Roborock makes deep cleaning easy
Just because you have to manually clean your house once and a while, doesn’t mean that the job has to be difficult. Able to vacuum and mop at the same time, with an automatic power mode to get the right level of cleaning the Roborock Dyad makes short work of even the dirtiest of floors. Its rollers can get a let clogged with fluff, so it’s worth vacuuming a dusty room or one with a lot of pet hair first, but this is a minor issue. It’s a touch loud, but that’s easy to forgive, as the Dyad is easy to use, works brilliantly on all hard floor surfaces and even cleans itself at the end.
Pros
- Auto mode adjusts power on the fly
- Self-cleans
- Handles tough stains easily
Cons
- Very loud
- Canu2019t quite get into corners
It’s fair to say that with a product such as the Roborock S7, you can let a robot automatically handle most of your vacuuming and mopping, yet there’s always going to come a time when you need to do the job manually; either for a bigger mess or wet spill or just to catch those dirtier parts of the floor.
That’s where the Roborock Dyad comes in.
While the Chinese company has previously launched a couple of traditional cordless vacuum cleaners, the Roborock Dyad is the first hard floor from the brand, able to vacuum and clean simultaneously.
Is it as good as the great robot vacuum cleaners that it makes?
Read on to find out.
Roborock Dyad: Design and operation
If you’ve seen a vacuum hard floor cleaner before, the Roborock Dyad won’t be a huge surprise. As with the competition, this model has two water tanks.
The smaller one on top is for fresh water, pumped out over the microfibre rollers in the floor head.
Although Roborock has teamed up with Unilever to make a detergent for a deeper clean, fresh water is all that you need.
This tank takes 850ml of liquid, which is typically enough to cover a standard floor of a house, although how many times you have to go over an area will affect how far the water tank will go.
A larger tank at the bottom for dirty water and debris sucked up from the floor head.
Although physically larger, this tank takes 620ml of water, so a typical clean will see you having to empty this tank multiple times.
On top of the tank is a washable filter, and inside it is a secondary filter that helps separate physical gunk from the water.
There’s also a float, which cuts off the entryway when the tank is full to prevent overfilling and damage. The Dyad will also speak to you and tell you that the dirty water tank is full and needs cleaning.
Likewise, if you should run dry on the fresh tank, the Dyad tells you that it’s time to refill and even turns the power off on the floor cleaner automatically.
This tank comes apart quickly, so you can pour away the dirty water and collected debris at the end of a clean.
Roborock has used an integrated battery. Charging is via the floor stand: just drop the Dyad into place and it starts charging, showing on the current charge level on the cleaner’s screen.
As soon as you dock, the Dyad’s voice tells you that it’s time to start cleaning the floor cleaner, using the dedicated button on the back. This mode runs water through the microfibre rollers, cleaning them ready for next use.
To use the Dyad, just grab it and hit the power button on top.
This kicks the vacuum into life, auto-dosing water onto the rollers and sucking dirt and waste. In its default automatic mode, the Dyad uses a sensor to detect how dirty a floor is, showing you a red bar that fills up the screen: more red means a dirtier floor.
Using this information, the Dyad can adjust water flow and suction control to meet demand.
You can hit the button to turn on Max mode, although I didn’t find that I needed it.
One word of warning: the Dyad is loud even in Auto mode: it’s about as loud as a cordless vacuum cleaner in its turbo mode.
There’s also a suction only mode, which is for handling wet spills, such as you’ve just dropped a bowl of cereal over the kitchen floor.
Roborock Dyad: In use
The combination of tanks and solid construction means that the Dyad isn’t the lightest product ever, at 5kg.
However, aside from lifting it out of the charging dock, you won’t have to lift the floor cleaner too often.
Moving it around, it’s surprisingly nimble, with a flexible joint around the floor head letting you move around chairs quite easily.
However, the Dyad doesn’t quite go flat on the floor, so it’s not always possible to get under all furniture without moving it first.
The floor head uses three rollers: one main one that runs almost the entire width of the head, and two smaller ones that reach the edges.
The rollers spin in opposite directions, so moving the Dyad forwards and backwards is easy, and it never feels as though it’s fighting you to pull away.
An issue with this kind of product is what to do with it while you move furniture. Roborock’s answer is to put a kick-stand on the cleaner. Fold it out from the back, and lay the Dyad back and you don’t have to worry about it falling over when you’re not holding it.
Roborock says that this configuration also makes for excellent edge-to-edge cleaning. Running along a kitchen’s kickboard is easy enough, and the Dyad does get most mess, but run into corners and it doesn’t quite get everything.
I found that a wet cloth and some old-fashioned manual scrubbing was needed in corners. Still, the Dyad does handle most of the hard work for you.
I found that Auto mode was all that I needed. Light stains, such as dirty footprints, come off easily, but harder stains, such as dried-on food, may need multiple passes with the Dyad.
Guide: Roborock models compared
I found that giving a few sweeps over the mess to get it wet worked, coming back after a minute or so to tackle the mess at multiple angles. Ultimately, there was nothing that the Dyad couldn’t lift.
As this is a vacuum cleaner and a floor cleaner, you don’t necessarily need to vacuum first. However, you may want to, particularly if you have pets. Wet hair can get clogged underneath the rollers.
While the rollers are easy to remove for cleaning, and Roborock provides a handy cleaning brush, it’s best to avoid situations where there’s too much dirt going into the Dyad.
I found that in very dusty rooms or when there’s lots of pet hair, it was best to use a regular vacuum cleaner first.
Roborock Dyad: Battery life
Battery life is roughly 35 minutes, which doesn’t sound like a considerable amount, especially compared to a robot vacuum cleaner.
It’s not really about total time, but cleaning power. With those 35 minutes and the wide floor head, you can cover a lot of space. Roborock claims 3,000 square feet on a charge, and I wouldn’t argue against that.
For most cleaning jobs, I find that there’s plenty of power left to go again if needed.
Range anxiety is softened by the smart LCD panel on the top, which gives you a live battery reading in percentage.
With this, you can see at a glance how much longer you can keep going.
