Roborock Q7 Max+ Vacuum with Auto Empty Dock – day 5
You may recall my love of Rhonda, the Roborock S7 that I’ve written about on and off for a year as it was the first robot vacuum that just did what I wanted.
While the Q7 Max+ is not the direct successor to the S7 (which I believe is the S7 MaxV Ultra,) for the price and features it is comparable with the S7 & Dock, with a much upgraded suction (4200PA on the Q7 Max+ vs 2500PA on the S7,) and is a carpet cleaning beast.
Being the carpet cleaning beast comes at the expense of the S7’s vibrating lift mop pad, but also saves a few hundred dollars on the unit.
The Q7 Max+ has your standard drag mop system, which doesn’t work particularly well for my use cases because every 5 feet there seems to have to be a carpet over my nice hardwood because reasons I cannot understand.
For the first week I’ve sequestered the Q7 Max+ to my upstairs, which was previously in the realm of another vacuum that only supported Alexa, but did a good job other than that one time it forgot Alexa, the network, etc.
This is not a complete review obviously. This is five days in and when there’s enough for another review I’ll link it at the end.
Setup
There’s not a lot different in setups with this and any other puck vac with an auto empty dock. You screw in about six screws with an included screwdriver to build the dock tower, plug in a power cord, remove 6 or so strips of tape, slap on a mop pad and fill with water if you’re using it as a mop, charge.
Grab the Roborock app, add the unit, run a quick mapping and get your house looked at quickly without waiting for a clean to complete. You can set to multi-floor houses and save I believe three different maps. I’ll be trying this out this next week and seeing how The Q7 Max+ does on Rhonda’s turf, but that’s for another time.
I had previously associated my Roborock account with Google Home, so that *should* have picked it right up and worked, but I happened to be attempting to get the Assistant aspects up during a several hour period where Google was not working and had not really broadcast they were not working.
I blamed Roborock at first, but then realized I couldn’t get any of my third party devices to work… whatever… was not Roborock’s fault. The app worked perfectly and had for a bit.
3D maps now
There are 3D maps now and I’m not entirely sure this is particularly useful. You can see above the first two pictures are the 3D maps it made, and then you can edit them and put things like a bed or tables or a TV stand in and sort of view things in a slightly cooler view, but it doesn’t really produce them. I put in some things to make it look more like the room I know, but the options for items are limited. I could not make a table of the right proportions for a bed table. Oh well.
You can see in the third gallery picture above between the desk and the couch there appears to be a large stack of something probably 3 feet high. That particular piece of blockage is an Amazon Fire Kids edition tablet sitting on top of a 2″ high box. There’s also a box of crayons (12 pack) there so maybe 4-5 inches high.
Not putting this down, just noting that the Roborock Q7 Max+ is short and anything at “eye level” appears to become a column.
So, neat at the moment, just not feeling the 3D maps add much… at least from what I’ve discovered so far. I do not see why this can’t retroactively be added to other Roborock products, but maybe I’m missing something.
Quick mapping initiated
I did a quick map. My upstairs isn’t large, but it’s quick robot-unfriendly. However it’s something all the puck vacs I’ve reviewed have handled. I believe the Q7 Max+ managed to get it mapped in under 3 minutes, but it was quick. No hangups, no jams, nothing that had been the experience of older vacuums attempts to map and clean. Quick mapping is awesome.
And then we had the first run
I started up the Roborock Q7 Max+ and it did something no robot vacuum ever has – it tangled in a taut ethernet cable that runs along the floor and no vacuum ever has had a problem driving over. It attacked that cable, pulled it loose, and jammed. Repeated attempts it did the same.
I had to tape down/build a ramp over the cable.
I’m entirely unsure whether this was because this vacuum was doing a worse job, or a better job than others at navigating obstacles and vacuuming.
It went into an area it had avoided mapping previously that I didn’t think it could get to, climbing up over a mat that it had avoided, off-roading right into my curtains where it got stuck.
Into the bathroom where it picked up an absurdly light rug, pushed it into the door locking itself into the bathroom.
Bumped into a bag on the wall, managed to dislodge a string that held the bag closed, sucked the string up and had to be dislodged.
I only mention these things because the previous vacuums up here, none of them managed the amount of mischief this one got up to on the first run.
I point this all out because, well, it happened. I banned it from the bathroom because it doesn’t need to be in there due to that rug. Taped down the cable, moved the bag, and set a no-go zone near my curtains because they *should* have been a problem for all the previous vacuums but somehow weren’t.
I was annoyed, but it wasn’t the fault of the Q7 Max+. Several runs since and no issues. It got all its crazy out on day one.
The eww?
I’d run the previous 4000PA vacuum before sending it to pasture (living with my boss for a bit,) and the Q7 Max+ shouldn’t have had a lot of cleaning to do and shouldn’t have that big of a vacuum increase with only 200 more the PAs, but first real run it did.
There’s a lot more to how good a vacuum works than PA… there’s the dislodging dirt from the carpet part as well as the suction part. There’s how much volume of air is moved as well. Whatever the case is in a PA to PA showdown the Q7 Max+ beat something similar hands down.
The amount of air that shoots out the back of this will blow an empty coke can several inches on a carpet as it passes by. Yeah, I missed the recycling bin while it was running and that happened.
What have I not tested yet? (getting to it I swear)
- Custom routines such as after meals
- mopping
- 7 week claims of not having to empty
- 3 hour runtime
- Multi level mapping
Overall
I’m five days in and only subjected it to carpet and found it’s dang good as a carpet vacuum. I was annoyed on first run but have not been afterward. I suspect highly based on previous product that I will like the vacuum, but don’t trust a review at five days.
You can find the Roborock Q7 Max+ on Amazon, Roborock’s store.
If you’re not particularly interested in the tower / 7 weeks of not having to deal with emptying a dust bin, you can save about $270 as of this writing not getting the tower.
