Until now, it was in the floor maintenance section that Roborock distinguished itself on the website of Digital. We may have to get used to seeing the Chinese also shine in the laundry care section since, on the occasion of IFA 2023, it has just unveiled its first laundry care device, a washer-dryer. responding to the sweet surname of Zeo One. Will Roborock succeed in establishing itself in the laundry care sector as it did in the field of floor vacuuming? The challenge seems tough to say the least.
For this first attempt, Roborock does not really reinvent the wheel and therefore relies on the ultra-classic architecture that we all know: a large parallelepiped 60 cm wide by 85 cm high and 66 cm deep – which corresponds to our European standards – equipped with a porthole on the front. Above the latter, we find the control panel a little more original since the engineers have decided to completely dispense with the wheel for a set of sensitive keys which will therefore be used to choose the basic program. Other buttons are used to set the cycle (water temperature, spin speed and how much).
Laundry-friendly low-temperature drying
According to the manufacturer’s statements, the Zeo One is capable of washing 10 kg of laundry but only drying 6. Note, however, that this difference is not unusual in the small world of washer-dryers. . Roborock promises efficient and fiber-friendly low-temperature drying thanks to its Zeo-cycle™ technology using a subtle combination of sensors, algorithm and artificial intelligence as repeatedly announced by the already well-established competition. The press release advances “a drying capacity of 288,000 m² without extreme heat […] i.e. 40 football pitches” we are kindly told. According to our learned calculations (280,000 m² divided by 8,000 cm² or, to within a few cm², the surface area of a double-sided M t-shirt), this represents approximately 383,930 t- In a nutshell, we will be wary like the plague of this kind of statement which does not really help to get a concrete idea of the performance of the Zeo One.
Of course, the Zeo One can be connected to a smartphone equipped with the dedicated application. The tech-savvy washerwoman (or washerman) will therefore be able to program his cycle remotely, launch it at the most opportune moment to have his clean and dry laundry when he returns home or to take advantage of off-peak hours. More relevant, it should also be possible to download very specific cycles that would not be available natively on the Zeo One control panel.
For the moment, no availability or price has been communicated.