Review: Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow

Roborock’s Curv robot vacuum is probably the most attractive robot vacuum I’ve ever tested. The domed white docking station is attractive, convenient, and compact. It doesn’t hurt that Roborock’s navigation and cleaning systems are consistently the best among the robot vacuums I’ve tested. Roborock vacuums don’t get lost. They clean up all kinds of messes effectively. And they’re beautiful. What more do you want?

It’s been several years since the last update to the midrange Qrevo Curv line (Roborock has spent that time putting arms and legs on robot vacuums, oh well), but the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow was worth the wait. It’s designed mainly for homes with hard floors, with an extra-wide, self-cleaning spinning roller that can exert heavy downward scrubbing pressure. It has scrubbed sticky jelly off my floors. With two kids and a dog, sometimes I run it three times a day in my kitchen. This thing is great.

Jelly Roll

Photograph: Adrienne So

Roborock’s proprietary name for this mopping system is called SpiraFlow. The large roller—it almost spans the width of the vacuum and extends outward to edge-clean thoroughly—has eight hydration points across it to continuously clean the roller as it mops. A built-in scraper shunts the dirty water into the tank and makes sure that the mop doesn't soak the floor.

The roller rotates at 220 rpm and applies 15 newtons (approximately 3.3 pounds) of downward pressure. In comparison, the Eufy X10 Pro Omni, which I loved, applies about 6 newtons of pressure.

Not only can the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow clean up standard mopping messes, like spilled Campari or flour, but it can also clean up even bigger ones. My daughter spilled a handful of sticky berry compote; I just set a zone into the app and watched the Qrevo clean it up entirely. I didn’t realize a bottle of olive oil was leaking until I stepped in it in my socks and saw that I'd been tracking it all over the floor. The Qrevo took care of it.

I did add two tablespoons of Roborock’s proprietary cleaning solution to the clean water tank. Make sure you only use the cleaning solution optimized for that particular robot vacuum to avoid clogs. I also really appreciate that you can add the cleaning solution directly to the clean water tank. Many robot vacuums had a separate tank for their proprietary floor-cleaning solutions, which came in tiny, proprietary containers. It was inconvenient and wasteful.

On that note, maintenance can be a huge issue with robot vacuums. You would not believe how much time I’ve spent painstakingly disassembling and reassembling robovacs to get out the one Lego brick or button that’s gummed up the works. That's not the case with the Qrevo. Here, the dust bin, roller, and scraper all easily slide out and click back in again, complete with voice prompts to make sure you’ve put it all back correctly.

No More Carpet

Photograph: Adrienne So

Roborock’s AI-enabled SmartPlan used to be the best cleaning and navigation system I’d ever used. However, the AIs in other robot vacuums are advancing rapidly. That’s not to say that SmartPlan is bad. The vacuum still does most of the things you need it to do. The Qrevo makes it to every room and back to the docking station reliably, without fail. It accurately identified my furniture and risky drop-offs. No falling into the fireplace pit here!

According to Roborock, you don’t need to tidy up beforehand, but in my testing, I found that wasn't true. SmartPlan can still only identify and avoid objects that are 3 centimeters tall and 5 centimeters wide, which, while not large, is still quite a bit bigger than a bead or Lego brick.

I have two kids and a 1.5-year-old puppy who frequently shreds things in my house, and they all provide me ample testing opportunities. The Qrevo still gets tangled up in tote bag straps and stray pieces of paper that aren’t tall enough to be detected. A shredded dream catcher’s pieces met these size requirements, but the Qrevo Curv found the feathers baffling.

The Qrevo Curv 2 Flow is also optimized for hardwood floors. SmartPlan had no trouble automatically distinguishing the tile of my bathroom and laundry room from the hardwood of my kitchen. However, it occasionally relegated my carpeted living room and den to a sad Default status, rather than Carpet, and did not lift the mopping pad. In two weeks, I caught the Qrevo mopping the carpet once or twice.

The internal routing to the docking station's dust bag also appears to have been optimized for liquids, which means that solids, like dog hair, tend to clump up inside. I forgot to check the disposal chute for a few days, and it spat out a clump of dog hair the size of a small hamster. It's been a while since a Roborock vacuum has done that to me.

Photograph: Adrienne So

SmartPlan's occasional unreliability made me a little nervous to just set and forget the Qrevo by scheduling a cleaning time and letting SmartPlan decide everything, as I've done with Roborock vacuums in the past. However, I did like that there’s now a dirt-detection feature that Roborock calls, confusingly, DirTect. You can also customize and boost the cleaning with a pet-detection feature. It has 20,000 pascals (Pa) of suction, which, while not the highest suction power of the robovacs I’ve tested, is plenty high enough for most people. (You will probably just bald your carpets if you go higher.)

Battery life is also not the best I’ve tested, nor is it the fastest to recharge. (For example, Ecovacs and its more affordable sub-brand, Yeedi, both now have models with PowerBoost technology that can top up to finish a cycle in a matter of minutes.) If I start a full cleaning at 9:30 am, it takes until 3 pm to finish, with a three-hour recharge cycle mid-clean. It can clean for about 1.5 hours if it’s required to do things like mopping. It takes about 140 minutes to clean 850 square feet.

Probably the most important consideration, though, is that the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow is brand-new and retails for $1,000. For the past several years, I’ve been saying that $1,500 is about the median cost for a brand-new robot vacuum, and this is considerably well under that mark. And it's currently on sale for $850 until February!

While they’re fun for testing and making videos, I'd skip the flashier, pricier stair-climbing and arm-waving models for now. This solid midrange vacuum is all that you really need, at a price that you won’t have to refinance your house to afford.