Qrevo Slim

Just to set some context, our family has soft of become robot vacuum aficionados. We’ve owned various makes and models of all kinds including the original old school roomba that randomly bumped around blind, and have used more recent lidar models from Shark and Dreame too. Our current workhorse is the Roborock Qrevo slim that we’ve had for a little under a year. The Qrevo slim has been really great for the most part, so we were excited to try out the flagship Saros, but also skeptical about how much better it would really be vs our current robo vac….bottom line, after just a few weeks of welcoming the Saros 20 into our home, I’m fairly confident I can say this has to be one of the greatest robot vacuums ever made, hands down..... Pros: - I’ll start with off with newest and most hyped feature of the Saros 20, the climbing ability….in case you were wondering, this is NOT just a half baked marketing gimmick. In our house, we have a marble threshold for one of our bathrooms that no robot vacuum has ever managed to overcome. Our current Qrevo Slim came the closest, managing to get half its head over the hump, but that’s it. All other robots have similar outcomes, they attempt jump the barrier but ultimately gave up after 2-3 min. The Saros 20 is the ONLY vacuum that has been able to climb over, consistently, every time (I can post a video if there's any interest). We didn’t own the Saros 10R (the previous flagship that the 20 replaced), but still pretty certain that the Saros 20 still climbs better because it has new hardware. It doesn’t just lift the main wheels higher like the old model, the 20 actually includes additional hardware in the form of new support legs that extend out to lift up the whole bot. Huge win, if you robo vac struggles to get over bigger barriers in your house…. - The obstacle recognition on the Saros 20 is light years ahead of our current Qrevo Slim…this was honestly the biggest surprise. I will just say it outright, the navigation/obstacle avoidance on the Slim, and basically every vac we’ve had, just outright suck. The was our biggest gripe with our current vacuum because somehow, it performed worse than the Roomba that didn’t even have lidar or camera. I could never just run the robot without clearing out the floor first and picking up every hazard, b/c if there was even a single cord or hand towel on the floor, the robot got stuck almost every time. On top of that, at the end of the map run, I would review the photos and description of the obstacles and it was sooo far off, like all the time....it would report with 80% certainty that my plastic storage container lid was a bathroom scale and 80% sure that my shoe was a mop.... Like, what? I get that some things look similar, but then don't report an 80% confidence interval lol. The Saros 20 has starsight 2.0, vs the slim that had starsight 1, so not sure if that's the real innovation. I didn't own the Saros 10R so I can't say how much better the 20 is vs that model, but it's exponentially better than our Qrevo slim. The Saros 20 is basically perfect at recognizing cords, and tip toeing around obstacles. It’s the only vacuum that I've ACTUALLY set and forget, no joke. - The app is fantastic....same app as the QRevo slim, so I thought nothing new to report here. BUT, in fact, huge surprise, the Saros 20 has an additional ability that fixes one of the biggest complaints that I had with the app, which is the ability to tell the robot to ONLY vacuum first, and then ONLY mop after, which is awesome. With our old QRevo slim, the only way to get it to do that was to create a custom routine...this takes forever and makes it a pain to clean room x, y, and z or whatever combo of ad-hoc rooms you want, on the fly. So glad they fixed it, but it’s a head scratcher why they didn’t update the old robots to also have this function, because its literally just a software update….. Cons: - None, really….I mean battery life could be a little better? It’s heavier, and has new hardware in the climbing arms, so this could explain the slightly worse run time performance, but honestly it’s not a huge difference vs the last model, and still better than industry average. For most homes that aren’t mansions, I’m guessing it won’t even be noticeable. The website also advertises 212 F boiling hot water cleaning....eh, it's definitely hotter than the Slim, which was lukewarm/slightly above room temp at best, but boiling water cleaning seems like a bit of a stretch. The residual water in the tray after a first clean though is def warm/hottish to the touch. - Price? Let's not kids ourselves, this thing isn't cheapbat 2x the price of the slim. Even as good as it is, not sure that it's 2x as good as the Slim.... But it's really close.... At least 1.6x better. - All in all, I can't believe how much better this robo vac vs our Slim....it really is basically perfect. Before I got it, it would have been hard to convince me in the value of buying an ultra premium tier robo vac like the Saros 20, vs a high end robo vac like our old Qrevo….but this vacuum addresses basically every shortcoming that we’ve ever had with the slim and other robo vacuums, and I can say hands down, it’s worth it. I can see other flagship bots being as good, but tough to see how another robot could be better. We finally have a TRULY automated, hands off, set it and forget it robot now. Curious, people that had a 10R, if the obstacle avoidance was good too? This is light years better than our Slim but not sure how much improvement you'll see coming from a 10R.....