Roborock S8 Pro Ultra.

The Gavler Review.

Roborock S8 Pro Ultra Review: The Closest a Robot Has Come to Replacing Vacuuming

The Roborock S8 Pro Ultra sits at number three on our Best Vacuum Cleaners list with an 8.9, and it's the closest a robot vacuum has come to genuinely replacing the chore rather than just automating part of it. Buy it if your home is hard floors or low-pile carpet and you want the entire maintenance loop — emptying, mopping, drying — handled without you touching it. Skip it if you live with deep-pile carpet or area rugs; this specific model wasn't built for that fight.

What it is

Roborock's flagship swaps last generation's single bristle brush for two counter-rotating rubber brushes designed specifically to resist hair tangles, and pairs them with VibraRise 2.0 — a mopping system that vibrates a wider pad area for more aggressive scrubbing and automatically lifts both mop and brushes when it senses carpet or heads back to the dock. That last detail matters more than it sounds: it's the difference between a robot that drags a wet pad across your rug and one that knows to get out of the way.

The real innovation, though, is the RockDock Ultra base, which handles nearly everything a robot vacuum usually leaves for you to do by hand. It empties the onboard bin into a 1.8-liter disposable bag — good for roughly six weeks of debris — washes the mop pad with its own motorized brush, dries it with warm air to head off the mildew smell that plagues lesser self-cleaning docks, and refills the clean-water tank. LiDAR mapping handles navigation, and a front camera plus structured light manage obstacle avoidance.

In use and performance

On the core cleaning job, the praise is substantial. Trusted Reviews didn't mince words: "Smarter and more powerful than its predecessor, the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra is a top-quality robot vacuum cleaner that's largely maintenance free: it self empties, cleans its own mop and fills with water." On mopping specifically, the outlet found it scrubbed dried, stuck-on marks right up to the room's edge: "The Roborock S8 Pro Ultra did a solid job, scrubbing them right up to the edge of the room. That's an exceptionally good performance." Object detection drew similarly strong marks: "Roborock's AI object detection has improved massively over the years, and is now at a point where it's exceptionally reliable," dodging shoes, cables, and pet mess in testing.

A separate TechRadar test tells a slightly more mixed story worth weighing alongside that praise — and it's the kind of honest counterpoint a single glowing review won't give you. TechRadar's testers found the S8 Pro Ultra handled light debris well but struggled with a heavier flour-and-oats test, noting "it left the flour smeared across the floor" rather than fully lifting it. More notably, despite the advertised obstacle avoidance, TechRadar reported that "the vacuum still went to that area and managed to suck up my phone's charging cable on several occasions" — a real limitation with thin, low-profile objects that LiDAR and structured light don't always catch. The self-cleaning dock held up well in that same test: "The self-cleaning and hot-air drying has kept the mop pad looking almost new" after two weeks of use.

Noise is a genuine strength either way — around 70 dB at maximum, quiet enough that most owners can run it while home without it dominating a room.

Strengths

• The RockDock Ultra genuinely automates the parts of robot-vacuum ownership people hate. Emptying, mop washing, drying, and water refill all happen without you touching the machine for weeks at a time.
• Dual rubber brushes resist hair tangles — a real upgrade over the single-brush design of the previous generation, and a meaningful quality-of-life improvement for pet owners.
• Strong, if imperfect, obstacle avoidance. LiDAR-plus-camera navigation is rated among the more reliable systems available, even accounting for the cable-snagging edge case one reviewer found.

The trade-offs — who should skip it

No robot vacuum is a universal answer, and this one has a specific, well-documented limitation.

• The mop bracket doesn't detach on this model. That means the wet mop pad is always along for the ride, and in deep-pile carpet or area rugs, it can catch in the fibers rather than lifting cleanly out of the way. If your home is mostly carpet, this is the wrong Roborock.
• Deep-carpet vacuuming is merely average, not a strength — the S8 Pro Ultra is optimized for hard floors and low-pile carpet, and its scores reflect that trade-off.
• Obstacle avoidance isn't flawless with thin objects. TechRadar's cable-snagging finding is worth keeping in mind — tidy loose cords before the first few runs while you learn where the robot's blind spots are.
• The dock is genuinely bulky. A self-emptying, self-washing base needs real internal plumbing, and it takes up more floor and counter space than a simple charging dock.

How it compares

The S8 Pro Ultra sits two ranks below the Dyson V15 Detect Absolute and Miele Complete C3 Kona at the top of Gavler's Best Vacuum Cleaners list — both corded or cordless stick vacuums rather than robots, which is really the underlying choice buyers are making. A stick vacuum like the Dyson gives you direct control and typically stronger deep-carpet performance in the moment; a robot like the S8 Pro Ultra trades some of that peak cleaning power for near-total hands-off convenience on hard floors. If your home is carpet-heavy, the Dyson or Miele deserve serious consideration instead. If it's mostly hard floors and low-pile carpet and you want to stop thinking about vacuuming altogether, the S8 Pro Ultra is the better fit.

The Gavler verdict

An 8.9 for a robot vacuum that comes closer than almost anything else on the market to actually replacing the chore of vacuuming, not just automating a slice of it. The self-maintaining dock is the real story here — Trusted Reviews calls the whole package "a true triumph of power and engineering" — and even independent testing that surfaced real limitations (the flour test, the cable-snagging) still landed on a strong overall result for hard-floor and mixed-floor homes. Buy it for that use case. For deep-pile carpet, look elsewhere on this list.

Common Questions

Is the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra worth it in 2026?

Yes, for hard-floor and mixed-floor homes. It ranks third on Gavler's Best Vacuum Cleaners list with an 8.9, and Trusted Reviews calls it 'a true triumph of power and engineering.' The self-emptying, self-washing RockDock Ultra genuinely turns cleaning into a weekly glance rather than a daily chore. Skip it if your home is mostly deep-pile carpet — the mop bracket doesn't detach, and testing found it can still snag cables and rugs despite its obstacle-avoidance system.

Does the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra actually empty and clean itself?

Yes. The RockDock Ultra base empties the onboard bin into a 1.8-liter disposable bag good for roughly six weeks of debris, washes the mop pad with a motorized brush, warm-air dries it to prevent odors, and refills the clean-water tank automatically — the entire maintenance loop most robot vacuums leave to the owner.

How good is the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra's obstacle avoidance?

Mostly strong but not flawless. Trusted Reviews rates its LiDAR-plus-camera object detection as 'exceptionally reliable' at dodging shoes and pet mess, but a separate TechRadar test found it still snagged a phone charging cable on multiple occasions — a useful reminder that even good obstacle avoidance isn't perfect with thin, low-profile objects.

Is the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra good on carpet?

It's fine on low-pile carpet but not built for deep-pile homes. The mop bracket on this model doesn't detach, so the wet mop pad can drag across and catch in thicker carpet fibers, and deep-carpet vacuuming performance is merely average rather than a strength.