Compared to the units I previously reviewed, the Roborock Q7 Max, and the Roborock S7, the G10 is easily twice the size. While with the past units, I could easily carry the unit around, with the G10 I began to notice its heft halfway towards the lift from my car. According to the official Shopee page, the G10 weighs 5kg, which I seriously doubt.

But perhaps that has to do with the cumbersome nature of the unit, after all, the main difference the G10 has from the above mentioned 2 units is that it comes with an auto-washing mop cleaning station. To emphasise, it has a mop-cleaning station, that is also auto-washing. Not only does it wash the mop of the vacuum unit, it cleans itself too, neat!

I try to make it a point to not read instruction manuals, especially for less-intricate gadgets, and from setting up my previous 3 Roborock units, I wouldn’t need to. The design is usually intuitive enough. More importantly, it serves as a reverse-Turing test, to see if the setting up would be doable for lazier people like myself.

At this point, it feels like Roborock has anticipated this behaviour, because apart from the bible-thick owner’s manual, they printed and stuck in an extremely-large user set up guide. Packed on the top of the G10 shipping box, unmissable by design, in simple words, complete with pictures. Kudos. I know that setting up usually takes maybe 10 minutes max, this really seals the Roborock in its foolproof-ness.

Returning to unboxing the unit, it’s packed with plenty of styrofoam to protect it from shipping mishaps, safely suspended within the padded box. One of the steps on the big instruction card is to first remove a separate styrofoam piece that’s kept inside the mop cleaner, so it feels like Roborock has really covered all possibilities in their packaging. I can’t say that I’ve felt this well taken care of from another product.

That being said, the next thing I did was try to pull the unit out of its styrofoam packing sideways, which, once free, immediately spilled its 2 containers for the washing of the mop. Thankfully these plastic tubs aren’t the fragile bits.

Setting up is as easy as before, while the instructions asked for the Roborock app, I continued with my XiaoMi MiHome app, which still has the previous units in its memory. The app, intuitive as ever, prompts everything, as usual, and gives options like multiple-room map setting.

One difference this new towering block has over the previous standalone charging docks is the function to hide cables behind nicely, with its cutout for cable management, so you can tuck this unit fully back into a wall for a cleaner overall aesthetic.

Speaking on aesthetics, the dock looks a lot cleaner than the previous iteration, even though it’s 4 or 5 times the height and 2 or 3 times the length. The LED light bar blinks slowly and sequentially, in white and red, depending on situations. It almost looks like a futuristic, robotic kombini, with a single parking lot for its vehicle, the vacuum.

The G10 vacuum itself also looks a lot cleaner than the previous robots, with a more muted colour scheme than its other cousins. Where the previous units had orange accents, this only has white, black, and gray, which looks more sophisticated, and would fit nicely inside a Scandinavian theme or industrial theme home.

Unlike the Q7 and s7, the “vibrarise” mop unit isn’t removable, only the cloth mop itself. It seems to be a new hassle, given that you have to now lift the unit up to remove or replace the cloth mop, but since the mop is automatically washed, the point is moot.

The vacuum unit docks in nicely within the tower, and you’ll get the usual “charging” audio cue when the charging points are aligned.

The top hatch houses the 2 tubs, one for clean water and one for used water from the mop. The plastic feels pretty thick, similar to Lock and Lock boxes. I appreciate the attention to details that they employ here, where something as forgettable as the clean water tub, they’ve given you 2 filling methods. You could use a small opening, presumably to fit a tap, hose, or bottle, or you could fully open the top for a bigger opening, which is what you’ll find on the used water tub, since emptying water is an easy dump. There are also thick plastic handles on the top for easy lifting out from the unit for filling/dumping its contents.

Once on and set up, the light on the top of the vacuum unit syncs with the light on the tower dock, even when blinking softly, which is a really nice touch. Even within the app, there are animations to display the unit sleeping, with snoozing Zzz’s, and one for brush washing. When tapped to wash, the vacuum unit backs out, does a 180-degree turn, and backs the mop end into the dock unit.

