Roborock Flexi Lite review: Lite in name, not in practice

Apple has the Pro and Pro Max, Samsung has the Plus and the Ultra, and home appliance brands like Roborock have got the Pro and the Lite (and the MaxV Ultra - but that is a whole other conversation). These suffixes serve to tell you the hierarchy of their products without needing to look at the specs. You know that the Pro will be the top of the line in both features and price, while the Lite will be something more streamlined. But just because something has been given the top podium spot, doesn’t necessarily mean it is the best choice for consumers.

Sure the sparkle of a Pro tag tugs at something aspirational in your chest, but the Roborock Flexi Lite is a reminder that sometimes premium features are simply superfluous. Compared to its Pro counterpart, the Flexi Lite may be lighter in specs but not where it counts.

What actually gives the Flexi Lite its namesake comes down to its design. Among other specs, it has a smaller 620ml water tank compared to the Pro’s 730ml, a 10 minute dearer battery life, and it's self cleaning mode is more bareboned. All of these exclusions make it around a kilogram lighter too, weighing in at just under 4kg not including the water tank. How these specs compare on paper has nothing to do with the practicality of the device though. 

Since floor cleaners are significantly heavier than your regular stick vacuum, they can sometimes build up too much momentum during cleaning and feel like they’re running away from you. Compared to other models the Lite does indeed live up to its name, and despite not having the ‘easy push-and-pull operation’ featured in the top-tier model, the lighter weight of this cleaner made it just as easy to maneuver. Plus the Lite shares the same flexible design as the Pro, both able to stretch down flat with a 15cm clearance, so getting underneath furniture is no problem. 

The smaller 620ml tank was more than enough for me to thoroughly clean my kitchen, bathroom, and touch up other hard floor areas around the house. It also contributed to the overall lower weight of the Flexi Lite, and made for less arm fatigue while I cleaned. This meant that I could comfortably clean for longer than I have with other hard floor cleaners. Although the 30 minute battery life is lower than other wet floor cleaners, it was more than sufficient for the cleaning I needed to get done. It could potentially be an issue if you’re down for a deep clean, so if you regularly find yourself spending more than half an hour mopping then take it under consideration.

While you can’t actively clean for as long with this device, it does take longer to clean and dry itself. At the base station it used tepid water to centrifugally clean the mop roller - spraying fresh water onto the roller, while it spins and is scraped off before being sucked back into the dirty water tank. It then uses warm 50 degree celsius air over the course of one hour to dry the mop head. This is double the time required to dry the Pro, and won’t disinfect the mop head. While the day-to-day maintenance is still quite hands-off, you will need to commit to manually cleaning the mop head more frequently than other models.

Perhaps one of the most prominent Pro features that pops up around household appliances is app connectivity. To be frank, I am a bit of a hater when it comes to this. While some appliances benefit from a companion app such as robot vacuum cleaners, or even a smart oven, handheld vacuums and the like aren’t one of them. Notably the Flexi Lite doesn’t connect to the Roborock app, and well, good. When we reviewed the Flexi Pro we had issues connecting to the app in the first place, and that not only put a damper on the whole experience but it begged the question as to whether you should even bother. I like that you don’t need to mess around with Bluetooth and WiFi in order to manually clean your floors. It just makes sense.

What really matters when it comes to floor cleaners is just how well they can clean your floor, and the Roborock Flexi Lite goes toe-to-toe with more expensive counterparts from within the Roborock brand and beyond. 

Both the Lite and the Pro use Roborock’s DirTect adaptive cleaning which adjusts the power and saturation levels based on what kind of mess it encounters. This auto mode is quiet, and effective, but if you want to get at a deeper clean you can manually switch to a higher power mode.When tested against sticky messes like barbeque sauce, and maple syrup, the Flexi Lite scooped them up off lino in one pass. Dry debris like oatmeal took a pass or two to fully clean up, but overall the performance is excellent on your usual household messes. It didn’t do much to pick up stains or caked on dirt however. Despite its best efforts, the Flexi Lite couldn’t budge some unknown residue stuck to my kitchen floor. These kinds of stubbourn stains are better tackled with a steam mop like the Tineco S7 Steam, since tepid water floor cleaners are only capable of so much. Still, the Flexi Lite scored the same across our debris testing as its more advanced sibling.

Ordinarily retailing for $699 the Roborock Flexi Lite Wet and Dry floor cleaner has recently dropped down to $499 across retailers. It is available from a range of certified sellers in Australia at this lower pricepoint. 

It can be tempting to look at a product line up and opt up, but in some cases you won’t be any better off. While getting the more expensive phone can yield better photos, or the more amped up laptop will make gaming more reliable, when it comes to appliances like vacuums and floor cleaners the spec differences are less pertinent. For the Roborock Flexi floor cleaner series, you can be confident that saving your money won’t yield worse results. The Flexi Lite floor cleaner is a Pro product in all but its name.