Roborock Qrevo S review: Minimal trade-offs for a minimum price

Roborock’s Qrevo S is an updated version of the 2023 Qrevo with better suction power, and a lower price. Not only is it cheaper than the original version, this device costs half as much as the S8 MaxV Ultra - Roborock’s flagship this year. For that drastic of a price cut you’d expect to make some salient compromises, and there are some trade-offs but they’re less painful than you’d expect. They’re excusable, minimal, and in some cases, they’re even welcomed.

Although the Qrevo S is both a vacuum and a mop, it performs better as the latter. Equipped with two rotating mop heads the robovac tackles your general grime, and sticky messes with ease. In testing we pitted it against tomato sauce and maple syrup on a hardwood floor. Within a single pass both disappeared, for the most part. Once the water dried there was a slight sticky film around the cleaning area, and a whiff of tomato sauce still permeated the air. It wasn’t a perfect clean, but it was close.

Admittedly, you’re probably not going to use your robot vacuum for particularly soiled areas, but with the Qrevo S you could trust it to get the ball rolling, or to do the final sweep. Say you spilled a bowl of cereal while running out the door. The mopping performance is good enough that you could confidently send the vacuum for a spin, and just need to give it a quick once over with a floor cleaner or mop when you get home. Unless the spill is right up by the wall. Since the Qrevo S doesn’t have any edge mopping functionality, anything too close to an edge will need human intervention. Despite missing this feature, the mopping on the Qrevo S was generally more reliable than what we saw on the S8 MaxV Ultra, which despite being double the price has a less effective microfibre mopping pad.

Vacuuming on the other hand is a bit more hit and miss. In our testing the Qrevo S vacuumed up around 90% of medium and small debris on carpet, and 80% of hard floor. Medium sized debris (75mm-125mm) was left behind the most on both flooring types, but some of what was initially picked up ended up redistributed through the house. I’m putting this down to the Anti-Tangle Brush. While it does live up to it’s claim, and both fur and hair don’t tangle around the roller, it instead tends to spit out the furballs instead of sucking them into the bin. The same goes for other kinds of debris. At times it can get stuck in the grooves of the roller brush, and instead of ending up inside the vacuum, ends up falling back out onto the floor. For smaller dander like dust (or hundreds and thousands as we use in testing), this happens far less. Nevertheless if you’re a hairy household, or tend to have bigger bits scattered around (think a destructive dog, or a messy toddler), you’ll still need to pull out the stick vacuum.

Roborock is the gold standard when it comes to robot vacuum mapping, and the Qrevo S is no exception. Within 15 minutes the Quick Map feature was able to provide a detailed map of my three bedroom home, complete with floor types. This map can be further honed down in the Roborock app where adding invisible barriers, and ‘No-Go Zones’ takes seconds. I was testing the Qrevo S and the Qrevo Master concurrently, and despite the price difference between the two, the mapping has the exact same level of detail across the board.

The smarts between the two don’t compare in the same way however. Large object detection and avoidance is excellent - the device doesn’t bang into furniture, or try to mount stuffed toys. It has a quick response time to new obstacles as well, and is able to divert its path within a second or two if you step in front of it or block it. It struggles with smaller objects however. Throughout the testing process the Qrevo S has taken down many-a cable. In one instance it even pulled down a HomePod Mini, and I don’t even know how it got to that cable in the first place. Anything low to the floor - no greater than 15mm high - gets the same treatment. The robovac treats items like books, plates, and even a Macbook, in the same way it does a threshold to cross. It just kind of gets over the top of it. If you don’t put things on the floor (couldn’t be me), then this probably won’t bother you, but you’ll want to set up barriers around your cables in the app.
These limitations are small stakes in the scheme of things. Overall the Qrevo S is more intelligent than its price tag gives it credit for and it has the added benefit of Roborock’s excellent mapping technology.

Aesthetically neither the base station, nor the vacuum itself are particularly interesting, but they’re not eyesores either. Compared to other all-in-one vacuums, the base station is relatively small for what it can accomplish. Inside the 52cm x 34cm x 25cm station sits a disposable dust bag, both clean and dirty water tanks, a self-cleaning mop system, and a warm air dryer. It is a lot to pack in. Docks with similar functionality can be up to double the size.
As it stands, most of this space is taken up by the water tanks. Since they’re smaller than some, you’ll need to fill and empty them more often. Emptying out the dirty water tank is always a bit of a nightmare, regardless of which brand of vacuum you get. Over time it stinks. Of course the best course of action is to empty it every time, but if you can’t be bothered (fair), you can just throw a few drops of bleach into the bottom of the tank. I found this helps to keep the smell, and any mould growth at bay.

That aside, the station reliably does its jobs. The auto-empty is quiet and effective for both the mop water, and the dry debris bin. The warm air drying is much the same. Within an hour or so on the station the mop pads are bone dry.

The Roborock Qrevo S costs $1,499 in Australia, but you can already grab deals that bring that price down.

By no means is the Roborock Qrevo S a cheap robot vacuum cleaner, but it is significantly cheaper than other robovacs with similar offerings. For half the price of the best devices available in the market today, you can get one that is just slightly dumber, a bit worse at picking up medium debris, and has a better mop. The trade-offs are relatively small, and in some instances they aren’t trade-offs at all.