This Robot Vacuum Has a Claw That Tries (and Mostly Fails) to Pick Up Your Socks

A Roborock Saros Z70 next to a photo with a Roborock Saros Z70 picking up a sock.

It’s been almost 25 years since the first robot vacuum cleaners rolled into homes, smacked into dining room tables, and got tangled up on socks. But the days of endearingly dumb Roombas are a fading memory. New bots have improved rapidly in the past few years, and it almost seems like they’re on the cusp of a real Rosey the Robot housekeeper — at least for floors.

Roborock, arguably the most innovative robot-cleaner company of the 2020s and maker of our top pick for robot vacuums, just released the Saros Z70, a self-cleaning vacuum-mop combo complete with a mechanical claw that unfurls from the bot’s body to pick up stray socks, tissues, and slippers. In theory, this new addition helps the robot clean more thoroughly and get stuck less often, and saves you the hassle of picking up after yourself.

The robotic claw on the Roborock Saros Z70 is an impressive feat of engineering. But it picks up only certain types of clutter — and even then, I found that it works only about half the time. Liam McCabe/NYT Wirecutter

In reality, it’s a gimmick. Over a few weeks of testing, I found that the claw fails more often than it succeeds. Roborock representatives even warned us that it’s a work in progress when they sent a review sample. Good for Roborock for trying something so ambitious — and it’s a minor miracle that this arm actually does work some of the time. But unless you’re happy to pay thousands of dollars to beta-test a half-baked feature in the hopes that it might improve over time, you can sit this one out.

Apart from that limb-shaped distraction, the Saros Z70 is actually an excellent robot cleaner. The navigation system has some cutting-edge upgrades that, to my eyes, represent the most meaningful improvements to that tech this decade. You don’t need to pay nearly this much money to get a robot that’s almost as useful. But if you’re after the very best bot, something from the Saros lineup — if not the Z70 — is in the mix.



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