MaxV Robot Vacuum Long Term Review: Almost a Year Later

Roborock Malaysia was extremely kind enough to send us the Roborock S6 MaxV for us to review it and take it for a test run. But it occurred to me, doing a short-term review is great and all, but long-term review gives a better perspective on what’s going on under the hood. So, since December till September (as of the date of this review is being published), we have been using this robot vacuum pretty extensively and in this Roborock S6 MaxV Review – we are going to share our experience, what to expect and how it held up over the span of 7-8 months – trust us, it did an amazing job in more ways than one.

Build and Structure

Robotic Vacuums looks simple and to put it in an unappealing word, generic so to speak. But the looks matter the least because at the end of the day functionality and what’s really under that machine and how it does the job matters the most. That said: The Roborock S6 MaxV we received comes in this glossy and rather shimmering polycarbonate body that looks pretty cute to be honest. Think of it as a robotic pet with two eyes on the front that roams around sucking every dust and what not off the ground.

That said, you can notice it does have some structural advantages – like on the front, it has a bumper that triggers as soon as it hits an object to not proceed further. On the bottom, we notice the wheels and a spinning brush on one side that allows the S6 MaxV to push the particles in a corner or areas where it can’t really reach into the suction area for it to clean as efficient as possible.

It does have a little hockey-puck-like contraption that’s located on the top, which is actually a functional component to its cleaning which we will talk about later. But if you are wondering, how’s the clearance like – for the most part, where we tested, the vacuum could only go where it could fit in, so in my room where there’s clearance on the ground like my shelf, cabinet, it was able to go under and get the job done. The Roborock S6 MaxV can put up a good show and hold up very well in most circumstances given that it’s built like a tank and well put together. If minimalism is something you are looking into for your robot vacuum, well – the Roborock S6 MaxV does it right.

On the back, you will find the Water Tank and the place where you’d attach the mop pad to clean the floor, followed by the speaker on one end and air vent on the other to avoid particles entering into the environment again. The Dustbin which sits under the Cover Grip is basically a container with filter – so, all you have to do is take it out, dispose it in your bin. It’s washable too!

Connectivity, Integration and Smart Features

Flagship-grade vacuums tend to have features where you could connect it to Wi-Fi to control wherever and however you want and the Roborock S6 MaxV doesn’t skim on any of those features as it comes decked out in every possible manner. Starting with the physical controls because it’s something I actually want to see on a robot vacuum in case launching the cleaning process from your phone isn’t possible due to internet connectivity issues (Especially if you are on Unifi, true story.). You could even tell what’s the connectivity situation is like by the indicator under the Cover Grip. Anyways, there are three buttons on top:

• Power button in the middle allows you to not just turn on and off as you press and hold but also initiate cleaning (as the mapped layout of the home is registered within the system itself).
• The left – its Spot Clean to start Spot Cleaning
• On the right – Home, to send the vacuum back to the dock.

If you do want to reset the Wi-Fi connectivity, you can press and hold the Spot Clean and Dock button for 3 seconds to reconnect to the Wi-Fi. This amount of control just on the vacuum itself gives me a relief because when my mom wants to initiate the cleaning – and let’s be honest, putting ourselves in our parent’s shoes, it can be extremely overwhelming, so having the button control to initiate cleaning is a good step. Another thing to note is the silver contact point on the bottom of the vacuum because this is the charging connector – so, keeping the area where you are going to place the dock and the anti-slip mat is important.

Finally, for those IoT Fans out there, yes, you can add the Roborock S6 MaxV to your Google Home and make it a part of your home ecosystem and even enable commands to trigger the vacuum to do its job.

App Experience is Splendid

Hardware aside, a good software makes up for the rest of the experience and Roborock nailed it. You’d be surprised on how thoughtful the whole layout is and how friendly it is to the users without overwhelming anyone in the process. Once you launch, you get to see if your vacuum is Online or not and on the top right, you can see all devices or if you have just one then you will see it in a Spotlight mode and at the bottom – you have two more buttons: Notifications from the Vacuum and Profile.

Once you enter the Roborock S6 MaxV – you’ll immediately notice the crucial information on the top: cleaning area, battery level and cleaning time, followed by a map of your home and at the bottom, you have few buttons: Option to clean the full home, Room or Zone, Map Management, Cleaning Option consisting of the Vacuum Power, Water Level and even tailoring the intensity based on room. Finally, the button to Clean.

If you do go into the settings, you got a lot more options to customize the robot’s settings, camera functions, the voice of the robot, Schedules, Pin n Go, Remote Control, Cleaning history and finally the most important – Device Sharing and Firmware Updates.

The best part about the app is that: you could control the vacuum from wherever you are really and the reason why I emphasize on the Firmware Updates is that – these helps you to optimize, improve and handle task better over the time and Device Sharing on the other hand is genius – all you need to do is add your family member’s email or phone number, then you can share the vacuum with them. So, when you are not around, they can control it how ever they like it.

Just the app experience alone with the Roborock S6 MaxV is more than enough to give me full 5 points out of 5 on how well it handles things within the app. Now, you might have noticed we said something about camera above – now that’s the ReactAI – which is the real star of the show.

ReactAI and PreciSense LiDAR: The Real Star

This is the tech element that makes the Roborock S6 MaxV advanced and puts the vacuum ahead of its competitors. Let me explain one at a time, starting with ReactAI.

Short for ReactiveAI – there are two cameras on the front that works just like how human eyes work – with the help of the dual camera, it looks at objects, identify how far it is and then with the help of AI it will react on how to avoid the obstacle. There is a small black bar at the bottom, where the Infrared sensor is located so that it could see what’s happening at night. This combined with the PreciSense LiDAR which is the hockey-puck-like contraption on top, allows you to map a room far better than a camera does. You get an ultimate combination of both where it makes up for each other’s shortcomings. That said, the two said features are running on a Qualcomm APQ8053 processor and the AI is the much familiar TensorFlow we all know by now – the Open-Source Machine Learning and AI Software.

