Roborock Q5 Pro Review
A staggeringly good value robot vacuum cleaner
Verdict
The Roborock Q5 Pro is stunning value at just £299. Considering that price, the tangle-free brushes, excellent app, LiDAR navigation and powerful suction are quite remarkable. Basic, gravity-fed mopping and so-so edge performance may mean you want to spend more on a more powerful cleaner, but for those who want a quality robot for most vacuuming jobs, this one is stunning value.
Pros
- Excellent app
- Brilliant value
- Powerful vacuuming
Cons
- Can’t lift floor mop
- Very basic mopping
Key Features
- TypeThis is a standard robot vacuum cleaner and mop, with a regular charge-only dock.
- MoppingThere’s a gravity fed mop, which is just dragged along the floor, so is good for basic cleaning only.
Introduction
In a world where robot vacuum cleaners are getting more and more advanced and more and more expensive, the Roborock Q5 Pro is something of a welcome throwback.
Costing just £299, this is a far more budget robot vacuum cleaner than I’m used to testing, with basic mopping and only a standard charging dock.
What it may lack in features, the Roborock Q5 Pro makes up for with decent vacuuming performance and a bit of occasional mopping. And, as it uses Roborock’s brilliant app, it’s also incredibly easy to use.
Design and features
- Dual rubber brushes
- Basic gravity-fed mopping
- Excellent app
Although the Roborock Q5 Pro is one of the cheapest robot vacuum cleaners that I’ve reviewed in a long while, it manages to grab some features from the company’s higher-end robots. To that end, this robot has a LiDAR dome on top, which it uses for fast navigation and mapping, rather than using a more basic VSLAM system.
Turn the robot over, and you may be surprised to see the contra-rotating dual rubber brushes, which are a feature of the high-end S8 MaxV Ultra. These brushes work together to agitate and collect dust, and they also help prevent hair from getting tangled.
Otherwise, the Roborock Q5 Pro is a bit more basic than the company’s other robots. Here, there’s a mopping bracket that takes 180ml of water.
This mop has to be clipped to the underside of the robot when you want to mop, and its water is gravity-fed rather than pumped. That means no control over the amount of water used, and it can be worth damping the mopping cloth before use, so that the Roborock Q5 Pro starts to clean as soon as it moves.
As the bracket is fixed, it won’t lift over carpet. And, if you don’t prevent the robot from moving into a carpeted area, then the Roborock Q5 Pro will happily run all over your home wetting everything. Once finished, the mopping cloth should be removed and washed in a washing machine to clean it up.
There’s no fancy self-clean or self-empty docking station. Instead, the Roborock Q5 Pro has a simple charge-only dock, which comes with a plastic base tray to prevent the mop from soaking a floor.
The advantage of this kind of dock is that you can place it almost anywhere, even under some bits of furniture.
The downside is that the robot has to be emptied manually. At least the 770ml bin is large, which means it will collect a lot of dirt and it’s quite easy to empty. The bin also has a filter, which should be cleaned monthly.
Control of the robot is via the Roborock app. Once connected, the Roborock Q5 Pro goes on a mapping run. As there’s LiDAR onboard, the map is quick to generate. At the end of the run, the app suggests rooms, although it’s easy to merge or split rooms to match your home’s layout, and to add no-go zones.
This robot doesn’t support no-mop zones, which is a little frustrating, as it meant that I had to manually block the robot from going into rooms with carpet.
This robot supports multiple maps, so you can move it around your home, carrying it upstairs to clean a second floor if you need to.
For cleaning, I could select to clean the entire house, a room (or rooms) of my choice, or a zone that I drew on the map. There’s no control over the mopping, but there are five power modes (quiet, balanced, turbo, max and max+) to choose from alongside two cleaning modes, standard or fast.
With a room or zone selected, it’s possible to select up to three cleaning passes. For any more than one pass, the Roborock Q5 Pro will tackle the rooms by moving horizontally and vertically, cleaning in a grid for a deeper clean.
If you use the option to add hard flooring to the map, you can select which way the floor runs and have the Roborock Q5 Pro only move in the same direction, which can improve the cleaning quality.
As this is a basic robot vacuum cleaner, there’s no camera on the front for obstacle detection, so it makes sense to clear up any obvious obstacles, such as cables, before starting a clean.
