Roborock Qrevo Edge 2 Pro review: Close to the sun

A new robot vacuum is released every couple of months, and as of late each new release has been stacking up the features. On paper that sounds like a pro, but the Qrevo Edge 2 Pro is an Icarian tale. Stacked with features like the AdaptaLift chassis, a retractable LiDAR sensor, and detachable mop pads, the robot vacuum presents excellent value, but at times these features are more trouble than they’re worth. The Edge 2 Pro may fare better flying between the extremes.

Design

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Ignoring the usual flying saucer design, the Edge 2 Pro has a unique combination of practical design features. The retractable LiDAR sensor allows the robot to shrink down to under 8cm tall so it can fit underneath lowline furniture. For the most part bringing the turret down doesn’t affect the overall performance, but there are times it can get itself stuck. A handful of times during testing the vacuum ended up lodged underneath my entertainment unit. This isn’t a uniquely Roborock experience - I’ve tested a handful of Ecovacs robots who have had the same problem - but it did manage to scratch up the top of the unit while it tried to free itself.

A more reliable addition is the detachable mop pads. Rather than dragging wet and dirty mop pads across your carpet the Edge 2 Pro clicks them off and leaves them at the base station while it vacuums. There is a noticeable difference in the longevity, and the smell of the mop pads because of this. Despite plenty of other robovacs running rigorous cleaning cycles at the base station, after a while the mop always develops a certain smell. So far the Edge 2 Pro has managed to buck this, although the 100 degree wash cycle probably pulls its weight here too.

Flying closer to the sun is the Adaptalift chassis. The hydraulic element lets the robot lift itself up to 3cm off the ground and traverse across thresholds up to 4cm wide. While we (among other publications) are guilty of calling this a ‘stair climbing’ feature, realistically it is more about getting over sliding door frames. I don’t have any of these in my house, but the Edge 2 Pro still looks for them. My camera roll is a collection of snaps of the robot mounting random things; shoes, cables, a drum pedal, a wine bottle.

Each time the overly ambitious robovac tries to fly higher, I have to go and rescue it. Which, if it was consistent, could be avoided, but it isn’t. The AI object avoidance tech in the vacuum does know what shoes and cables look like, and successfully navigates around them some of the time, yet sometimes it decides they’re something to surmount. I’ve tried a bunch of ways to avoid the issue but the simplest one would be to turn off the feature. That isn’t an option. Instead I have set no-go zones where it consistently happens, but every clean is a coin toss. Will it make it over the tower or will its wings melt?

So much of the Edge 2 Pro’s design features are useful, but not every household needs all of them. The hubris of cramming so many high end features into one device is bound to fail somewhere, and in this case it is the Adaptalift chassis. In a household that doesn’t need that feature, its overzealousness is less of a feature and more of a bug. Conversely the other novel bits of design are legitimately useful, and if I were to downgrade to a cheaper model without the lift tech, I'd lose them too.

Performance

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General particle performance is solid across the board, but the mopping isn’t as reliable as other robovacs. The biggest sticking point is sticky messes similar to a honey or Nutella consistency. I tested it against yogurt, a sriracha sauce and a sugar heavy pistachio spread, and while the Edge 2 Pro made light work of the yogurt and sauce, the spread hardly budged.

It took three heavy duty mop passes to get it off the middle of the floor, but up against a wall edge about 60% of it still remained. For comparison, most robovacs are able to clean up sticky messes with a small amount of residue left in one pass. You probably won’t be cleaning a Nutella like consistency all the time, but it demonstrates that the Edge 2 Pro’s mop isn’t as adept as other models.

On the vacuuming front I have no complaints. Up against all our testing materials (oats, sprinkles, and flour) it picked up around 98% in the first pass on both carpet and hard floor. In more day-to-day testing the vacuum made a noticeable difference around the house. My pup’s fur, leaves and sticks tracked in from outside, and the usual household dander had a similarly impressive clearance rate. The zero tangle rollers don’t fare as well with larger pieces of sticks or bobby pins, and these will usually cause some kind of blockage, or a horrible sound at the least. I wouldn’t expect anything different, but I have to warn my fellow lazy cleaners.

Mapping and object avoidance

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Looping back around to object avoidance, some of the Edge 2 Pro's Adaptalift issues could be solved if this was a little bit better. On the map the robovac is able to identify a range of different objects, and theoretically avoid them, but it only has around an 80% hit rate.

Low lying objects like cables, shoelaces, or a stray t-shirt are likely to get jammed in the vacuum. You'll need to move all of these to get a properly hands-free clean, but even then you can't be sure the robovac won't need your help. Even medium sized objects that the device can identify and track on the map sometimes get the same treatment. The Edge 2 Pro routinely gets stuck on shoes and dog toys, mostly because it seems to think they are a threshold to cross (as I touched on before). If the object identification and avoidance was more accurate, chances are neither of these would be as much of an issue.

On the flip side the mapping is quick and reliable. I have had one weird glitch where the vacuum lost its way and seemed to think it could move through walls before inevitably getting stuck. Unfortunately you can't delete parts of the map if there is an error like this, but Roborock's in-app AI has set a no-go zone around this floating dimension so hopefully it shouldn't run off there again.

Roborock Qrevo Edge 2 Pro: Final thoughts

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While the Qrevo Edge 2 Pro doesn’t have the same tragic end as Icarus, the two are still a cautionary tale of hubris. For the vacuum we see it overreaching and consistently disregarding its own advice. Even though it knows those are shoes, it still tries to cross it like a threshold, just because it has the ability to do so. It’s one flaw, but for the user experience it is a fatal one.

That is only one part of the story though. On the other side of the tower the Edge 2 Pro has reliable and top tier vacuuming performance. While the mopping has room for improvement for most everyday messes it will do the trick.