Now Privacy is definitely an utmost concern of any users out there, especially when we see researches on how hackers tend to tap into a vacuum to spy houses. Roborock did think about that and their answer to that is: Nothing is stored or sent to cloud or duplicated. The images captured gets deleted immediately and it’s TUVRheinland certified for being a safe smart home product.

Cleaning Efficiency

All the aforementioned features aside, at the end of the day – we are looking at the cleaning efficiency. Now, a full disclosure: during our time reviewing the Roborock S6 MaxV, the reason as to why it took us this long to get a good idea of the efficiency is that this is the second Robot Vacuum, we have played with and it’s a little challenging to gauge on how well it does from its predecessor but to take the “on-paper” claims on its own. So, that said – here’s the long-term cleaning experience.

Now for the most part – my use of the Roborock S6 MaxV is pretty simple and straight forward – clean my room every week and clean the whole home every day. Now, the vacuum head is located at the bottom with a rotating brush, that sweeps into the container and to move around, it has an omni-directional wheel on the front and main wheel aside the brushes. The moment it starts cleaning, the side brush and main brush kicks off and starts cleaning.

During the Cleaning Process

During the cleaning process, since it’s a robot vacuum, you must move objects that might cause any sort of disruption in the cleaning process, and it could be as simple as a “wire” lying on the ground – which made us realize that it does tend to miss out detecting objects that aren’t significantly big enough to consider as an object. But once it leaves the dock, it maps the room that its in and starts its clean process. The vacuum isn’t quiet, but it isn’t as loud as you’d think – which is nice, especially for households with newborn, you wouldn’t want the vacuum to wake them up. This is just the vacuum part. As for the mopping, assuming you have filled the water, it will then rub the plate down, releases water and cleans the floor.

Since it’s a circular vacuum and it’s a pretty huge body that roams around, it uses its own pattern to clean and you may notice that at areas where it finds it harder to reach, the one side brush does as much as it could to push it to the main brush. This is where I did wish that the vacuum came equipped with two brushes as it could push more dust on both sides to clean the corners of the room. The obstacle detection is good enough that when it detects any, it will immediately avoid the area and proceeds to other places – like the chair in my room – it will clean around it instead of trying to make an attempt to go under the wheelbase.

Majority of the easily accessible surface areas, the Roborock S6 MaxV takes it like a champ – properly cleaning them and mopping at the very same time. On tiled surfaces, my concern was if it could move properly, and it handled well, all possible due to the rubberized main wheel that grips on to the ground well and even when mopping, it doesn’t affect the movement. The cliff sensor helps in identifying bumps and cliffs so that it keeps itself safe as much as it could.

Once the cleaning process is all done, it will then find its way back to the dock to charge and gives you the progress as to how much it cleaned, and areas covered. Most of the time, the 5200mAh battery is more than enough to clean my whole home and not once it has gone back to the dock incomplete, unless if it really gets stuck – which is when you’ll hear it saying, “The vacuum is stuck” and get notification on your mobile. As soon as you attend to it, the vacuum then recalibrates its location to identify where exactly it is and then picks up from where it left off.

Maintenance

This is important because Roborock S6 MaxV requires a bit of a maintenance – it’s not easy as letting it roam, do the cleaning, and call it a day. When the vacuum encounters hair longer than usual, it tends to tangle and wrap around the brush which could cause issue when it wants to clean again, and you would lose out on the efficiency. That said, at the bottom – you’ll notice that the main brush is held by a cover latch, and the Side Brush is mounted with a screw – so get your screwdriver for this.

Once you open up, the brush comes off easily and there are little locks to remove the bearing and then you could slide the looped hair – we ended up cutting the hair with a blade which is actually located in the vacuum itself. The one on the side brush comes off quite easily after you unscrew it.

Both the container – water for mopping and Dust Container including the filter are washable and it’s recommended to keep good hygiene. The vacuum does remind you to dispose the excess water in order to avoid any fungal build up over the time. The mat is easier to remove and just throw it into the washing machine, to get it cleaned. That’s basically it.

Something to Take Note of 

For the most part, with the Roborock S6 MaxV – there aren’t many drawbacks because it does things well as it should but there is one:

• Since it’s a Robot Vacuum, it has the same flaws as any robot vacuum cleaner has in the cleaning efficiency department. The day where we can solely depend on the robot vacuum only is still not here. So having a cordless vacuum like the Roborock H7 is a good idea to clean areas where the S6 MaxV couldn’t reach.

This is a general issue with any kind of vacuum of this caliber really and consumers purchasing this, would know that. But this is the kind of assistance you need especially you have a busy livelihood and minimize the house chores for yourself, your partner or family members. So, before you even initiate the cleaning, make sure to tidy up your room and home.

Conclusion

After using it close to almost a year, the Roborock S6 MaxV impressed us in more ways than one: by giving quality updates fixing bugs and issues, offer amazing app support, mostly great cleaning experience and not to forget, thoughtful features to go along with our day-to-day lives that doesn’t overwhelm anyone. By the time you read this, the Roborock S7 is already out and about roaming in many homes but say if you don’t have the budget to go for the S7 and want something close to that, then the Roborock S6 MaxV checks out every tick in your list.

We aren’t sure if we’d review the Roborock H7 but we do have another vacuum hitting the VesperLab soon and you do not want to miss that because it can see microscopic particles with the help of laser – click here to stay updated as to what’s about to come next here at The Adventures of Vesper.