Performance
- Good vacuuming
- Very basic mopping
With a rated suction power of 5500Pa, the Roborock Q5 Pro is as powerful as some flagship robots from a couple of years ago. Suction power isn’t the only important thing, it’s a robot’s ability to agitate dirt that really counts.
To see how it performed, I set some real-world challenges, starting off with my carpet test, sprinkled with one teaspoon of flour. Set to a double pass, I found that the Roborock Q5 Pro did a very good job, managing to remove the bulk of the mess, with some traces left behind. I’d still need a regular vacuum cleaner, but for general everyday mess, the Roborock Q5 Pro does a good job.
Next, I added flour to a hard floor, and then gave the Roborock Q5 Pro two passes. This test was easy for the robot and it got everything.
For edge performance, I added flour right up to the skirting board, and then let the robot go. An initial look suggested that the Roborock Q5 Pro had done a basic job, smearing some mess and leaving a section that needed a manual cleaning.
However, as I looked around, I saw that the Roborock Q5 Pro had managed to drag some dirt around the room rather than picking it up.
I repeated the test with the attached mop pad, and the results were better, although I still needed a manual vacuum cleaner to finish the job.
Next, I added some stains for the mop to tackle. I pre-wet the mop cloth, and then set the robot off on two passes. My coffee stain was reduced, but was still visible.
Next, my red wine stain was similar: the Roborock Q5 Pro managed to reduce the stain but it was still clearly visible.
The ketchup stain was virtually unchanged. As the Roborock Q5 Pro doesn’t have an agitating mop pad, it can’t scrub tough stains.
That was also a problem with my ground-in-mud test. While the loose solids were vacuumed up, the mud stain remained highly visible. This isn’t really a very good mopping robot, and its mopping is useful on very light stains only.
I tried the Roborock Q5 Pro out with human hair. All of the hair was collected, and the dual rubber brushes did a good job, with no hair tangled around them.
General navigation is good, with the Roborock Q5 Pro easily finding its way around my test lab, quickly navigating from room to room or to a zone I’d drawn on the map. However, it is a little clumsy, and a few times, I noticed it bump into a bit of furniture, pressing the contact bumper down. Smarter robots with cameras are far more gentle, moving up to furniture but not ramming it.
I measured the robot at 65.3dB, which is about average for a product like this: not too noisy, but not the quietest.
Battery life is rated at up to 4 hours on the lowest power setting. Even upping the power to a higher level of suction, as I did, I found that the Roborock Q5 Pro could easily clean the test lab with two passes (bigger than an average home’s floor plan), and leave enough power left for additional jobs.
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Should you buy it?
You want quality vacuuming at a low price
This robot vacuum cleaner is great value, has a brilliant app and powerful suction, cleaning well on all surfaces.
You want better edge performance or mopping
Edge performance is a little lacking and the mop is so basic as to be of little use. If you’ve mostly got hard floors and want them mopped properly, look elsewhere.
Final Thoughts
There are clearly better robot vacuum cleaners that mop better and avoid obstacles using AI, such as the Eufy Omni S1 Pro or the Roborock Qrevo Slim. The difference is that those options are a lot more expensive, and the Roborock Q5 Pro is dirt cheap.
Its very basic mopping and lack of no-mop zones mean that unless you’ve got hard floors only, or can easily lock off carpeted areas, this isn’t a great choice for those who want to clean hard floors and avoid having to manually mop.
However, as a vacuum-only device, there’s a lot to like about the Roborock Q5 Pro; it’s powerful, has clever dual rubber brushes, and it’s controlled via a great app.
If you want a robot vacuum to reduce how often you have to manually vacuum, then this one is brilliantly priced. If you’re after different features, check out my guide to the best robot vacuum cleaners.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every robot vacuum cleaner we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry-standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main robot vacuum cleaner for the review period
We test for at least a week
Tested with real-world dirt in real-world situations for fair comparisons with other vacuum cleaners
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FAQs
No, there’s no carpet avoidance at all with this model, so you have to stop the robot moving over carpet if you don’t want to get it wet.
There’s no camera, so the Roborock Q5 Pro can avoid larger obstacles, such as furniture, but it can’t avoid cables, shoes and the like.
Full specs
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
