Review: Roborock Q10V+ robot vacuum, small footprint, big clean

We have reviewed many robot vacuums here at EFTM in recent times, and there is a reason for that—there are so many across a wide range of price points.  

We all love a flagship, premium device, but often, our budget doesn’t extend that far. Sometimes, it does, but we are sceptical that the premium model is not twice as good as the model that is half its price, and often, it is not. This is where the Roborock Q10V+ comes in.

The Q10V+ is designed to offer flagship-level performance at a much more affordable price of RRP $1,299. I’ve been testing it out for a week or so now and have been quite impressed with it, not just for the features it includes but also for its small footprint.

Design

These days, all robot vacuums look virtually identical, at least from the top. The Q10V+ is no different.  

Underneath is where you will notice a difference between this and one of the $3-4,000 robot vacuums.  Instead of the dual main brush anti-tangle system we have seen on recent Roborock vacuums, this has a single main brush.  Now it stands to reason that this *should* pick up more hair and get tangled, because that’s how so many other single brushes have behaved in the past.  Not this one.

I’ve had this vacuum going all over my floor, including the long-haired rugs and yet when I turned it over tonight there was not a single hair wrapped around the brush.  Roborock call the main brush a “spiral-designed rubber floating main brush” and I’m not sure what form of wizardry they’ve done but hasn’t tangled yet.  I’ve had vacuums that cost twice as much get tangled more than this.

The mopping pad is a single detachable pad that glides across the hard surface to mop the floor clean.  The pad does more than just glide through – it applies more than 6N of pressure to the floor while vibrating at 3000 times/minute.  You can alter the amount of water that flows onto the pad depending on how deep/thorough you need your mopping to be.

Rather than having the dock fill the vacuum with water, you need to do this yourself. You need to lift the lid of the rear of the vacuum to remove the water tank and refill it manually. It wasn’t easy removing the lid, and every single time I did it, I thought I was going to snap it off. I didn’t, but it was not easy—Roborock needs to make that easier somehow.  

I have a large area that it mops and I had to refill it each time I mopped – not a huge issue but remember if your floor is particularly dirty you really should wash the mopping pad every time or two as well.

The dock

The dock that arrives with the Q10V+ is the RockDock Plus self-emptying dock, which can store up to seven weeks of dust. It is small, lightweight, and incredibly basic, and I love it.

The dock is nothing fancy, and that’s what I love about it and this entire system. It simply is somewhere for the vacuum to dock (funny that) and charge and also where it empties its dust bin. This is how the original robot vacuums functioned, but this one is different because it is a fraction of the size of the older docking stations.

The dock is incredibly small and that is great – and possibly the Q10V+’s best feature.  I’ve set up robot vacuums at my parents and my in-laws’ houses, and each time I have struggled to find a spot big enough against a wall for the multifunction dock to sit.  This dock solves that problem.  

Sure, it doesn’t refill the water tank automatically, nor clean the mopping pad for you, but cry me a river, first world problems and all that.  That is a minor inconvenience for those with limited space.  

How well does it clean?

The Roborock Q10V+ has 10,000Pa of suction power, which sounds impressive compared to vacuums from years past. Not anymore, though. The last Roborock robot vacuum I reviewed had a suction power of 18,500Pa, but then that was twice the price of this one.

The Q10V+ cleans the floor well, but you’ll notice that it does not get quite as deep a clean on my carpets as the premium vacuums do.  It takes an extra pass or two to get stubborn spills and dirt from carpets but you can set that easily in the app.  

Hard floor cleaning though is great.  10,000Pa of suction is enough to pick up nearly all dirt, dust and spills on the first pass.  If you have a floor that is predominantly hard flooring then this vacuum will suffice for cleaning but for carpets you do have a small compromise.  

For more stubborn spills onto carpets I just set the Q10V+ to go over the area more than once, at max power and the floor ended up clean.  You just notice that the flooring doesn’t seem as well vacuumed as a higher suction vacuum.  It will not be cleaned as deeply into the carpet.  This is the compromise you make for a cheaper robot vacuum.

The app

The app and functionality operate exactly the same as they do in all other Roborock vacuums—for the features that they include. The Q10V+ does not include the new AI features included in a more expensive vacuum such as the Roborock QREVO Edge.

It still includes PreciSense LiDAR navigation for fast, detailed maps of your home.  While creating these maps, it also determines the most efficient route to cover your home, as most other robot vacuums already do.  The mapping was incredibly fast and once again I was very happy with that given the issues I used to have with the slow mapping of robot vacuums of yesteryear.

The app gives you the option to save more than one map, on more than one floor.

Within the app, you also determine how the vacuum will handle the movement from a hard floor onto carpet, what direction you want the floor cleaned (some may want it to clean “along the floor direction”), and whether you want to use AI Obstacle Avoidance.

AI Obstacle Avoidance worked well, eventually.  You see, Roborock protect all these glass/plastic windows with clear film that you need to remove before they work properly.  It seems I missed the film on the front window that shoots out the obstacle avoidance technology.  That explains why it got caught in the charging cable one day and then for the few days after removing the film it didn’t get stuck again, even though I put the cable in the same place.  

Who buys the Roborock Q10V+?

 The Roborock Q10V+ is a vacuum that is not just compact but also a lot cheaper than many other robot vacuums on the market. The dock is nothing fancy, but empties the dustbin regularly.

It cleans relatively well but I would suggest using a two-pass clean as a minimum if vacuuming or mopping up any specific spills. For a routine clean though, a single pass works just fine. The app is well thought out and offers enough manual settings without getting too complicated.

If you are on a tight budget or simply do not have much room in your house for one of the robot vacuums with the bigger docks (the comprehensive docks) then this could be the robot vacuum for you.

The Roborock Q10V+ is available now across Roborock Australia’s official retail channels, including the Roborock’s Official OnlineStore and Participating Authorised Retailers for RRP: $1,299 AUD.