The Roborock Saros 10 and Saros 10R look similar, but they’re not!

They launched at the same time, they serve the same general purpose, they’re even the same price, but the Roborock Saros 10 and Saros 10R have some interesting differences. One has award winning navigation, one has best-in-class suction power, they’re both superb, next-gen robot vacuums.

To borrow a quote directly from the Roborock website, the Saros 10 is enhanced, in pretty much every way.

The general take-away when explaining these two new Roborock bots is that the Saros 10R is a new approach to robot vacuum tech, and the Saros 10 is last-gen tech, but rebuilt and improved in every way they could.

At first glance, you’ll see that the Saros 10 offers a LiDAR sensor in the traditional turret on top of the bot. Though, we applaud Roborock for making that turret retractable. When the bot encounters low furniture, such as both my kitchen table and my hallway table, the LiDAR turret drops down into the bot. There is a window on the bot that allows the sensor to see a limited field of view, and when the obstacle is cleared, the turret pops back up to provide full 360 degree coverage.

Next, the Saros 10 has a full-width flat mop pad. The VibraRise 4.0 Mopping System uses sonic vibrations to scrub your floors with up to 8N of mopping force. The new mop pad is more absorbent, with 26% more coverage area over competing bots. Better yet, Roborock has made the mop pad detachable by the base station. When cleaning carpets, the mop stays behind.

My favorite new mop feature in the Saros 10 is the cute little edge mop. This independent round mop head sits on the side of the vacuum, providing edge cleaning without missing a beat.

There are few other surface-level updates on the Saros 10, it rocks the same extending brushes, threshold clearance, anti-tangle brushes, and capacities as most top-end Roborock vacuums. The remaining updates are on the inside.

The number on the spec sheet that may stand out to you is 22,000 Pa. That’s right, it was only a year ago that the very best bots on the market were comfortable at less than half of the amount of suction pressure that Roborock offers today. There’s obviously more to cleaning power than just the suction pressure, but at 22,000 Pa, I’m happy to report that some of the tough-to-clean rugs in my space are looking great after the Saros 10 passed over.

Did I mention that Roborock added the ability to clean carpets as the first action in your cleaning cycle? That makes more sense when mopping is the next action, but is still oddly comforting in a pure vacuum cycle, for some reason.

In addition to upgraded sensors that offer more accurate mapping and navigation, Roborock has introduced Reactive AI 3.0 Obstacle Recognition. With their new VertiBeam lateral obstacle avoidance included, your Roborock vacuum now identifies hundreds of common household obstacles in real-time and determines the best way to clean them, or clean around them.

The Roborock Saros 10, like the Saros 10R, has run through our house with near perfect navigation.

If you’ve read my Saros 10R review, I’m about to repeat a few things. Both units rock a FlexiArm side brush, Automatic mop lifting and detaching, fully self-cleaning, self-filling, self-emptying, self-drying, and detergent dispensing through the base station, and they use the same app to set schedules, routines, and control the bot.

The new 6,400mAh battery offers up to 40 more minutes of cleaning than previous models, and when in Balanced Mode, the operational volume is 64dB, which is one less than the Saros 10R and three less than the S8 MaxV Ultra. Basically, it runs longer, quieter, and vacuums with more power than any other robot vacuum in my house at this time.

Using the next generation of Roborock’s “last-gen” navigation sensors and strategies appears to have paid off. The Saros 10 scoots around my house with precision and efficiency. I applaud the VertiBeam sensors more than the inclusion of AI for the results here, almost all last-gen bots would run into my tripods and furniture with angled legs, not ideal, and not a problem with the Saros 10.

Looking at the base station, it has the same mirrored finish as the Saros 10R, but has smaller water tanks. What I like is that the door to the vacuum bag is hinged. Sounds simple, but the Saros 10R station was not, so you had to place the door to the side during cleaning and maintenance.

We’re going to let the Roborock Saros 10 run around our house a little bit longer before we make this decision, but after just a short time, it’s obvious that this bot belongs on our list of best robot vacuums. I have it running alongside the Saros 10R, as mentioned, but also beside the Narwal Freo Z Ultra, Eureka J15 Pro Ultra, Narwal Freo X Ultra. (And the Narwal Freo Pro, stay tuned for our review.)

Compared to the Eureka J15 Pro Ultra, there’s no question the Saros 10 is better at navigating my space, but they offer equal levels of actual floor cleaning capabilities. That may make the more affordable Eureka vacuum the better choice for some users. If your space is not complicated, if you do not have children or pets or frequently changing objects across your floors, the Eureka bot vacuums and mops very well.

Compared to the Narwal units, I consider the Saros 10 to be slightly better than the Freo X Ultra, but the Freo Z Ultra cleans my space better than the Saros 10. Navigation is practically equal between the Saros 10 and Freo Z Ultra, and all of these Narwal units have spinning mop heads for that shiny polish of my hard floors. The Narwal units also all have lower initial prices than the Roborock unit. If you’re stuck choosing between these two, first time users can look at each brand to see which they might like to buy into, but past users might consider sticking to the ecosystem they’re already a part of. It’s that close between the Freo Z Ultra and Saros 10.

Luckily, all of the named bots in this post are valuable considerations.

I am very pleased to tell you that there’s no clear answer to this question. I feel as though the Saros 10R is better at mopping, and the Saros 10 is better at vacuuming, but we’re truly talking about perception here, they are very equal in cleaning capabilities. What it really boils down to is your floor surfaces, the type of mopping that you require, and how well lit your space is.

The spinning mop heads of the Saros 10R produce better scrubbing and polishing of hard floors. The vibrating flat pad of the Saros 10 does not fail to get the tough stuff, but cannot give the buffed polish of spinning pads.

For extreme cases, the navigation sensors actually make a big difference. Based on the specs, the Saros 10 should be better at operating in the dark. The Saros 10R has a headlight to help its RGB and 3D ToF sensors see your space, but the 360 degree view from the LiDAR turret and LDS Laser navigation of the Saros 10 give it the advantage in the dark. For normal households with sunlit rooms during the day and frequent lights on at night, you’ll be good with either bot, but if you have a pitch-black room to clean, pick the Saros 10.

Personally, I have far more hard floors than carpets, and dark rooms are not of concern, I would choose the Roborock Saros 10R.