Verdict

Powerful navigation and map features mean you can set the 360 S7 Pro to clean the way you want. It performs well on hard floors, but we found dirt pick-up on carpets wasn't as impressive. There's a basic mop system built-in, too, although this uses gravity to feed water, so is only good for basic jobs. At this price, the competition is tough, with better all-round robot vacuum cleaners available.

Pros

• Excellent map control
• Sophisticated navigation
• Good pick-up on hard floors

Cons

• Average pick-up on carpet
• Basic mopping

One of the good things about the rate that technology improves is that budget and mid-range products increasingly gain features, but without it impacting price. The 360 S7 Pro is a case in point – a solid mid-range vacuum cleaner offering plenty of suction and proper LiDAR navigation.

Add to this a basic mop feature, too – but only so-so dust pick-up in tests means that there are better options available at this price.

360 S7 Pro design – It looks like most other robot cleaners

• A simple-looking robot vacuum cleaner with two controls: start clean and return to dock
• Easy to empty, with the bin lifting out of the top
• Mop mode is enabled by sliding in the water tank

At first glance, it’s fair to say that there isn’t much that sets the 360 S7 Pro apart from robot vacuums made by other manufacturers. As such, the 360 S7 Pro is a round robot (350 x 350 x 101mm) vacuum, and it looks as good as any that I’ve seen from rival brands.

On top, you’ll find the LiDAR dome used for navigation, plus two controls – start a clean and return to dock. IThese are useful, allowing you to get going without having to reach for the app.

The charging dock is tall and thin, without a protruding base; the charging points are on the upright. If you’re going to use the mop accessory, then you should opt for the plastic floor stand, which will stop water from damaging your floors.

Lifting up the top flap allows access to the 0.57-litre dust bin, which lifts out for easy emptying. Here, you’ll also find a washable filter, which can be removed for cleaning. Included with the robot vacuum is a razor tool, which 360 supplies for cutting away any hair that becomes wrapped around the floor brush.

On the underside of the 360 S7 Pro is the floor brush, which also lifts out for easy cleaning. There’s a single side-sweeper brush, too, designed to sweep dust from the edge of a room into the main path of the cleaner.

360 S7 Pro features – There are some powerful map customisation options on offer

• You can configure cleaning by room
• Map management lets you set up no-go and no-mop zones
• There’s an Amazon Alexa skill and Google Assistant support

The 360 S7 Pro’s LiDAR navigation will see the robot vacuum map out your home having performed its first clean. Powerful map management tools provide the option to split your home into individual rooms, so you can set custom cleaning options per room, and you can even set the order in which the rooms are cleaned.

As is usual, the map lets you set no-go areas, as well as virtual barriers, so you can control where the robot can and can’t go. This is handy if you find that it becomes stuck around certain bits of furniture, for example.

You can also configure no-mop zones, which stop the robot from going into the specified areas when the mop is attached. It’s a useful feature to avoid accidentally wetting a carpet – although the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo 930 does this automatically, backing off when it detects that it’s on a carpet.

For each clean, you can set the suction mode, choosing from Quiet, Standard, Powerful and Max. Mopping mode is turned on automatically on inserting the mopping bracket and, since the water is gravity-fed, you can’t turn it off via the app.

Alongside cleaning an entire area, you can also select to clean just a room, or you can draw a box on the map and program the robot to clean that particular zone up to three times, which is a good plan for a particularly dirty area.

Of course, there’s also a scheduled mode, enabling you to set your robot vacuum cleaner off at particular times every week.

There’s an Amazon Alexa skill that lets you start and stop a clean (but not return to dock). The Google Assistant Skill is called something different, 360 IoT, and has a different icon to the Alexa one, which is a little confusing.

360 S7 Pro performance – Pick-up on carpet is only average

• Good navigation meant that the robot easily moved around the test area
• A relatively quiet robot vacuum that isn’t distracting
• Pick-up performance was often slightly lacking

I started testing the 360 S7 Pro’s ability to clean on carpet by sprinkling an ‘X’ of flour in the centre of the floor. Running the robot on Standard mode, there didn’t appear to be much difference between the dirt on the carpet at the start and once the vacuum had run over it. This cleaner struggled to get into the short carpet pile.

I set the robot off again, this time on the Maximum setting. Performance was better this time round, but there was still a fair amount of flour left behind.

I moved to a hard floor, placing two ‘X’s of flour on the floor: one in the middle, and one against the skirting. Performance here was better. In the middle of the floor, the robot managed to pick up most of the mess, leaving behind only a small clump of dirt.

Edge performance was also pretty good, with most of the initial dirt getting picked up by the robot, with just a trace amount remaining.

I ran the robot over the area again on Maximum power; it picked up pretty much everything. Admittedly, this is a tough test, so the 360 S7 Pro is likely to do well faced with the day-to-day dirt found around the house.

Mopping performance proved a bit hit and miss, as has been my experience with all gravity-fed vacuum cleaners. Flipping over the robot after a clean, you’ll find that the microfibre cloth is certainly dirty. However, this is only a result of picking up looser surface dirt; it doesn’t work as well on ground-in mess. If you want a robot vac for keeping your hard floors spotless, then you’ll need a unit that can control its water flow, such as the Roborock S6 MaxV.

In terms of noise, the 360 S7 Pro measured 58.2dB, which is pretty quiet. You could easily have a conversation in the in which the robot vacuum is cleaning.

Should you buy the 360 S7 Pro?

For the price, the 360 S7 Pro provides plenty of features, including powerful map customisation and detailed cleaning options for each room. Navigation, too, is excellent, with this quiet robot vacuum cleaner going about its job without proving too distracting.

On hard floors it does a decent job, but I found carpet performance lacking, with the mopping option basic at best. For those with mostly hard floors in their home, the 360 S7 Pro will do a decent job, but the Roborock S5 Max is a better all-round robot vacuum cleaner and offers controllable water flow. Check out my guide to the best robot vacuum cleaners for more options.

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