- Roborock Saros Z70 presented at CES 2025
- First commercial robovac to have a retractable mechanical arm
- It will go on sale in the first half of 2025.
Robot vacuum cleaners are getting smarter, and today’s best robot vacuum cleaners It can do all kinds of magical things. Unfortunately, those innovations are usually in software, which means they can fly a little under the radar of the average consumer. That’s not the case with the Roborock Saros Z70, which has an extra limb.
Yes, the Saros Z70, which was officially unveiled at CES 2025, has a retractable robotic arm that does the tidying up for you. It’s called OmniGrip 1.0 and it’s a world first for a mass-produced robovac.
I got a preview of the Z70 a month ago and it was absolutely fascinating. The robot looks much like any other robovac, except for a mysterious glowing hatch located on the top surface. When requested, this hatch opens majestically and from it emerges a mechanical arm with a clamp on the end. The robot then looks for objects it has been told to remove (for example, socks or shoes), picks them up, and moves them to a new location. This pincer can extend and rotate both horizontally and vertically to reach its prey.
Look
You’ll be able to set default behaviors in the app, so you can specify that anything the robot recognizes as a sock should go next to the laundry basket, for example. Similarly, discarded shoes could also be relocated to a specific “shoe area”, as could things like clothing or trash.
Not only is this an advantage in terms of having one less task to take care of yourself, but it also means a more thorough cleaning, as the robot has a clearer floor to vacuum.
If the idea of autonomous robots with limbs makes you a little uncomfortable, rest assured that Roborock has built in some safety features. All OmniGrip 1.0 features are completely disabled by default; The owner must specify exactly how they want the arm to work through the app. You choose which objects the OmniGrip should interact with and where they should go. If you don’t, it will remain behind your door permanently.
There’s a child lock and a safety stop button, plus the gripper has a relatively low-tension grip – the maximum weight is apparently roughly equivalent to a pair of shoes. That means that even if he tried to take your cat (and to be clear, he shouldn’t), he couldn’t do it.
Speaking of which, Roborock is apparently working on a feature where the Saros Z70 will be able to play with your cat while you’re away. If the cat deigns to get involved, of course.
There’s always a lot of extravagant technology at CES, so you’d be forgiven for assuming (as I did) that this was little more than an attention-grabbing prototype, rather than something consumer-ready. Apparently not. Pre-production samples will go on sale this month, retail samples are scheduled for March 2025, and open sales are scheduled for the first half of the year (that is, in the first half of the year, before the end of June).
Is this the future of robot vacuum cleaners? Maybe…
I saw a slightly older generation version of the Z70; in fact, it wasn’t even the latest version at the time, but rather a press event touring model that had suffered a battle wound to its hatch as a result of overzealous driving. in New York. Even without the latest software updates and a few glitches during the demo, it was certainly impressive and certainly unlike anything we’ve seen before in the world of robotic vacuum cleaners.
Is this the direction robot vacuum cleaners are headed? Maybe. I’m encouraged by the fact that this bot comes from Roborock, a brand that constantly impresses us with new releases and can be trusted to deliver useful innovations that actually work. We loved the Roborock Qrevo Curv, which came with quad-like suspension for bouncing over high thresholds, for example.
While it’s exciting to see something totally new, realistically I suspect that for the time being, the Saros 10 and 10R sister models will be the ones people actually buy. All three options are being positioned as joint flagship models and all three feature the latest and greatest technology from the rest of the Roborock fleet.
The 10 and 10R are similar, but the former uses a traditional LDS module for navigation, while the latter uses the newer StarSight system (introduced with the Qrevo Slim, and notable in that it does not rely on a raised central disc, which This means that the overall profile of the bot may be thinner.) The Z70 is similar again, but with the important addition of the robotic arm.
TechRadar will cover this year’s edition extensively CESand will bring you all the important announcements as they happen. Go to our CES 2025 News page for the latest stories and our hands-on verdicts on everything from 8K From foldable TVs and screens to new phones, laptops, smart home devices and the latest in artificial intelligence.
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