Roborock S9 MaxV Review: Strong but Not Perfect
Our full Roborock S9 MaxV review after two weeks of testing: measured performance, battery figures, and whether it is worth £1199.
Maya Okonkwo
The short version
The Roborock S9 MaxV is Roborock's 2025 entry in a crowded smart Home Devices market, and at £1199 it is competing against some of the strongest hardware we have tested. After a fortnight of daily use, the headline is straightforward: it delivers an extending side brush that genuinely cleans edges and corners.
Verdict in one line: Buy it for an extending side brush that genuinely cleans edges and corners. Think twice if this would bother you daily: very expensive.
In the hand
There is nothing experimental here, which is mostly to the Roborock S9 MaxV's credit. The detail worth calling out is that it cleared a cable, two shoes and a charging brick across ten runs. Against the rest of the smart Home Devices category it feels considered rather than novel.
How it performs
Our testing runs the same suite on every device so figures stay comparable across years. The figure worth quoting is Battery: 6400mAh. That places it comfortably above average for its price bracket.
| Specification | Roborock S9 MaxV |
|---|---|
| Suction | 10,000Pa |
| Navigation | LiDAR plus dual-camera |
| Mopping | Dual spinning pads, auto-lift |
| Dock | Self-empty, wash and dry |
| Battery | 6400mAh |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent a month installed in a real home, not a bench. A three-bedroom flat with sixty existing connected devices, a congested 2.4GHz band, and deliberate router reboots to see what recovers on its own.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Response time | Command to physical action, measured a hundred times across the day, reported as a median and a worst case. |
| Reliability | Failed or dropped commands as a percentage over the full month, logged automatically. |
| Recovery | Time to come back online after a power cut and after a router restart, five trials each. |
| Local control | Whether the device still works with the internet connection physically unplugged. |
| Setup | Timed from opening the box to a working automation, by someone who has not used the app before. |
We deliberately do not report advertised range figures, which assume an empty room and no other radios.
The honest caveat: Every home’s radio environment is different. Reliability here is a strong signal, not a guarantee.
The strengths
- An extending side brush that genuinely cleans edges and corners
- Excellent obstacle avoidance
- A dock that handles emptying, washing and drying
Taken together, those strengths make it a natural fit for households with pets, hard floors and no patience.
Where it falls short
- Very expensive
- A bulky dock
- Proprietary dust bags add ongoing cost
None of these are dealbreakers on their own. Whether they matter depends entirely on how you intend to use it, which is why the section below matters more than the score.
How it compares
The closest alternatives on price are Eufy S3 Pro Cam and Ecobee Smart Thermostat. All three have been through the same tests, so the figures below are directly comparable rather than collected from different reviews.
| Model | Price | Our score | Standout | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roborock S9 MaxV (this review) | £1199 | 4 / 5 | An extending side brush that genuinely cleans edges and corners | Very expensive |
| Eufy S3 Pro Cam | £219 | 4 / 5 | Local storage with no subscription at all | A bulky housing |
| Ecobee Smart Thermostat | £219 | 4 / 5 | Remote sensors that average temperature across rooms | Fiddly installation on older systems |
Nothing at this price scored higher in our testing, which is the strongest argument for the Roborock S9 MaxV.
Is it worth the money?
At £1199 the Roborock S9 MaxV asks £831 more than the category average of £368, against an average score of 3.9 out of 5 across the smart Home Devices we have tested. Its own 4 works out at roughly £300 per point. You are paying a premium for a genuinely better result, which is defensible if an extending side brush that genuinely cleans edges and corners is what you are buying it for.
If the budget is the binding constraint, the Meross Smart Plug Mini at £12 is the floor we would still recommend — below that the compromises stop being ones you can live with.
Daily use
Two weeks in, the figure that stopped mattering was suction — 10,000Pa is more than adequate and you forget about it by the third day. What kept surfacing instead was that very expensive, which is easy to shrug off in a spec comparison and harder to ignore at 6pm on a Friday. On the other side, it cleared a cable, two shoes and a charging brick across ten runs turns out to be the sort of detail you only appreciate after living with the alternative.
Who should buy it
Buy the Roborock S9 MaxV if you are households with pets, hard floors and no patience. Skip it if this is something you would notice every day: very expensive.
Buy it if:
- Households with pets, hard floors and no patience
- You want an extending side brush that genuinely cleans edges and corners
- You value excellent obstacle avoidance
Skip it if:
- You need very expensive to be a solved problem
- The Eufy S3 Pro Cam at £219 already covers what you need
- You upgraded within the last two years — the gap is not worth the outlay
Verdict
Buy it for an extending side brush that genuinely cleans edges and corners. Think twice if this would bother you daily: very expensive.
Score: 4 / 5 · £1199 at the time of writing.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the smart home we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Roborock S9 MaxV vs Aqara Hub M3: Is the 2025 Model Worth the Change? and Roborock S9 MaxV vs Ecobee Smart Thermostat: Is the 2025 Model Worth the Change?.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
