Roborock S7

Because the apartment is quite large — over 100 m² — I decided to get a robot. Before the floors were ripped up, I used to vacuum and mop the whole place myself. That took me about an hour... now I can spend that hour on something else while the robot does its thing.

There were plenty of options, but after going through every review I could find I landed on the Roborock S7. All its features — including the LIDAR and automatic emptying — outweighed the competition. WiFi is a must, unfortunately only 2.4 GHz, and you'll need the app on a tablet or phone.

The great thing is that the robot continuously maps the space, so no manual adjustments needed. It's useful to divide the whole area into rooms and then clean room by room or just specific sections. Excluding areas from cleaning is of course standard.

You will hit limits though. For example, curtains that go all the way to the floor. If they're truly floor-length... the robot won't stop and will get tangled up in them. If you have a lamp sitting on a low base, it'll try to get past it. Same with drying racks (through the legs). The cherry on top was when it missed a strip of trim on the floor. It got caught underneath and the robot dragged it around the whole space. Thanks to its consistent movement pattern you could clearly see exactly where it had been...

Otherwise it's a very useful tool for daily vacuuming and mopping. You need to empty the dust and debris every so often. It was a good call — nobody wants to spend their time vacuuming and mopping.

One more challenge awaits me: relocating the docking station. I temporarily put the robot in the living room because of furniture work.