Roborock Q7 M5 Review: What a 150 Dollar Robot Vacuum Actually Gets You

Robot vacuums used to be a rich person toy. The Roborock Q7 M5 is currently selling for about 150 dollars, down from its 229.99 list price, and after three weeks of letting it roam my apartment I understand why reviewers keep calling it the best budget bot of the year.

Suction that embarrasses pricier bots

The headline spec is 10,000Pa of suction, and independent testing puts its measured pull among the strongest ever recorded in this class. What that means on my floor: rice, coffee grounds and the endless dust that Saigon traffic pushes through my windows are simply gone in one pass. On hard floors I honestly cannot find anything it misses.

Navigation is the other surprise. It uses a proper LiDAR turret, builds an accurate map of the apartment on the first run, and cleans in tidy rows instead of bouncing around like cheap bots do. Roborock claims 150 minutes of battery, and it covers my whole place with more than half a charge to spare.

Where the budget shows

Now the honest part. There is no obstacle avoidance camera, so anything smaller than furniture is fair game. It ate a phone cable in week one and dragged a sock halfway across the living room. You learn to do a thirty second floor sweep before starting it, which slightly defeats the point of a robot.

The mopping is basic. It is a damp pad dragged behind the vacuum, and it tends to leave floors wetter than it should. Fine for dust film, useless for real stains, and it will not lift the pad over carpet. If you have rugs, take the pad off. Hair also wraps around the brush more than average, so anyone with long hair or a shedding dog will be cutting hair off the roller weekly.

The 400ml dustbin fills fast too. There is a version with a self-empty dock, the Q7 M5 Plus, and if the budget stretches I would take that upgrade before any other.