The mop is reusable. You should wash it in the washing machine at 40 degrees after each mopping trip. The auto-empty base arrives in two parts and you need to tighten five screws to attach them. Fortunately, a screwdriver is neatly stored on the bottom of the unit, while the screws that require tightening are already inserted and marked with a screwdriver icon. This setup requires a bit more work than the Deebot N8 Pro+ auto-empty base, which comes fully assembled, but anyone should be able to do it.

This new model presents revolutionary changes, especially in the scrubbing section, improving this function in such a way that the brand assures that it is very close to manual scrubbing. The S7 is simple to set up, but if you use the auto-empty base, it requires additional assembly. Unboxing the S7 and auto-empty base This way, the robot vacuum can mop the delicate laminate flooring in the living room with less water and the tiles in the kitchen with a lot of water.

Setting Up the S7 and Auto-Empty Dock

FYI: Since the robot vacuum turns off the suction motor in "Deep Cleaning mode", it hardly decreases the battery runtime. Thus, it can also mop larger areas at once. The Fluffy Washable Mop The next improvement is in the main brush, which replaces the traditional bristles with rubber fins, making it more durable and significantly improving cleaning. While we’re discussing the S7’s generally excellent vacuuming ability, let’s take a closer look at the bin. At 470ml, it’s pretty small and unfortunately not terribly well designed. There are two access doors to the bin – the one you use for emptying it and the one that provides access to the filter. The main door simply pulls outwards but it’s a right mess to empty, especially if you have pets and it’s full of clumpy hair.

At 35cm in diameter, the S7 is 4cm wider than iRobot’s flagship Roomba S9 and 2cm wider than the budget-priced iRobot i3. However, its single ribbed rubber roller is just 16cm in width – about the same as the i3 but a lot shorter than the S9’s substantial 23cm. This means that it will miss about 9cm of dirt on either side and only vacuum a smaller area of floor at any given time. The long, single side-mounted spinning nylon brush certainly helps direct wayward pieces of fluff towards the roller but, as is the norm with most robot vacs, it will not effectively vacuum the edges of a room or indeed any corners and crevices that are too big for its body. When the robot vacuum finished cleaning the second floor, it’ll return to where you dropped it off and wait for you to carry it down. Furthermore, you can also see wave-like design elements around the laser tower. These probably represent the pulsating mopping plate (sonic mopping).Once it creates a map of your floor plan, you can merge, divide, and name the various spaces for area and customized cleaning. You can also create virtual walls and no-go zones to cordon off certain areas, as well as no-mop zones. After the robot maps your floor plan, you can merge, divide, and name the various spaces for area and customized cleaning The app offers full, room, and zone cleaning options. If you leave it on full, the default option, the robot will move from room to room until it has covered that entire level. For targeted jobs, you can select individual rooms on the map and send the robot straight there. The zone option even lets you draw a square around a space on the map you want the robot to clean. Another cool feature is the ‘keep out’ zone function. I have a couple of typical Coir doormats – you know, that scratchy coconut fibre stuff – and no vacuum cleaner wants to go there unless it wants its bin filled in three seconds and its wheels to jam. So I created two keep-out zones using the app’s intuitive graphic and I now no longer have to rescue it from certain doom.

We tried the Light setting at first, which was quite loud — just a bit louder than you would expect from an upright vacuum. It took less than a minute to finish running. However, we were disappointed to see that the dust and debris was mostly caught under the robot vacuum the first time we ran it. We tried it again in Max mode, which lasted just under 30 seconds and didn’t sound much louder than the Light mode. It worked this time — no dust to be found under the robot vacuum. Note, too, that while the majority of robot vacuums that can claim to ‘mop’ hard floors simply slosh water around, the S7 MaxV is capable of scrubbing as well. As such, we found it easily coped with removing tough dried-in stains such as Coca-Cola on our hard floor, as well as fresh dirt. Even better, when set to vacuuming and mopping, the robot vacuum will automatically lift the mop on detecting carpet, to avoid it becoming soggy. It maintains LiDAR navigation and does not present major changes in terms of design, autonomy and power, maintaining approximately 3 hours of use, with a suction power of 2500 Pa.As well as creating a 2D map of your home, the robot vacuum also offers a 3D map. In addition, for those who are using the robot vacuum with an iPhone, there’s also the ability to create a matrix map, which uses the camera on your phone to capture details about furniture and floor types, so you can start a clean that may simply encompass the area around your bed or the dining table, for example. However, this functionality is only available to those using the robot vacuum with an iPhone 12 or above. Moreover, its mop-lifting feature worked perfectly on both low- and medium-pile carpets. As soon as the S7 sensed carpet while mopping, it lifted the cloth mount and kept vacuuming. When this happened, I walked behind the robot to verify that it wasn't wetting the carpet. The auto-empty base successfully transfers debris out of the dustbin so you don't need to touch it The vibrations of the mopping plate simulate " scrubbing movements". With this, the robot vacuum can even remove the most stubborn stains. The robot vacuum scans the room with a unique laser distance sensor (LDS). With this, the little housekeeper always knows where it’s at and where it has to go next.