{"id":9125,"date":"2021-11-25T05:37:39","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T05:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/TheNextWeb=1374073"},"modified":"2021-11-25T05:37:39","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T05:37:39","slug":"the-roborock-s7-changed-my-mind-about-robot-vacuums-in-tiny-apartments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=9125","title":{"rendered":"The Roborock S7 changed my mind about robot vacuums in tiny apartments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/themes\/cyberdelia\/assets\/img\/placeholder\/bg-1.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>If you\u2019d told me a year ago that I\u2019d come to love a robot vacuum cleaner, I would\u2019ve laughed at you. And yet that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happened with the $650 <a href=\"https:\/\/us.roborock.com\/pages\/roborock-s7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Roborock S7<\/a>, a combined vacuum cleaner and mop. It is one of the few gadgets I\u2019ve tested lately that I can actually say made my life better.<\/p>\n<h3>I was a robovac skeptic<\/h3>\n<p>I don\u2019t know about you, but I find it hard to work when the house is a mess.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been a remote worker since well before the pandemic, which means my office is my home. Living in the typical tiny NYC apartment, that also means I don\u2019t have a dedicated room just for work stuff \u2014 so mess in the home means a mess in my workspace. It doesn\u2019t help that my girlfriend and I have a dog and a cat, with any number of foster pets running around depending on the season (currently, that\u2019s two extra kittens). I normally start my days by cleaning, so anything that could help would be a godsend, but I didn\u2019t think a robot vacuum would be useful.<\/p>\n<p>See, I understood why <em>some<\/em> people might want a robot in their home, but it just didn\u2019t make sense for <em>me<\/em>. The way I saw it, robot vacuums were for people with big homes, who lived outside the city or had the money to afford a mega apartment. In a small apartment, I had a whole laundry list of objections:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Robot vacuums can\u2019t get into all the little nooks and crannies of a small apartment, or navigate through all the tight spaces. If I\u2019m going to have to clean those spots manually, what\u2019s the point?<\/li>\n<li>They won\u2019t clean above the floor. Again, what\u2019s the point?<\/li>\n<li>Since they can\u2019t clean everywhere, I\u2019m going to end up needing another vacuum anyway.<\/li>\n<li>The room calibration would probably screw up when I move stuff around the home, making it more hassle than it\u2019s worth.<\/li>\n<li>Surely my clumsy self would trip over the vacuum at some point.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019d have too much pet hair for the vacuum to handle.<\/li>\n<li>There are often shoes, cables, or other items that would get tangled or make it harder for the vacuum to navigate around the home.<\/li>\n<li>Robovacs are probably too loud to run while I\u2019m working.<\/li>\n<li>Few robot vacuums can mop, so I might as just vacuum and mop myself in one go.<\/li>\n<li>The ones that <em>can<\/em> mop tend to require you to move your rugs when you want to mop, which is just annoying.<\/li>\n<li>The ultimate robovac horror story: what if one of the animals has an \u2018accident\u2019 and the vacuum spreads poop all over the house?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Luckily, my job means I get to test this stuff out. Roborock sent me the S7 to try \u2014 along with its automatic dust-emptying dock (a $300 upgrade), and it completely changed my perspective on robot vacuums.<\/p>\n<h3>I was wrong<\/h3>\n<p>Almost all of the concerns above were either misinformed or just not that big of a deal \u2014 and the pros outweighed the cons. Specifically, there was one simple fact I didn\u2019t quite realize until I started to use the Roborock:<\/p>\n<p>Even if it can\u2019t vacuum every single surface of my home, it\u2019ll significantly reduce the total amount of dust that can spread around the home. The less fur and dirt there is on <em>most<\/em> of the floor, the less dust there will be to end up on various surfaces.