Roborock’s new robovacs are determined to get under your couch – here’s how
- Roborock launched three new robot vacuum cleaners at CES 2025
- They all have a slim design, allowing them to be cleaned under low furniture
- The Saros 10 has a navigation puck that flips up and down
Roborock launched a new fleet of robovacs at CES 2025. The Saros 10, Saros 10R and Saros Z70 are presented as joint flagship models and all feature the latest and greatest robot vacuum technology the brand has to offer.
The one that will probably attract the most attention is the Saros Z70, as it has a large robotic pincer arm attached to it, but I would also like to draw your attention to the Saros 10 and 10R. Neither are all that flashy (a robovac with limbs is a high bar), but both have some quietly innovative features – and perhaps the kind that will be immediately usable by more people.
Specifically, that includes the fixed, raised center puck found on most of today’s best robot vacuums. This means that they both have a relatively short profile and can therefore clean places that are inaccessible to those other, larger robots. The most obvious example is the space under low-sitting furniture, which tends not to be vacuumed and as a result can be a bit of a hotspot for dust and dirt.
Let me go back for a moment. The most popular methods of robot vacuum navigation require a raised puck in the center of the machine. For most bots this is for LiDAR, but in the case of Roborock it is used for a system called LDS (Laser Distance Sensors). In both cases, the puck helps the bots ‘see’ a fuller picture of their surroundings. But it also adds height.
The way Roborock achieved this low-profile design is completely different on the 10R and the 10. The 10R still uses the proven LDS system for mapping, and in fact still has a central puck – except this time, it’s retractable .
The puck is designed to sense when it enters an area of lower height, retract into the bot (reducing it to a slim height of less than 8cm) and then pop back out when height allows . The LDR puck, meanwhile, has an upward ToF (time-of-flight) sensor that emits an additional laser beam to detect the height of low spaces. It also houses a wide-angle vision module which Roborock says helps with mapping accuracy and means the robovac is much less likely to get lost when the puck is in its hidden, shy turtle state.
Overall, the brand promises a bot with excellent spatial awareness, which can “easily navigate complex environments.” And that also means venturing confidently into the dusty depths beneath your couch.
With starry eyes
The Saros 10R has no puck at all – pop-up or none – and that’s because it doesn’t use LDS. Instead, it uses an entirely new type of navigation called StarSight, and made its debut on the Roborock Qrevo Slim, which was announced at IFA 2024. It’s the same height as a puck-down Saros 10 robot vacuum cleaner: 7.98 cm.
How exactly StarSight works remains a mystery to me. Like many robovac navigation systems, it relies on sensors and cameras, and this time it’s paired with an extra dose of AI for precise object identification and avoidance. The key to the accurate mapping and navigation here is that it uses a sampling rate 21x higher than LDS.
Flagship specifications
The navigation method is the main difference between the Saros 10R and the 10, which are otherwise extremely similar. In fact, they also look very similar to the Saros Z70, with the exception of that large robot arm.
Other special features of both Saros bots include a downright stupid 22,000 Pa suction, which I estimate is about enough to suck up my entire flat, and a rubber roller split in the middle to allow hair to pass through the opening can escape and into the trash. These features alone have me looking at these models for a possible spot on our list of the best robot vacuums for pet hair.
At the time of writing, no pricing details have been released, but Roborock says both bots will cost exactly the same. That means the customer can decide for themselves whether they prefer the tried-and-true LDS navigation – which, it should be noted, has performed consistently well on all Roborock robot vacuums we’ve tried it on – or the newer one. , fancier, completely more attractive called StarSight.
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