DJI - ROMO S

I just got the DJI ROMO and the obstacle avoidance is spectacular. Have yet to be able to fool it and it avoids cables, small toys and curtains without issue.

So, after spending a week with the Saros 10R, I decided to return it (since there was no option for a direct trade) due to an issue with water leaking. A bit of a shame, since I liked it as stated in my last thread. Instead of ordering another 10R, I found a deal (<€800) on the DJI Romo S, and decided to try it out. There are some reviews out there from Germany and Asia, but since this model is not available in the US, information and direct comparisons are more limited. MSRP on these things is ridiculous, but the same can be said imo of many robots. Luckily, with some luck and patience, a more reasonable price can be found and I ended up paying over €100 less than for the 10R. Preface: our robots are first and foremost for maintenance. We do not have any pets, and only one easy to vacuum rug. In this respect, there is little challenge. I'm also not interested in having a robot mop up wet or combined messes, that's what a vac mop is for, and even a budget model will do it quicker and better than any robot. We do however have a toddler running around, which means daily maintenance is needed as anyone with a toddler will attest, and random objects can appear in the most unusual places. We also have difficult to navigate furniture with sharp corners and edges, so our absolute priority is navigation (around furniture) and obstacle detection. In this respect the Saros 10R was better than the CurvX (which is our upstairs unit) which occasionally had difficulties with the furniture. Obstacle detection on the CurvX is pretty good, although it would also occasionally miss out on something like half an eaten biscuit under the sofa. The Saros never encountered one, so I can't attest if it would have gotten it. Now, our upstairs floor in this respect is more predictable, and the CurvX not once missed recognizing a common object like a cable, bathroom scale, a piece of clothing.. It's no slouch, but as said, our living room can be more of a challenge. Enter the Romo S. It has been running with the optional bristle brushes, since they are more similar to what is on the CurvX/Saros, and makes for a more direct comparison. Setup was trouble free and straightforward. The app is slightly different than the Roborock app, but let's be honest, all of these apps are very similar and there's features in both, missing in the other. Like others have noted, what is immediately apparent is how smooth this thing drives around. It's cleaning pattern is different in that does the room edge at the end of its cleaning instead of first, and when doing a checker pattern it also does the edge run twice, compared to once on the Roborocks. It also moves very smooth between my difficult to navigate furniture. Only once during a spot run did it try to climb over one of my couch legs for some reason, which it couldn't, but I did not have to intervene manually. This was in the evening, I'm not sure why it didn't catch it - anyhow, that was a one time occurance, but just to show you that nothing is perfect. What's also interesting is that even at the highest object detection sensitivity, it doesn't back away from the objects a whole lot. It has so far never caught on to anything here, but if I were DJI I'd put in an option to disable the sidebrush when it detects an object, as I can see it catching certain things, despite detecting them. In terms of vacuuming performance, I can't say it performs better or worse than the Roborock offerings, my home probably isn't challenging enough - it does its job well. One thing I like is how precise it cleans the edges next to my carpet, compared to the others. There is an app option where it scales it suction power, moves slower, and slows down the side brush, when it encounters heavy debris. I'm not sure how this works, but I do know that dark spots on floors (knots, or even dark tiled floors) can cause the suction to rampant. Doesn't bother me since it mostly runs when we're out, but mentioning it nonetheless. You can disable it of course. As for mopping performance, every model needs some experimenting to get the desired result, and again, I cannot say one does a better job than the other for pure maintenance cleaning. Liked the CurvX, liked the Saros, I like this one. It's fine. I did notice cleaning cycle of the mops takes longer than it does on the others, as does the drying cycle. I've yet to see if I can shorten it and still have the mops dry. Something I also noticed is that it seems to use a bit more battery than the Roborocks - which doesn't really matter that much to me, but it may to some. The app has a feature to only load to 80% to save the battery, which I use. All in all, definitely happy with this purchase after the faulty 10R. Since it's currently still €100 cheaper than the 10R, I think it's good value (as far as that goes with robot vacs). Also reassuring that despite being a new brand as far as robot vacuums go, both the app and unit appear to work well. I hope it lasts!

Had a similar issue with the CurvX and our sofa. The 10R did great, and as well as the DJI Romo (not an option for USA atm). As mentioned before, buy from a store with a good return policy in case your demands aren't met.

