A few weeks ago I bought a RoboRock Q5 DuoRoller+ robotic vacuum cleaner for my wife Kathleen’s birthday. This was not a surprise gift. We decided we needed to try using a robotic vacuum cleaner because we have five cats, including two that could easily be considered long-haired.
For a number of reasons I’ll get into below, the RoboRock Q5 DuoRoller+ has earned its place as a vital part of the Aiello family’s cleaning arsenal.
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Keeping up with the hair that our five cats shed has been almost impossible without a robotic vacuum. But using this RoboRock has made collecting shed cat hair on our ground floor vastly easier, and the largest amount of vacuuming now occurs automatically!
Why Did We Start Looking at RoboRock Instead of Other Brands? And Why the Q5 DuoRoller+?
This article is a review of the Q5 DuoRoller+ and not a comparison of all robotic vacuums. If you need broader comparative analysis, we’d recommend reading The Best Robot Vacuums by Sabine Heinlein for The New York Times Wirecutter.
Wirecutter’s current recommendation, the RoboRock Q5+, is where we started our product search. We chose the Q5 DuoRoller+ instead, for the following reasons.
Suction Power and Battery Capacity
The Q5 DuoRoller+ is a relatively new model from RoboRock. It is a vacuum-only model, so it is comparable to the RoboRock Q5+. The difference between the Q5 DuoRoller+ and the Q5+ is that the DuoRoller+ has more power. The DuoRoller+ has twice the suction (5500Pa or Pascals for the DuoRoller+, versus 2700Pa for the Q5+).
The DuoRoller+ can operate for up to 240 minutes or 4 hours of vacuuming, without needing to return to its dock to recharge. This is good to know. But our experience running the DuoRoller+ over a 500 square foot map on a daily basis is that our vacuum only needs to run for 45 to 50 minutes per cycle. The Q5+ can run for 180 minutes, which is also a great running time.
Accurate Mapping
I hadn’t paid much attention to the robotic vacuum market before briefly researching the market in 2024 and deciding to buy this RoboRock. So I didn’t realize how good the algorithmic mapping of floors had become.
RoboRock’s Q-Series vacuums all contain built-in LiDAR sensors. As a result, they do a really good job of mapping walls and stationary objects that exist in a house. The Q5 DuoRoller+ is considered a good value in the sense that it has excellent mapping capabilities, but does not have the truly advanced features– like cameras that can detect obstacles at a very low level.
I consider one or more RGB cameras built into a robotic vacuum a luxury, rather than a necessity. But RGB cameras are very good at detecting animal waste, which might occasionally land on a carpet or bare floor, if you have pets.
The map that our RoboRock Q5 DuoRoller+ compiled of our ground floor is incredibly accurate. In fact, I can change how it vacuums our ground flood simply by closing or partially opening doors to rooms like the half bathroom off the kitchen.
Diligent Vacuuming
The RoboRock Q5 DuoRoller+ is nothing if it’s not diligent. Once I had it set up, I established a daily, full map cleaning cycle for 9:30am, Monday through Friday. This is a time after my family members who go to in-person work and school have left. This is also when our cats settle down and typically nap.
Once we set up this schedule, the cats adjusted by not napping in the middle of the Living Room floor.
The algorithm that RoboRock uses to vacuum a room appears to be:
- vacuum around around the perimeter of the room,
- find the straightest path across the width or length of the room,
- make multiple parallel passes to cover the room,
… while avoiding obstacles.
A Truly Well-Designed RoboRock App for Your iPhone
RoboRock is a Chinese company1. What this has generally meant in the Smarthome space is that the user interface and / or the app that is provided with the device is cryptic and appears decidedly unintuitive to North Americans.
I’m pleased to say that RoboRock is different. Its app is well designed. The controls that contain words are labeled in clear American English. So, I’d rate its app fantastic compared to the apps from other Chinese Smarthome device companies, such as Meross.
See the screenshot for the map shown above to get an idea of what the RoboRock app looks like.
There are ways to name each room, designate no-go zones, customize the floor surfaces, and identify furniture. when editing a map.
RoboRock Q5 Auto-Empty Dock and Charging Station
The RoboRock Q5 DuoRoller+ and the Q5+ both come with this Auto-Empty Dock and Charging Station. The dock contains a single-purpose vacuum to collect the dust and debris collected by the robotic vacuum during its cleaning cycle. It stores the collected dust in a 2.5 Liter (150 cubic inch) dust bag.
What Did the Q5 DuoRoller+ Collect?
RoboRock says that some Q5 DuoRoller+ and Q5+ users can run the vacuum for up to seven weeks without changing the dust bag. Probably not for the owners of five cats, like us. So what I did was waited two weeks, emptied the dust bag by hand on to a medium sized paper plate, and weighed the what was collected.
That big clump of shed cat fur and dust has a surprisingly large volume, but it only weighs 0.7 ounces, or about 20 grams.
After seeing the amount of collected cat hair displayed like this,, there’s no question that we badly needed a robotic vacuum.
Why the Q5 DuoRoller+ and Not a RoboRock that Doubles as a Mop?
There’s two big reasons why we wanted our first robotic cleaner to be a vacuum only and not also a mop:
- Cost– we wanted a robot vacuum that cost as close to $300 as possible on Prime Day. The Q5 DuoRoller+ was under $300. Current prices at Amazon are higher, but they have a great discount for Prime members as of this writing.
- Simplicity– for our first robotic cleaner, we wanted a vacuum that has an auto-empty dock and charger, not a more complex dual system with water tanks. We believe that would require too much maintenance. Besides, our primary concern is cat hair!
This Vacuum is Such a Home Run, We’ll Worry About the Technical Details Later
Operation Gadget is where you go for Apple Home tips and ideas. Total integration into Apple Home would have meant buying a Matter-compatible robot vacuum. In the Summer of 2024, those devices are more expensive than the relatively basic RoboRock Q5 DuoRoller+.
But this vacuum is such a home run. It has all of the features we want as a pet owners trying to keep up with shedding. We’ll worry about nice-to-haves, like Matter compatibility, later.
- I want to point out that Beijing RoboRock Technology Co. Ltd. is a Chinese company. I initially thought it was a subsidiary of Xiaomi. But I now believe that it is an independent company and Xiaomi is an investor at some level. ↩︎