Stick vacs are taking over the world, riding high on the back of the humble lithium battery. By 2023, according to Market Reports World, more than 62% of vacuum buyers were going cordless – and it's easy to see why. They're just so handy to have about – no need to drag some hose-sprouting clunker out of the closet and root around trying to find a power outlet.
But there are certainly compromises to be made. For starters, the age of the stick vac signals the twilight of the cord retract button – and that's simply one of the greatest buttons in most homes, ask any six-year-old.
Another is that since they're so small and portable, there just isn't a ton of room for dust storage. So you're forever having to go and empty the canister – and I don't know about you, but personally this almost always results in me feeling dirtier than I did before opening the dust-bomb lid.
Chinese company Roborock has built its name on some of the most advanced and forward-thinking robot vacuums in the business – including this absolute doozy, which is patrolling my lounge room as we speak. Most robovacs these days attempt to prolong the time they can run without assistance by emptying themselves into their charging docks – and Roborock has decided why not extend the same feature to its latest stick vacuum, the H60 Hub Ultra.
I've had one around my place for several weeks now, and ... well, it solves a lot of problems for me. Not just the self-emptying part, either. Another unexpected win here is that the side of the docking station opens up to reveal perfect little spaces to store the extra mini-brush and crevice tools. For reference, our existing Ryobi stick vac also has such attachments, but I'm not convinced that anyone around here knows where they're supposed to live, and as a result, they're probably sitting in some pile somewhere being part of the problem and not the solution.
With the H60 Hub Ultra, there is a place for everything, and thus everything is in its place. Now, on the downside, that's a fairly large place. You do need to find a spot for this machine to call home, and while it's not ugly to look at per se, it's also no aesthetic triumph. Too big for most cupboards, it looms monolithically in a corner. Such is life.
Here's a quick rundown of some other key features. The H60 Hub has got:
- Up to 210 "air watts" of suction power. For context, Ecovacs tells me most stick vacs are in the 100-150 AW range. So the H60 sucks above its weight class
- A ~3,000-mAh battery, which Roborock claims is good for up to 90 minutes of cleaning. Not with the roller brushes on it ain't – but it runs notably longer than my other stick vac
- A wide-angle green working light mounted low on the roller head that throws dirt, dust and debris into stark relief
- An anti-tangle roller brush design that also wallops carpets at 7,200 bpm to whack dust free
- Multi-stage air filtration, both in the vacuum itself and the dock
It weighs 1.8 kg (4 lb) in the hand – which works fine for me – and probably feels a little lighter, since the roller brush seems to help it along as you move it. It's not particularly noisy, at ~75 dB, and the controls are as simple as they get: an on/off button, and a boost button. These are on top of the canister, which seems silly when they could be in a trigger format, or otherwise more accessible, but I'm quibbling.
When you're done, you take it back to the dock and hang it up, upon which it unleashes a brief but dramatic wave of suction that yanks the dust out of the canister and sticks it in a removable bag.
The dust bag in the base station has a 3-liter capacity. Roborock says this will handle up to 100 days of cleaning. Not in this neck of the woods in won't, bucko, but I'm sure it tracks for some pristine shoebox apartment in Beijing.
I often find myself visualizing this idyllic little apartment when subjecting Chinese vacuum gear to the maelstrom of chaos that is our place. Industrial factory cleaning equipment is probably what we really need around here – it feels a little unfair to put these machines through their paces in an environment so violently disrespectful to them.
For example, we've managed to clog the H60 up twice, to the point where we needed to manually empty the dustbin. But is this the fault of the vacuum itself, or of the operators, who drove it straight over an improbably large pile of chocolate wrappers – or indeed, of the grubby children who gaily sprinkled the floor with said wrappers? I would say the latter two more than the former.
Otherwise, the H60 hub has performed admirably in its duties, and I've very much appreciated the problem-solving flair it brings to the stick vac scene.
There is one further issue that needs to be addressed, though, and that's the price tag. At AU$999 in Australia, Roborock is asking a lot. That's three times what the Ryobi cost me. Indeed it's more than some robovacs want, and even the mighty Dyson only has two models in its catalog that cost more than the H60 Hub Ultra.
So it's very much a premium product at the moment. But it's also a premium experience and a vey nicely put together little machine – and if you've got a dust allergy, the fact that you rarely if ever need to open this thing up and coat yourself in dust to empty it? Well, that might put the cost into perspective.
If you're going to take away my cord retract button, you'd better deliver something in return – and between the in-hub tool storage and the lack of dusty showers manually emptying a stick vac into the big bin, the H60 Hub Ultra solves two of my biggest cleaning problems. I suspect the biggest two remaining problems will be living here well into their late twenties.
The Roborock H60 Hub Ultra is currently priced at US$599.99 in the US, and on sale in Australia for AU$499.00.
Product pages: Roborock AU, Roborock USA
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