- Roborock has launched 3 new robot vacuums at CES 2025
- All have slimline designs that let them clean under low furniture
- The Saros 10 has a navigation puck that pops up and down
Roborock has launched a new fleet of robovacs at CES 2025. The Saros 10, Saros 10R and Saros Z70 are being pitched as joint flagship models, and all sport the latest-and-greatest robot vacuum tech the brand has to offer.
The one that’ll probably turn the most heads is the Saros Z70, because it has a big robotic pincer arm attached, but I’d like to also turn your attention to the Saros 10 and 10R. Neither are quite as flashy (a robovac with limbs is a high bar), but both sport some quietly innovative features of their own – and perhaps of the kind that are more immediately useful to more people.
Specifically: neither has the the fixed, raised central puck that you’ll find on most of today’s best robot vacuums. That means they both have a relatively short profile and thus can clean places that are off-limits to those other, taller robots. The most obvious example is the space underneath low-sitting furniture, which tends to go unvacuumed and as a result, can be a bit of a dust and dirt hotspot.
Let me back up a bit. The most popular methods of robot vacuum navigation requires a raised puck in the center of the machine. For most bots, this is for LiDAR, but in Roborock’s case, it’s used for a system called LDS (Laser Distance Sensors). In both cases, the puck helps the bots to ‘see’ a more complete view of their surroundings. But it also adds height.
The means by which Roborock has achieved this low-profile design is completely different on the 10R and the 10. The 10R still uses the tried-and-tested LDS system for mapping, and in fact it still has a central puck – except this time, it’s retractable.
The puck is designed to sense when it’s entering a reduced-height area, retreat back inside the bot (taking it down to a slimline height of a smidge under 8cm), and then pop right out again when height permits. The LDR puck, meanwhile, has an upward ToF (time-of-flight) sensor that emits an extra laser beam to detect the height of low spaces. It also houses a wide-angle vision module that Roborock says helps with accuracy of mapping and means the robovac is much less likely to get lost when the puck is in its hidden, shy-turtle state.
Overall, the brand promises a bot with excellent spatial awareness, which can “navigate complex environments with ease”. And that includes confidently venturing into the dusty depths beneath your sofa.
Starry eyed
The Saros 10R doesn’t have a puck at all – popup or no – and that’s because it doesn’t use LDS. Instead, it makes use of an entirely new type of navigation called StarSight, and it made its debut on the Roborock Qrevo Slim, which was announced at IFA 2024. It’s the same height as a puck-down Saros 10 robot vacuum – 7.98cm.
Exactly how StarSight works remains something of a mystery to me – like many robovac navigation systems, it relies on sensors and cameras, and this time it’s combined with an added helping of AI for accurate object identification and avoidance. The key to the precise mapping and navigation here is that is uses a sampling frequency that’s 21x higher than LDS uses.
Flagship specs
The navigation method is the key difference between the Saros 10R and the 10, which otherwise are extremely similar. In fact, they’re also very similar to the Saros Z70, with the exception of that big robotic arm.
Other special features on both Saros bots include a frankly stupid 22,000Pa of suction, which I’d estimate is roughly enough to suck up my whole flat, and a rubber roller that’s split in the middle, to allow hair to escape through the gap and into the trash. These features alone have me eyeing these models up for a potential spot on our best robot vacuums for pet hair list.
At time of writing, pricing details haven’t been released, but Roborock says both bots will cost exactly the same. That means the customer can make their own call as to whether they prefer the tried-and-tested LDS navigation – which, it should be noted, has performed consistently well on all the Roborock robot vacuums we’ve tried it on – or the newer, fancier, altogether more appealingly named StarSight.
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