Today we will review the brand new Roborock S5 Max, the best among Robot vacuum from Roborock so far. The main thing to know is that the S5 max is more than just an update from the previous S5 version, which was one of the favorite robot vacuums when it came out a few years ago.
Roborock has essentially released a new generation of robot vacuums since then with the S6, the S4 and now with the S5 Max. This release is intended to bring their very popular S5 model into the next generation with updated hardware and software.
Overall upgrades
The newer Roborocks have a much larger 32-bit-quad-core processor. This bigger brain helps them in a number of ways, but especially with navigation. These three newer ones also have upgraded side brushes which are made out of materials that are less prone to wear as well as upgraded main brushes which have more bristles and are supposedly better with resisting pet hair tangles.
However, the main upgrades from the older S5 to the next generation is with the software and there are a lot of new features to play around with in the app.
To dig deep into some specific issues, there are a lot of differences between the S5 Max and its new generation counterparts.
Cleaning performance
Hard floors cleaning
Firstly, the S5 max did its main job of picking up debris off of hard floors and carpets extremely well in the tests. Roborock robot vacuums have been always praised for their clean pickup ability, meaning that their brushes work well together and just pick up various types and sizes of debris very cleanly without scattering debris with its side brush or blowing it around with its exhaust. The S5 max seemed to be better than any robot vacuum with pure pickup ability. When being tested on both its max power and its so-called balanced power mode, it was really impressive. It was possibly the best sand pickup on hard floors especially in a lower power setting on carpets. It had the same great pickup ability for all types and sizes of debris without any of the side brush stalling problems as seen from the others like with the S6.
Carpet cleaning
On the carpet deep clean test where we embed 100 grams of sand into medium pile carpet and weigh the dustbins after five minutes it scored an above-average 78 basically the same score is the older S5 and a little better than the S6.
Dry stain cleaning
We tested this with dried on coffee grape and vegetable juice stains and found that it was quite a bit better than previous Roborocks. It got the easier coffee stains in the first pass though the much tougher grape and vegetable juice stains took two full runs to clear. These are really hard tests for robot mop combos. They’re even kind of hard tests for straight-up electric mops. It can be said that the S5 max is the best robot mop combo in terms of pure mopping ability.
Pet hair removal
Roborock has always done well with the pet hair tangled test and the S5 max was as well. It was able to resist 100% of the one gram of five inch hair on max power, which was impressive though increasing either the amount or length of hair from that point will cause some light tangles, but even so it was well above average for robot vacuums in general. We tested its power in a number of ways, found that it had a touch more airflow than the older S5 as well as the S6. Though the S6 probably has less power by design to get better battery life numbers.
It did a little better with the crevice pickup test than those other two as well getting most of the debris from the eighth inch crevice and a touch more from the quarter inch crevice than the others did.
Dustbin capactity
The S5 max has a much bigger dustbin than the old S5 and the S6 at 640 milliliters. It’s the same size as the S4 which is a major plus and it’s especially impressive when they still made room for the new large water tank for mopping.
LIDAR Navigation and Virtual walls
With navigation it was as good or better than any robot vacuum today. It uses LIDAR, a spinning invisible laser to map out the house and it created a complete map on its first run. As previously mentioned, it’s new quad-core processor makes it really efficient with navigation and the same lightning fast speeds that covering both the small and large room tests with the S4 and S6 all while achieving near perfect coverage including places like under chairs and other nooks and crannies.
In general, its navigation and obstacle avoidance was really good. It also had higher than normal climbing ability and it did pretty well with not disturbing small mats as well, like the older S5, the S5 max also has virtual walls or no-go lines where we draw lines and or boxes on the map in the app which keeps the robot from going where we don’t want it to go. This feature is found to be pitch perfect in terms of accuracy with the S5 max.
Selective Room Cleaning
Like the other next generation Roborocks, the S5 max has some app upgrades like the room select feature. It will create a map after we divide and name the rooms in our house so that it will clean certain rooms instead of others.
Besides, users can really customize their scheduled cleanings like on Mondays vacuum the kitchen and living room only on max power at 8:00 AM or any number of variations.
New mopping features
Electric water tank
Also, the new mopping features are the main difference between the S5 max and all the other Roborocks. While the older S5 as well as the S6 and some others have had mopping attachments, the S5 max represents a totally new mopping design. The older mops were basically small capacity tanks with a pad that just attached to the bottom of the robot. They functioned essentially using gravity where the water slowly seeped into the mopping pad at a fixed rate.
The S5 max is the first Roborock to include a separate detachable electric water tank, which can hold quite a bit more water than the previous model. This is combined with a very similar mopping pad attachment, but instead of it operating purely by gravity, it now has an electronically controlled water dispenser which can be adjusted in the app.
No-mop zones
The new software features for mopping were also a major plus. Mainly that in addition to the no-go lines, we can also set up no mop zones which will only be recognized if we have the mop pad attached. It would be helpful to have separate keep out zones just for mopping until these features started to show up with the S6, but it really does make mopping so much more useful and favorable.
Battery
The Roborock S5 has the same amazing three hour battery life on low power as the original S5 and it’s still one of the best battery life numbers in the industry.
Price
The S5 max must be a great choice apart from its price. It is pricey; however, compared to its high quality, it’s pretty reasonable for what a consumer is getting.
Conclusion
It’s a significant upgrade from the S5. It’s nearly perfect with its pickup ability and navigation and all the app and mop features are some of the best, if not the best in the industry.