1. Always ignore the advertised pascal values. They almost always don’t mean anything, especially by itself. 2. As a robot with an embedded spinning lidar, ecovacs, owner of yeedi, did not implement it well. I believe the eufy e25 is at a similar price. The yeedi M14 is a decent vacuum and mop robot. There definitely are longstanding issues with its app like dividing rooms. If that’s the case with your home, I’d return it and get a robot from a different brand as they usually don’t have this issue. I just don’t recommend its flagship sibling model because other robots at the same price do better. As a general statement; Just not all robots are good moppers by virtue as it has a roller mop. The more important thing is how it is implemented. This is also the case with navigation as we’ve seen brands with the same navigation setup of a lidar tower have different results when it comes to navigation. The DJI romo, relying on solid state dToF sensors (like the Saros 10R) and radar appears to be the best navigating robot yet doesn’t have a lidar tower.

This level of navigation has been standard for LiDAR-based robots for at least the last 10 years. Roombas are simply outdated, which is exactly why iRobot ran into serious trouble. I’m using the DJI Romo, and you really have to see its navigation to believe it. It genuinely understands its surroundings. If there are cables on the floor, it doesn’t just avoid them, it follows the cable edge perfectly, even when it’s curved. It hasn’t bumped into a single piece of furniture so far. It’s not perfect, of course, but when it comes to navigation, it’s in a completely different league compared to Roombas and even compared to Roborock, Eufy, or Dreame.

You need one with obstacle avoidance. My DJI Romo never even touches cables.

