Roborock, one of the flashiest home robot makers, is taking the plunge. The Beijing-based brand, known for its super-smart robot vacuums, including models with robotic grabbing arms and stair-climbing capabilities, has launched its first-ever robotic pool cleaner.

We saw it first at IFA Berlin.

On a crowded showroom floor, we got a look at Roborock’s small and colorful new pool cleaner. Dubbed the RockAqua P1, this autonomous underwater vacuum is engineered to clean pool floors, walls, waterlines and shallow platforms.

Its adaptive cleaning path, a feature prominent in Roborock’s indoor vacuums, allows the robot to navigate pools of different shapes and depths. Vision-based obstacle avoidance identifies obstacles such as drain covers and steps, helping reduce interruptions during cleaning.

Roborock has entered the pool-care conversation with the launch of the RockAqua P1 at IFA.

While obstacle avoidance is useful, the ability to track down debris in a pool using AI cognition, as our top-rated Aiper Scuba V3 does, is even more impressive. So far, it doesn’t look like Roborock’s entry into the pool-cleaner category offers a comparable debris-detection feature.

What the RockAqua P1 lacks in proactive leaf, bug, and stone hunting, it makes up for with a lot of suction power. The robot delivers a suction rate of 6,800 gallons per hour, placing it in the same class as some of the most powerful pool-cleaning robots from well-established brands. Still, our lab testing shows that raw power doesn’t necessarily translate to better cleaning.

Roborock’s first-ever pool vac can adjust its suction strategically to better capture debris.Tara Brown/CNET

One particularly interesting feature is the robot’s ability to adjust its suction depending on the situation. According to Roborock, when it encounters larger debris, the robot reduces suction to prevent the water flow from disturbing the debris and pushing it out of the cleaning path. As it gets closer, it increases suction to capture the debris.

Roborock’s first pool cleaner runs for up to 3.5 hours on a full charge, which is average for high-end models. When a cleaning cycle is complete, the robot rests on the water’s surface. That’s a useful touch, since some pool cleaners remain at the bottom and have to be hauled out manually. The surface-resting design should make the RockAqua P1 easier to retrieve for emptying and recharging.

As of now, the RockAqua P1 is set for release in Europe only, with a rollout to the US market still in question.

Editor’s note: David Watsky’s travel costs for the IFA conference were covered by IFA. The judgments and opinions of CNET are our own

David Watsky

Managing Editor / Home and Kitchen

David lives in Brooklyn where he's spent more than a decade covering all things edible, including meal kit services, food subscriptions, kitchen tools and cooking tips. David earned his BA from Northeastern and has toiled in nearly every aspect of the food business, including as a line cook in Rhode Island where he once made a steak sandwich for Lamar Odom. Right now he's likely somewhere stress-testing a blender or tinkering with a toaster. Anything with sesame is his all-time favorite food this week. See full bio