<\/p>\n<p>(I should note that I\u2019m not really here to talk about specs and objective performance. There are much better sources for this data \u2014 check out Vacuum Wars\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-O7K4oerR4E\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">review<\/a>, for instance. Instead, I\u2019m just noting the obvious changes I\u2019ve noticed in switching from using only a regular vacuum cleaner to getting some help from a robot.)<\/p>\n<p>Before testing the S7, trying to get rid of dust felt like an almost impossible battle in a small apartment with so many occupants, despite vacuuming several times a week. I feel hope now; I\u2019ve noticed less dust collects on my speakers, piano, coffee table, shelves, and other surfaces. Instead of needing to wipe stuff down several times a week, now it\u2019s just a few times a month. That\u2019s time I can spend doing other things.<\/p>\n<p>As for the mopping functionality, I actually tried Roborock\u2019s S5 prior to the S7, which also has a mopping function, but found it impractical because I had to remove my rugs whenever I wanted to use it.<\/p>\n<p>The S7 has a simple trick up its sleeve: it will actually raise its mop surface to avoid low-pile carpets. Over several months of use, I can\u2019t recall it ever making a \u2018mistake\u2019 about the two rugs in my apartment, so I was confident about letting the automatic detection do its own thing. If need be you can also set \u201cno-mop\u201d zones in the app, but I never found the need.<\/p>\n<p>It also does a solid job of mopping thanks to a scrubbing motor that helps loosen dirt from the ground, as opposed to a simple wiping function as on most other options.<\/p>\n<p>Almost all the other concerns were non-issues. The room mapping worked reliably, and the robot get \u201clost\u201d navigating the apartment only a couple of times. The robot did occasionally get tangled with wires or smaller items. But those are easy to fix as the silicone brush head can be removed and reinstalled in a couple of seconds, and unlike a full-size vacuum, there aren\u2019t any long tubes where items can get stuck. The vacuum is generally great at avoiding larger objects (or sometimes gently pushing them out of the way), and it does well at avoiding tangles too.<\/p>\n<p>Another unexpected but welcome result: it actually trained <em>me<\/em> to pick up the small stuff before cleaning time. Since the vacuum cleaned up at the same time every day, I\u2019d put away any objects on the ground before the S7 did its thing.<\/p>\n<p>As for the whole poop nightmare, I simply set the vacuum to clean up at a time when I\u2019m always home and can make sure no such disasters happen. The vacuum is quiet enough under default settings (there are four power levels) that I don\u2019t mind it making the rounds while I\u2019m working.<\/p>\n<p>The only part that&nbsp;<em>is<\/em>&nbsp;obnoxiously loud is the optional $300 self-cleaning dock, but it\u2019s a worthwhile addition if money is no object in the name of cleanliness. When the vacuum returns to charge, the collected dirt gets sucked into a much larger reservoir, a process that lasts a few seconds. It means that instead of having to empty out the vacuum\u2019s accumulated dirt every few days, you only need to do so every month or two, depending on how large an area the vacuum is cleaning.<\/p>\n<h3>It\u2019s a game-changer \u2014 at least for me<\/h3>\n<p>I haven\u2019t tested enough robovacs to tell you whether the Roborock S7 is better than the ever-growing competition. Nor can I guarantee that it\u2019ll work in your particular home. It works best as a supplement to \u2018regular\u2019 vacuum (or, you know, a broom and a duster), rather than an all-in-one cleaning solution.<\/p>\n<p>But despite those caveats, the Roborock S7 is one of my favorite gadgets I\u2019ve tested in a long time. It won\u2019t suddenly make your home as clean as your mom will want it, but it helps me wake up to a cleaner home than I thought possible in a tiny apartment with two humans and four animals. It\u2019s one less obstacle to starting my workday, and one layer of stress reduced substantially.<\/p>\n<p>While many devices market themselves with new features that are implicitly supposed to make your life better somehow, the Roborock S7 is one of the few that actually did.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/news\/roborock-s7-review\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019d told me a year ago that I\u2019d come to love a robot vacuum cleaner, I would\u2019ve laughed at you. And yet that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happened with the $650 Roborock S7,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}