Hi all, I wanted to share a bit of my experience with robot vacuums, as i've been testing some new models recently and struggled to find the perfect fit for me. Sorry for the very long post :) Hopefully some people will find it interesting! # A bit of history first, as I've been owning those machines for the last 18 years: \- It all started with a **Roomba 541**, kind of an antiquity now with its random bump-and-go navigation, but working great at the time and I kept it a few years. \- Then when the "Lidar" models were raising, i replaced it with a **Neato**, I'm not sure of the model, maybe the D3. Navigation was indeed impressive coming from the old style Roomba, but after a week I noticed that the edges of my rooms was visibly dirty. This models didn't have any side brush and clearly the D-shape main brush was absolutely not picking up dirt at the edges. I was quite disappointed and returned it. \- As I was very happy with the first Roomba and disappointed by the Neato, I decided to go back to iRobot and bought the way too expensive **Roomba 980.** It did a very very good job at cleaning, navigation was clearly not on par with the Neato (as it was a VSLAM navigation), but it did the job and i also kept it a few years. \- Then a new brand emerged, it was called **Roborock** ;) I got the **S5 Max** and it was my first robot vacuum/mop combo. It was absolutely great, so great i even upgraded to the **S7** when it came out. Also a great robot, navigation was very good even if it bumped into many furnitures given its simple IR front sensor. I also got the auto empty dock when it came out a few weeks later, also great, leaving the dustbin and the filter perfectly clean every time. # So happy with the RR S7, but... I kept these robots a few years too, but here it is: the S7 was the top of the line when I bought it, and only a few weeks later, Roborock released the Routine feature... on some lower end new models (Q5/Q7 I think), without releasing it to the S7. I kept resentment towards Roborock since that, as my top of the line model was purely deprecated in a few months, got almost zero updates after that, and never got the Routines. # And here we are in 2025 me being thrilled to see all those new tech on robot vacuums and thinking about upgrading to a model with a fully automated dock. And that's were it become complicated as many of you already know... Being a bit angry with Roborock after the S7-non-update-gate, and seeing that they are on course to release 15 new models every year, so probably not updating and supporting them on the long run, I decided to try another brand. # To understand my choices, here are the most important things i was looking for: \- **A perfect navigation**, and I mean, **perfect**. I have **very high expectations** on this, and I know most of the people will not agree with me as a robot doing its job is "good enough", but I really am obsessed with it (and I'm not saying I'm right), like i can't stand an almost 1k€ robot to even seems to get lost, or touch anything. \- **I love the tech**, and I'm very interested in the sensors and the way the robot navigates and avoid collision. I was eager to try new sensors replacing the traditional Lidar turret for navigation, but of course i was not sure it was going to work well, as well as structured lights, tof and other fancy tech. \- I expect the **auto empty to work perfectly** and the bin to be clean, **as well as the filter** \- **Anti tangle brush** \- **A detergent tank** in the station, i don't want to add that to the water myself \- I want it **white**, I can't with the black robots and especially with the washboard being black, it's impossible to see if it's clean or not \- **I don't want a roller mop** for some reasons, from the maintenance to the complexity of the hardware, or the (imo) bad edge and corner coverage # Things i don't care about: \- Threshold capacity: i don't have any \- Carpet performance: I have only two small carpets \- The ability to leave the mop pads at the station: i never vacuum and mop at the same time I'm probably forgetting things but those are the main kpis. # 1st try: Mova P50 Ultra After watching like hours of robot vacuums reviews and videos, I decided to go with Mova and bought the P50 Ultra + optional detergent tank + tricut brush. I bought this one and not the P50 Pro Ultra because the Pro Ultra was too high to go under my kitchen cabinets. Bought it for €600. To be fair, it was working okay, but: \- Navigation was not so great, it was regularly turning in circle like it needed to position itself quite often, sometimes at the end of a job I noticed on the map that it forgot one or two furnitures legs. Nothing serious but as i explained I have very high expectations on that regards. \- Collision avoidance was good, it was very cautious and the structured light was doing a good job, way less bumping than with the RR S7 (which is expected), but still some bumping \- Also the dustbin was never perfectly clean after an auto empty, the filter was definitely not, and I also noticed some dust getting trapped around the dustbin auto empty port. Defintely not a good design. \- The auto cleaned washboard was great however, always staying clean without having to manually clean anything except the filter from time to time In the end I decided to send it back: i wanted a better navigation and i was very interested by the Starsight system of Roborock. But again, I was still not sure about RR... # 2nd try: Mova P50S Ultra and that's when i discovered the Mova P50S Ultra which was using (apparently) the same system and sensors as the Saros 10R. Bought it for €799. It was a nightmare: i think the hardware was good, with the same auto empty flaws than the P50 Ultra however, but the software is just crap imo. It was bumping into furnitures the P50 Ultra was avoiding correcly, taking forever to clean, and just seemed sooooo dumb. It also has a small wheel at the back that was bumping into the floor when the robot go on a carpet, making a horrible sound everytime. Returned it the next day. At that time I thought: you know what, let's trust RR again... # 3rd try: RR Saros 10R and I bought the Saros 10R for €850 (black friday). New mistake! \- Didn't like the color (but i knew it beforehand), however the glossy dock was really horrible with fingerprints \- The removable washboard seems like a dated and inefficient design when compared to the Mova washboard which i liked a lot \- Auto empty not great, filter still not cleaned well \- It did a bit better at navigation and collision avoidance than the P50S Ultra with the same sensors so definitely a better software, but far from perfect, and it was still bumping some furniture, and bumping hard! I was so disappointed... I sent it back. # So what do we do now So you're thinking what the f, he sends every thing back and that's true, I was a bit tired of this. That's when i heard about the **DJI Romo** that just came out in Europe. I was instantly sold by the navigation they promised, I looked at many videos, including chinese ones as there was few videos in europe at the time, and mostly by influencers that don't know nothing about robot vacuum. At that time i also considered the **Narwal flow**, but i didn't want the roller mop as I said, plus i found the navigation pretty bad (by my standards) in the videos i saw. However i give them credit for designing/engineering something different: dock design, dustbin design, omnidirectional wheel... some things are clearly made differently compared to Roborock/Dreame/Mova... That's also what I liked about DJI, they seemd to have designed something different and I liked that. Also I thought that maybe - just maybe - given their reputation, they will support the robot longer, update it and not launch 15 new models in the next couple months. But only time will tell. # 4th and last: DJI Romo S I bought the Romo S version as i was not ready to pay the crazy amount they ask for the transparent one. To be honest the regular price of the S version at €1299 is also way too high. I bought it at black friday for €799 which was a correct price imo. First one arrived with a broken wheel - with all the robots I bought, I'm not surprised I finally got a bad unit! Sent it back and DJI sent a replacement the next day, **very efficient customer support**. I'm now using it since two weeks and it's been absolutely great, I'm finally so happy with my robovac! \- **Navigation has been flawless**, really meet my expectations: it's just perfect. On a video I saw, i heard that it was "like it's flying on the floor", and I can't agree more. It never need to reposition itself, the lines are perfectly straight, it never miss a furniture leg. Plus it's using the solid state lidars that i was looking for (two rgb cameras + 4 lidars on the front, one lidar on the back). \- **Collision (and obstacle) avoidance is also absolutely great**, it doesn't touch a thing where the Saros 10R and Mova P50S where bumping. Also meet my expectations. \- There is a **mesh prefilter protecting the filter** in the dustbin, I think Narwal does that too. Thank you! The filter stays way more clean. \- The dustbin/auto empty design is way better i think, very different design, **it's emptying perfectly** without leaving any residue in the way to the dock. \- The washboard design is reminding me of the Mova one, very good, stays clean, with the bonus of not having a filter to clean, again a different design than on the other brands. \- Vacuuming performance has been great, as well as mopping, no complains on that \- Sure **the app misses some features**, but nothing that has troubled me, we'll see if they update it in the near future, I surely hope so. The app design is very polished with beautiful animations, I like that. \- And... **it's cute**, I don't know, I just like the overall design and in particular the front sensors which give it a sort of "cute animal" face. \--- I'm of course not writing all this to say that this one is the better one for everyone, **but it is for me** and I know i don't have the same expectations as many. It's been truly tiring to try all those models and to see that the **high end models, costing so much, has become so bad on some aspects.** Hope this will be useful for some people, and happy to answer any question regarding the DJI Romo as there are not so much reviews and videos out there for now! **If you read it until here... congrats and thank you!** I'll probably update later as i surely forgot some things. And I'm french so sorry for my english :) Some pics of my Romo: https://preview.redd.it/tpb8tx3de85g1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a92cb8ab943256dfac585ce4c0afd2154b63a80b https://preview.redd.it/pka2bu3de85g1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=251c90f6a46b2c5c9b78ff98282e477157cdf1c3 https://preview.redd.it/ycrxtt3de85g1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66067595033a0dc97d9029020f02ab297776a64c https://preview.redd.it/dzljfu3de85g1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c2f7e3853572ccd188e74d2fc3df8e11408cde6d https://preview.redd.it/vk96xt3de85g1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c2a1624ecbd5fb4f13971d1ccccf34c8bdb9b5a3 https://preview.redd.it/7vz1zy3de85g1.jpg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1348971e762a83e1e574f0c318134b19c4509bb0 https://preview.redd.it/w0ug0u3de85g1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f527bcec9e4c84810f4fc2e18d32e70dd2ef8d9e

