In 2023, the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra raised our expectations for smart home gadgets
Roborock's super-premium smart vacuum/mop is our favorite smart home device of 2023
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Robot vacuums have greatly evolved in the past few years, becoming fully autonomous machines that can scrub the floors with fresh water, and even wash and dry their mop pads. We've reviewed plenty of them this year, and the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra is definitely the one that caught our attention most. It's not the manufacturer's first self-emptying and -cleaning model, as it pioneered the lineup with the S7 MaxV Ultra, released back in April 2022. But the S8 Pro Ultra comes with several extra features that make it our favorite one so far, making it both worth its significant $1,600 price tag, and AP's favorite smart home gadget of 2023.
The Roborock S8 Pro Ultra builds on various innovations from Roborock, which help it stand out from the competition. Indeed, in addition to featuring two large water tanks and a dust bag, the RockDock Ultra comes with the market's most advanced mop washing technology. The latter uses a dedicated brush to scrub the mop, ensuring it's free from dirt. The built-in air drying technology then ensures the mop is left free of moisture and mildew, for maximum hygiene.
Aside from its dock, the S8 Pro Ultra itself is also different from the competition, in the sense that it uses a vibrating flat mop instead of rotating mop pads. When tested on hard stains, the cleaning results have been impeccable, proving the robovac's superior performance. Similarly, Roborock's innovative DuoRoller dual brush roller can efficiently reach deeper into carpets, thick rugs, and grouts to remove dust and dirt much more effectively than competing products. Regardless of the floor type you're cleaning, the robot can also automatically raise its mop or brush roller, ensuring carpets aren't accidentally touched by a wet mop.
Roborock has also developed one of the best apps, allowing you to fully manage and control the robot's behavior, including the ability to schedule off-peak charging, as well as specific cleaning modes for each room. This is seconded by the S8 Pro Ultra's impressive navigation capabilities and obstacle detection, which are almost flawless and add up to the fully autonomous aspect of the product.
With so many impressive features and excellent cleaning results, there's little to dislike about the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra — except maybe its $1,600 price. Thankfully, the latter can drop thanks to promotional offers, including solid discounts during Prime Days and Black Friday. Lastly, let's not forget that while the S8 Pro Ultra is our overall favorite robot vacuum cleaner so far, other brands like Ecovacs and Dreame have worked on new features, including extending mop maps to clean along baseboards, automatic detergent dispensing, or hot water mop washing, which maximize hygiene. However, these products came later during the year, and we're sure Roborock will continue to innovate and improve its products to catch up.
In the meantime, despite not having some seemingly better features, the S8 Pro Ultra remains our best-rated robot vacuum overall and favorite smart home gadget of the year, as it does an almost flawless cleaning job, even without using hot water to wash its mops or automatically dispensing detergent. It's therefore our go-to recommendation if you're looking for a high-end robot vacuum to clean your floors, with minimal human intervention, and a tantalizing glimpse into the future of DIY home automation.
Roborock S8 Pro Ultra
The Roborock S8 Pro Ultra is an outstanding premium robot vacuum and mop, boasting excellent cleaning capabilities, competent navigation and obstacle avoidance, and a self-cleaning dock that means very little user maintenance. It's Android Police's favorite smart home gadget of 2023.