Table of Contents
Roborock has been a dominant force in the robot vacuum market for several years, and the S8 represents the company's best work to date. With a dual rubber brush system, a sonic mopping module, and 6000Pa suction power, it promises to clean both hard floors and carpets better than most competitors at the same price point.
After several weeks of daily cleaning in a 120m² home with two dogs, hard floors, and area rugs, here's our detailed Roborock S8 review.
Design & Build Quality
The Roborock S8 is a circular robot vacuum with a lidar navigation tower on top. It's available in white only. The build quality is excellent — it feels solid and premium, with no cheap plastics or rattling components. The dustbin is located at the rear and easy to empty.
The mopping module attaches magnetically to the underside and houses a 300ml water tank. The sonic vibrating mop pad oscillates at 3000 times per minute, providing active scrubbing rather than simply dragging a damp cloth. The mop can be physically lifted when the robot detects carpet, preventing wet carpets — a genuine improvement over older designs.
Vacuuming Performance
The dual rubber brush design is a significant upgrade over bristle brushes. Rubber brushes don't tangle with hair — both human and pet — which means less frequent maintenance. In testing, the main brush remained clean throughout a week of daily cleaning in a pet household, whereas bristle brushes typically need cleaning every 1–3 days in similar conditions.
At 6000Pa suction, the S8 is genuinely powerful. It picked up fine dust, pet dander, and larger debris with equal effectiveness across tile, hardwood, and low-pile carpet. On medium-pile carpet, it required a couple of passes to fully clean but ultimately performed well. It's not ideal for thick shag carpet, but that's true of all robot vacuums.
Edge cleaning is solid — the side brush pushes debris toward the main brush effectively, and the robot makes deliberate passes along walls and under furniture edges.
Mopping Performance
Mopping is where the Roborock S8 differentiates itself from basic combo vacuums. The VibraRise system actively scrubs the floor in a side-to-side motion, which genuinely removes stuck-on residue rather than just spreading it around. After several passes with the S8, our hardwood floors were noticeably cleaner compared to a simpler mop attachment.
The auto carpet detection works reliably — on encountering a rug, the robot lifts the mop pad about 5mm to avoid wetting it. In our testing, it correctly identified every rug without fail.
The 300ml water tank is sufficient for most apartments. For larger homes (150m²+), you may need a mid-run refill if mopping the whole home in one pass. The water level is adjustable in the app — from barely damp to quite wet, depending on your floor type.
Navigation & Mapping
Roborock uses PreciSense LiDAR navigation, which creates an accurate map of your home. The initial mapping run takes about 45 minutes for a medium home, and the result is impressively precise. You can label rooms, set cleaning zones, set no-go zones, and specify which rooms to clean in which order — all from the app.
Obstacle avoidance uses a front-facing structured light sensor to detect and avoid low objects. It successfully avoided cables, chair legs, and dog toys in our testing, though it occasionally bumped into very dark objects (a known limitation of structured light systems on dark surfaces).
App & Smart Home Integration
The Roborock app is among the best in the category. It displays your live map during cleaning, lets you direct the robot to specific rooms or zones with a tap, and shows cleaning statistics. Scheduling is flexible — different rooms on different days is easy to configure.
For Home Assistant users, the Roborock integration is excellent. It exposes the full map, room selection, zone cleaning, and status monitoring to HA. You can create automations like "clean the kitchen when everyone leaves the house" with just a few clicks.
Alexa and Google Home are both supported for basic voice commands (start, stop, return to dock).
Our Verdict: 9/10
The Roborock S8 is one of the best robot vacuum mop combos on the market in 2025. The dual rubber brush system eliminates hair tangles, the sonic mopping genuinely cleans, and the navigation is class-leading. For mixed hard floor and carpet homes, especially with pets, it's a near-ideal solution. The main competition comes from the Dreame L20 Ultra's superior self-emptying and cleaning station — but the S8 is significantly more affordable.
Roborock S8 Robot Vacuum and Mop
Dual rubber brush, 6000Pa suction, sonic mopping with auto carpet lift. Outstanding performance for mixed floor homes.
Check Price on AmazonSmartWired participates in the Amazon Associates Programme. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.