(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)
LAS VEGAS—Roborock's Saros Rover takes robot vacuum mobility to a new level—quite literally. Winner of our Best Smart Home Tech category at CES, the Rover replaces traditional wheels with leg-like mechanisms inspired by human movement. The design enables the agile cleaner to hoist itself over obstacles, execute tight pivots, hop small gaps, and most impressively, climb stairs while actively cleaning. Roborock has yet to share pricing or a release timeline, but the fully functional unit on display at CES made it clear this is far more than a conceptual prototype.
Roborock also unveiled several other robot vacuums slated to arrive sooner, each with notable upgrades, including models that can raise their chassis to better handle high-pile carpet. The company also showcased a lineup of robot lawn mowers, including a LiDAR-guided model. While the entire lineup is impressive, the Saros Rover stands out as the clear highlight, so let's dig in.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)Each wheel-leg of the Saros Rover can independently raise and bend, allowing the vacuum to navigate through many tricky circumstances. Most practically, the legs together can help the vacuum easily traverse over obstacles and climb steps of multiple configurations. The vacuum can also jump, which might not be the most practical application of these legs, but it can help the bot quickly get across small thresholds.
As for stairs, the Saros Rover can both climb and clean, leaving one leg on the stair below to brace itself while it slides across the elevated surface. I watched a demo of it in action in a controlled environment at CES. The bot went up a step, turned, and cleaned before moving on to the next. I didn't see it go back downstairs. It is supposedly equipped to do that easily as well, with a motion similar to a backstroke when swimming.
During the demo, it went down a steep ramp on the other side of the steps. While on the ramp, it moved up and down and even paused in the middle of its descent to show its stability. At the bottom of the ramp, it performed a quick bunny hop.
The Rover uses motion sensors and AI to process 3D spatial information and understand its environment. If it works as promised, it’ll be able to clean straight steps, curved steps, and even slopes, and you won’t have to worry about it getting stuck on a nest of cords, even on flat surfaces.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)At the IFA tech showcase in Berlin in the fall, we saw other robot vacuums that could also climb, including the Eufy Marswalker and a concept model from Dreame. That said, those models relied on a separate rover to carry them up and down the stairs. Neither could clean as they climbed, either, giving the Saros Rover another advantage.
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Last year at CES, Roborock introduced a vacuum with a robot arm, the Saros Z70, that could pick up obstacles in its path and put them away. That model did come to fruition a few months later, but we found that the tech still needs a generation or two of polish, as its functionality was limited to a select few obstacles and floor types. In practice, the robot arm served as more of a novelty than a capable robot butler. The robot legs on this year’s model could come out of the gate in a better state if they can already navigate multiple stair types successfully.
Beyond the Saros Rover
Roborock showed off a few other robot vacuums slated for release this year. Both the Saros 20 and the Saros 20 Sonic have a record-setting 35,000Pa of suction power. They differentiate in their mop design and navigation. The 20 Sonic features a vibrating mop pad and a retractable LDS tower, allowing it to fit under low-clearance furniture. The Saros 20 uses the company’s Starsight navigation system, featuring enhanced obstacle detection and faster processing capabilities compared with LDS. It has dual spinning mop pads.
Aside from the high suction, they both feature the latest version of the company’s AdaptiLift Chassis, which enables them to navigate over thresholds and avoid obstacles. Additionally, this chassis allows them to adjust the height of the vacuum while on high-pile carpet and maintain that height to increase functional airflow. This dynamic carpet cleaning mode allows the vacuum to be elevated at several different levels, depending on the thickness of the carpet.
Roborock hasn’t announced a price or release date yet for either Saros model, but expect both to be on the high end following the trend of the company’s current Saros bots. Roborock did announce the price of a more affordable midrange model called the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow. The $849 model is expected to hit stores by the end of January. It’ll also be the company's first robot cleaner with a spinning roller mop that refreshes itself as it works. That mop style is quickly becoming a personal favorite based on other models that I’ve tested.
Finally, Roborock is showcasing a lineup of robot mowers, and the X1 LiDAR will be the company’s first model equipped with LiDAR navigation for mapping and navigating complex lawns. It’ll also be able to climb steep slopes and trim the lawn close to boundaries, to minimize the amount of manual edge trimming you’ll need to do afterward.
I’ll be testing all of these models as soon as I can. I especially look forward to seeing how well the Saros Rover can climb stairs in the real world (and clean while doing so). If it works as promised, it’ll be an exciting step forward for the category that will no longer be limited to a single floor.