Traditionally, robot vacuums (and manual vacuums for that matter) tend to struggle with cleaning thick carpets and rugs. The high fibers combined with upward suction is a recipe for getting stuck. It’s a bit ironic, because it’s exactly the kind of flooring that would really benefit from a thorough vacuuming.
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In two of its new launches – Saros 20 and Saros 20 Sonic – Roborock has come up with a solution. And brilliantly, it uses a feature originally designed to solve a completely different kind of problem.
Let me back up a bit. Like a number of last year’s best robot vacuums, the new Saros 20 bots have tiny feet that extend to help lift them over small steps or tall room thresholds. They’re a little less flashy than the long stilts on the Roborock Rover, but they serve a useful purpose.
On this 3.0 version of the ‘AdaptiLift’ feature and it can boost the Saros 20 over single steps up to 1.77in / 4.5cm in height, or a double step for a total of 3.34in / 8.5cm.
The new Saros 20 bots feature the 3.0 version of the AdaptiLift chassis, and this iteration has an additional trick up its sleeve. It can also lift the robot vacuum to one of eight different preset heights and hold it there, level, while it cleans. This means that if it encounters your ultra-chunky bedroom rug, it can hover at just the right height to clean it without getting stuck in the fibers.
In the demo area, I watched Saros 20 Sonic pause in front of a thick carpet edge and then carefully raise itself to the right height to cross it. As the flooring changed to a deeper pile, it bumped itself a bit in response. The movements were smooth and precise, and the robot remained upright throughout the cleaning part of the process. Impressive stuff.
A little less impressive, in my opinion, was the stair climbing part. Roborock says the 3.0 version of the Adaptilift has added stability, to raise and lower the robot carefully so as not to risk damaging it, but in the demo room it came up and down with a big crash.
In the robot’s defense, the steps were at the maximum height it can handle and on the higher side of what you’d typically find in someone’s home.
I’m excited to see how these perform in practice – a full review will follow once I get my hands on one to test properly.
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