Traditionally, robot vacuums (and manual vacuums, for that matter) tend to struggle to clean thick carpets and rugs. The tall fibers, combined with upward suction, is a recipe for getting stuck. It’s slightly ironic, because that’s exactly the kind of flooring that would really benefit from a thorough vacuum.
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In two of its new launches – the Saros 20 and Saros 20 Sonic – Roborock has come up with a solution. And ingeniously, it uses a feature that was 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 little feet that extend to help lift them over small steps or tall room thresholds. They’re a little less flashy than the long stilts that feature 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 totaling 3.34in / 8.5cm.
The new Saros 20 bots feature the 3.0 version of the AdaptiLift Chassis, and this iteration has a further trick up its sleeve. It can also lift the robot vacuum to one of eight different preset heights, and keep it there, level, as it cleans. That means if it encounters your ultra-chunky bedroom rug, it can hover itself at just the right height to clean it, without getting bogged down in the fibers.
In the demo area I saw the Saros 20 Sonic pause in front of a thick carpet edge, then meticulously lift itself to the right height to traverse it. When the flooring swapped to a deeper pile, it bumped itself a bit in response. The movements were smooth and accurate, and the robot remained level 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 Adaptilift has added stability, to raise and lower the robot gently rather so as not to risk damaging it, but in the demo space it did come up and down with quite a crash.
In the robot’s defense, the steps were at the maximum height it can manage, and on the taller side fro what you might typically find in someone’s home.
I’m excited to see how these perform in practice – a full review will follow when I get my hands on one to test out properly.
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