Sometimes, when they fix the airflow problem, their brush design is subpar, resulting in poor vacuuming. Examples are DJI Romo or Ecovacs with Blast.

Not just the AIRFLOW but also better Brush design and cleaning head design. Frickhelm has tested Ecovacs T50 Max Pro and DJI Romo, which were advertised as having 18 to 20 l/s airflow, which translates to roughly 40 CFM airflow, but carpet performance is meh because of the bad main brush and cleaning head design, and also a smaller dustbin. Actually, a specialized robot performs better than a combo robot because the components inside don't fight for internal space. But, apparently, people prefer a combo robot for simplicity and a lower price.

That's because to suck up debris you also need an airflow. Today's robot vacuum increases the suction number by reducing the width of the inlet, which also reduces the airflow number because airflow relates to air volume and suction to air pressure. Many deep carpet upright vacuum cleaners have a lower Pascal number measured at the head but a higher CFM number for this purpose. Also, the design of the main brush and cleaning head affects the cleaning performance too, especially in a low-power vacuum found in a robovac.

Between the **Dreame X50 Ultra** and the **DJI Romo S** at roughly the same price, I’d personally pick the **X50** for real-world cleaning performance. A few reasons: **• Cleaning power is stronger** — Dreame’s suction + mop system is objectively better for everyday dust, pet hair, and spills on most floor types. DJI’s robotics brains are solid, but their vacuum/mop setup isn’t tuned as deeply. **• Mapping and navigation are more proven** — Dreame’s SLAM + lidar + obstacle avoidance combo has been refined across many generations. DJI’s navigation is accurate, but in the vacuum space it hasn’t translated to consistently smooth runs yet. **• Support and parts availability are simpler** — Dreame has a bigger install base in Europe/UK, so things like replacement brushes, docks, and local support tend to be easier. If you’ve already had hit-or-miss flagships and are after *actual cleaning results*, the X50 is the safer pick.

Suction numbers on paper don’t equal real-world cleaning. Pa is measured at the motor, not at the floor, and it ignores airflow, brush design, sealing, navigation, and how often the robot actually keeps contact with carpet or edges. DJI clearly has great engineering chops, but in day-to-day use the X50’s cleaning consistency, mapping maturity, and dock automation are more proven right now. That’s what my comment was based on, not a spec sheet.

Too many BETTER players in the market. Roborock, Narwal, Dreame etc. Even startups and DJI's first robot vacuum was better than any Roomba in the last decade