From there, the dock begins running its cleaning cycle, with a spinning brush at 600 rpm, and water, running over the mop cloth several times. At this point, the unit gets rather noisy from its moving parts, as well as the suction to drain the dirt and water, pulling it up into the used water tank. The G10 also features self-cleaning, but I’m guessing it would take some time for any dirt to build up on the washing mechanism itself before I can see the effectiveness of its self-cleaning.

I first tested the wash setting before setting it to do a clean cycle, thinking that like the Q7 and S7 models, it’s better to wet the wash mop beforehand, otherwise, the mop would run for a few minutes without being fully wet, leaving you with some unmopped areas. However, that’s not necessary for the G10, as the first thing the unit does upon being set to clean, is to wash the mop, so anytime the G10 is set to clean, it’ll begin with a clean, wet mop.

Similar to the Q7, the G10 features 2,500Pa from its “HyperForce stormer”, which is more than enough for most households. Mopping is also done well, thanks to its 3000rpm “Sonic mopping”. The G10 uses an all-rubber brush, which is also found in the S7 and Q7. This rubber brush does away with hair especially well, so you don’t have to deal with tangles in the brush.

For carpeted households, the G10 and S7 would fare better over the Q7, thanks to its automatic mop-lift when it senses a carpet texture, from its “ultrasonic sensor”. No-mop zones can also be set from within the MiHome app, as well as no-go zones, in case you have fragile objects or fences that can be pushed over.

The seamless app connectivity makes monitoring a breeze, with battery percentage, cleaning path, zone and map settings, and even over-the-air software updates. There are several intensities of its suction and mopping power to choose from, so you can even set the vacuum to run in the night time, with lower decibels.

From cleaning up my home, I can guess that the G10 can run for 90 minutes at a go, before needing any recharging, which also covered a 26 square meter area. From observation you can see that the G10 first outlines the room, going along all edges, before then running in a very methodical row-by-row pattern. This ensures that almost every spot of the house that can be cleaned will be cleaned.

After the first round of cleaning, the G10 returns to the dock, and washes the mop before going to sleep mode. With only 1 round of cleaning done, the dirt can be seen in the used-water tank, giving it a murky grey shade, with sediment sinking to the bottom. The translucent tub helps to reinforce the utility of the G10, seeing the dirt before your eyes being dumped down the drain.

After cycles, the G10 dock also refills the water tank on the G10 vacuum, so you have a longer period of convenience between cleaning cycles, before you have to refill the tank, like on the Q7 or S7.

One issue that I thought about would be the mop having the wet-clothes smell, which in fairness, when I inspected the vacuum unit the next day, the wet-clothes smell was there. Though thankfully, it didn’t seem to spread out a lot. I’d say that you wouldn’t notice it unless you went to sniff the vacuum itself. Additionally, the unit would start its cleaning cycle with a mop wash, so the wet-clothes smell wouldn’t spread to the rest of the house.

Overall, I find the G10 to be really useful, considering that with the S7 and Q7, one of the friction points is having to physically attach and remove the mop before and after each clean cycle. Because of that friction point, sometimes I’d rather just use the vacuum function to pick up dirt, and only set the mop every other time. This is an issue that the G10 solves easily, and I think it’s a worthwhile upgrade if you have the space.

In terms of which unit you should get, I unfortunately wouldn’t be able to recommend a specific unit as there’s quite literally a model for every need, but I’d say that the G10 is a worthwhile investment for cleanliness and convenience. The G10 has a Recommended Retail Price of S$1,699, but to be honest, it’s always on sale, even on their authorised dealer pages on Shopee and Lazada. For example, today, the 21st of November, which doesn’t have any specific sale like the upcoming Black Friday or any of the double digit sale days, the official store is selling it for S$1,049.9 down from its S$1,699.9.