Roborock - S4 Max

I’ve had my roborock s4 max for years and I love the thing.

upvoting this. Love my roborock, just bought a second. My S4 Max has been going strong for like 3-4 years now, hell, maybe longer.

I like the Roborock brand. I bought a S4 Max 4 years ago and it still works. Recently I bought a Q10 S5+ (wet mop and vac) and it's working pretty good.  My first robovac was a Eufy 11S in 2019. It was a good entry level robovac (~$100) but frequently got stuck around the house. I still have it and it still works, surprisingly, but the battery needs to be replaced; it only has about 20 mins of life at max suction. I frequent this website for reviews and testing of the robovacs https://vacuumwars.com/vacuum-wars-best-robot-vacuums/ 

It's tied to an app but can run over your local network without an internet connection. There actually is an open source project called Valetudo that you can use to run your own server to manage it, but it only supports certain models. I have used it successfully with my Roborock S4 Max, there is a list of supported models on the site. https://valetudo.cloud/

Just picked up an Dreame L40 Ultra so our aging Roborock S4 Max can move to our basement. The perks being Valetudo support, swinging side brush, swinging mop arm, amongst the normal luxuries of auto water refill and auto empty. We still have cleaning people come for "deep cleans" beyond touching the floor but for two working parents with a puppy and two kids, this thing runs every days with weekly mops and is a MASSIVE improvement over our S4 Max. My wife is a neat freak, so she would clean after the S4 ran out of habit anyway and I've noticed her not doing it now with the L40. It also runs quieter, which is awesome so doing a run at night, plus a run after meals is easy. I am working on looping automations into my presence detection to get it to run every time we are far enough away from the house for it to do a complete cycle. Does it have more suction than our whole house vacuum? No. Is it better at mopping than our cleaning people? Also no. Is it better than my wife with our mini vacuum. Also no. But it running when we aren't around or aware makes up for all of that.

Roborock S4 Max - Ordered 09/2021 and it's been running 3+ times a day (1 full house run at least) for the entirety of it's ownership. I've just not retired it to secondary floor duty (finished basement) for a Dreame L40 Ultra. My biggest issue isn't the vacuum itself, you can source parts for it (for the most parts) and I'm talking more than just consumables like the brush, filters, and arm bristles, like wheels for instance. However I took really good care of it. I cleaned everything out, and I mean took the vacuum apart to fully clean out the entirety of its internal parts, where hair and dust really build up, pretty much 2-4 times a year. I truly think that makes the difference. > Warning, rant ahead My issue with Roborock, or the actual company, Xiaomi, or really any vacuum in general. Why does issuing a command to my vacuum need to hit a cloud server before my vacuum? Why does saying "clean the kitchen" require an internet connection? Firmware updates, sure, phone home all you want. Processing images for a AI whatever? If I have that enabled, by all means, I don't expect a vacuum to be a hardware-accelerated processing unit. I run Home Assistant, I looked into Valetudo, invested in a Dreame and took it all offline. I'm digressing majorly from what you asked but I always think it needs to be said. Hardwarewise, I think iRobot still sells parts directly for their first-released robot vacuum. In my experience, I could source cheap knockoff parts for my Roborock/Xiaomi vacuum from Amazon / Aliexpress.

Roborock S4 Max - still doing the job.

s4 max still going strong - 4-5 years. Named it notMax, after dog named Max.

Yeah it was definitely a steep price. I hesitated for a bit but ended up caving on the last day of the Prime Day sale. I was using the Roborock S4 Max before (vacuum only) and it worked great for years, but I got tired of the daily upkeep and it didn’t do well with long hair. I also had my eye on the QX Revo from Costco for $579.99. It looked like a solid deal and was my second choice, but it was sold out when I was ready to buy.

I was using the Roborock S4 Max that’s under $400 before the upgrade :)

I bought a Roborock S4 back in 2020 and it still works great. I maintained it regularly but now Roborock stopped selling the main brush replacements so I need to try 3rd party. If I'd known ahead of time, I could've bought in bulk but I guess 5 years is a long time for a robot vacuum anyway

S4 running daily for 5 years and Max running daily for a year.

Also have an s8 with vibrarise. I’ve read that the super “in” dual rotating mops aren’t proven to be better than vibrarise. What I will say is that I think mops on robot vacuums are still a “maintainer/extender” feature than a true mop up stains type of feature. If you manually mop, the s8 will make it so you have to do it less often. It’s not a replacement for that first initial manual mop. Besides that, I’ve enjoyed the s8 as it was an upgrade from my original s4. Obstacle avoidance is pretty good, although, I’m just used to tidying up before running it now a days.

I have a 9 month old so everything you said applies to me… I will say I haven’t checked on the ramp thing but the s8+ I bought last year works very well. It goes over the mats. The reason I bought it was because I wanted better than obstacle avoidance. I was coming from an S4 (not max) which had none. This does a good job, is self empty and does mop too. The mop is a vibrating mop bit the spin type of a revo. This doesn’t bother me as robot mopping still isn’t great no matter what you get, until you’re shelling out $1500+. Even then, I don’t think mopping tech has “matured yet”. I ultimately would just recommend a robot vacuum that has good obstacle avoidance as you just don’t want it to get stuck places since you’re spending time with your kiddo and not worrying about cleaning/picking up as much