I have owned a Roborock S4 for over a year now and couldn't be more pleased. It does a fantastic job of vacuuming, mapping, and making my family's life easier. We recommend it to anyone who will listen!
I recently saw that the S4 Max was on sale and purchased a unit. The Max promised to address the two small quibbles we've had with our standard S4: we often have to hunt for the cleaning tool whenever we need it, and the standard S4 struggles with one threshold in our house (which is admittedly challenging, so we don't blame the bot!).
However, after using the S4 Max for a couple of weeks now, it actually seems to be a downgrade in these areas:
- The S4 Max is more likely to "bang" against obstacles rather than gently bumping up against them. The standard S4 slows down as it approaches obstacles and then gently touches them, whereas there's an audible “bang” with the S4 Max as it bumps against objects at close to full speed.
- The S4 Max seems to scrape up against surfaces/walls more often and has a significant scratches on its bumper whereas the regular S4 has much less scratching by comparison (and has been in service for more than a year).
- The S4 Max is more likely to confuse its maps, overwriting an older map with a new room so that we have to delete the map and start from scratch.
- The S4 Max also seems to get more confused/disoriented about where it is within a room.
- The S4 Max is more likely to struggle with finding its docking station. The problem appears to be twofold: even a slight coating of dust seems to interrupt the contacts, and because the charging unit is smaller and lighter, the S4 Max is more likely to bump into the charger and dislodge/dislocate it during initial scanning and then can’t find it/align with it at the conclusion of the cleaning.
Again, we’re huge fans of the standard S4, but the Max has been a disappointment. Is there any chance that a Firmware upgrade will address these issues??
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Hi, thanks for reaching out.
The S4 max is an improvement of S4 in many ways. The biggest improvement is that the S4max has a climbing ability of 2cm while S4 has 1.5cm.
Both models will slow itself down as long as the laser head can see the obstacles. For the scratches, the robot should be able to walk in a safe distance between itself and the wall. We're wondering if this issue is related to the 3rd, 4th and 5th issues.
If the map is messed up, the robot may not be able to orient itself, and may have a lot of troubles. We suggest you send us a picture of the history cleanup map when the issue occurred for our referrence.
We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience we caused. We will try our best to help you solve the issue.