Roborock's Saros Z70 can pick up your socks — but this robot vacuum with a claw arm won't declutter your home just yet

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When I first started testing robot vacuums over a decade ago, my takeaway was that the idea held promise, but wasn't worth the price and the hassle just yet. At the time, robot vacuums weren't much more than bumper bots, and you had to take time to prepare your house so the robot wouldn't tangle in cords, get stuck under low objects, or drag itself through pet waste.

Cut to 2025 and robot vacuums are smarter than ever. The best robot vacuums on the market today can map your home, vacuum and mop at the same time, and self-empty when they're done. And now, with the upcoming launch of Roborock's Saros Z70, they can actually pick up clutter around the house — well, allegedly.

Last week, I got a first look at the Saros Z70 and watched its signature robotic arm in action. My takeaway is that this is a really cool feature that holds a lot of promise in the future but doesn't seem that useful right now. If anything, it feels a little rushed to market as Roborock competes to debut the most innovative features in an already crowded robot vacuum marketplace.

Right now, the robot can pick up socks, shoes, and not much else.

The Saros Z70 looks a lot like its predecessor the Saros 10R, with the addition of a paneled compartment that holds the robotic arm. When the sorting feature is activated and the robot detects an object, it will deploy the arm and attempt to pick it up and move it to a designated storage area.

Right now, the robot vacuum is trained to recognize and pick up only a handful of objects, including socks, lightweight shoes, and crumbled pieces of tissue or paper. I see why they've been careful with what objects it attempts to pick up — I wouldn't want it messing with wires or my cat's food bowls, but this significantly limits the utility of the feature for now. I personally don't have tons of balled-up pieces of paper scattered around my home; if anything, the major source of clutter is my cat's toys — but, alas, the robot hasn't been trained to pick those up just yet. I was told repeatedly throughout the preview that the engineering team is rapidly training the robot on new items and hopes that it'll be able to push software updates to the vacuum to make it smarter and smarter as the year goes on, but I sure as heck wouldn't pay the $1,000 upgrade over the Saros 10R for the convenience of not having to pick up a sock every now and again. (The price of the Saros Z70 seems to have gone up dramatically overnight — last week, it was listed with an MSRP of $1,899, and now it's priced at $2,599.)

Roborock promises the robot will be able to do more…eventually.

Once the robot picks up an object, it can either move it to the side and clean where it once was, or deposit it in one of two designated storage areas. The first is a shoe storage area that you can set on the map, and the other is a paper waste basket that comes shipped with each robot vacuum for — I guess, everything else. Right now, you have to use this flimsy (and frankly, ugly) trash can, since the robot has been trained to detect the pattern on the side. Once again, I'm told the engineering team is hoping to eventually allow you to use a container of your choosing with future updates. Are you sensing a theme here?

You can also drive the robot around and pick up things manually — but this feature seems to be more for fun than convenience.

It reminded me of when my engineer roommates attempted to program an old robot vacuum to be a beer delivery robot — it was honestly just faster to get up and get the beer myself. Similarly, I could spend 5 minutes driving around the Saros Z70 to pick up a sock, or I could just bend over and pick it up myself. I can, however, see there being some utility in this feature for those with movement limitations.

The robot can't vacuum and pick up objects at the same time.

Lastly, I was told that the robot doesn't engage the arm while performing its vacuuming or mopping routine. It notes the location of the object and then comes back later to pick it up after it's done cleaning. "Wouldn't it make more sense for it to pick up the objects and then clean?" I asked. The answer had to do with engineering and battery limitations, but there is a feature called "follow-up cleaning" that allows the robot to move the object and then clean where it once was. It won't move the object to storage in this mode, however, so those socks will still be on your floor, just in a different, cleaner space.

Despite my misgivings, I have to say it is pretty cool to see the robotic arm in action, and I think the design shows promise.

It's amazing to see how far robot vacuums have come in the past few years. I'm confident it won't be long before we have a robot that truly can clean every inch of your floors with little supervision or intervention. The robotic arm introduced by the Z70 is the biggest leap forward I've seen in a while.

My coworker is currently testing the Z70 in his home in the coming weeks, and I'm curious to see what he thinks of the utility of the robot arm after spending several weeks with it. Based on my very limited time with the robot, I personally wouldn't buy it at launch, but a lot can change between now and launch day — I'll definitely be keeping my eye on how the design improvements evolve in the coming weeks.