I was a robot vacuum skeptic, but EcoVacs pulled me back in

I’ve been testing out the EcoVacs Deebot T80 Omni and X9 Pro Omni vacuums, and I never want to go back to a house without one.

For years, I’ve lived in small Toronto apartments so it never made sense to buy a robot vacuum when I could sweep the whole place in less than ten minutes. However, my new apartment is much larger, so when EcoVacs reached out for me to test its latest robots I said yes.

I hadn’t used a robot vacuum since the third generation of Roombas in 2007, and they’ve come a long way since then. Both of the new EcoVacs units have built-in mops, which I was a little skeptical of, and they auto-empty into base stations. However, after spending some time with them, I’m not a skeptic anymore.

One more chore off the list

Upkeeping a house is a lot of work, and the chores never stop piling up. So while you can’t expect a robot vacuum to clean your whole house perfectly, it can help save you a little bit of time you can dedicate somewhere else.

The primary things that separate the T80 and the X9 Pro are suction power and the ability to lift the mop. The X9 Pro is a little higher-end, and its mop apparatus can move up to avoid carpets. That said, you can set the T80 to vacuum carpets before it mops, avoiding the damp carpet issue in a different way.

Overall, both do a great job of clearing dust and small particles. While I was skeptical of the mopping function, I think it does a good job of clearing up any extra dust the vacuum missed. Honestly, I used to sweep a lot, and it never felt this clean on my feet. While I might have been more thorough, the robots cover 90 per cent of the house and 99 per cent of the areas where I walk, so overall it’s making me very happy.

When near a wall the mop on both units extends out to reach it.

As I mentioned, they can’t go everywhere, and as much as they try, they still struggle to clean the edges of weirdly shaped things. There’s an AI vision feature that does help it get close, but it’s still not perfect. My house has lots of furniture along the walls, baseboard heaters and other oddities that don’t work great for 100 per cent coverage with a robot vacuum.

I have a cat, so this can be frustrating because cat hair will still build up in some corners. However, having the T80 unit upstairs run three times a week has cut down on cat dander immensely.

On carpets, it works well, but since the most I can set it to do is two passes on each rug, it just can’t spot-check in the same way I can when I’m using a hand-held vacuum. Don’t get me wrong, I was surprised by how well it cleans the carpet in my office. My cat likes to play on that one and rubs his body all over it, making it insanely hairy very often. It’s been a good test for these units. Right now, I have the X9 Pro set to clean the carpet in that room once a day, and it does a good job of managing the damage, but it can’t get all the hair. Still, it makes it livable and saves me time manually vacuuming.

I’ve had no real complaints about suction. Both work better than I expected, and I’m in love with the simple luxury of always having a clean floor that I don’t have to think about.

The app experience

The EcoVacs Home app offers a lot of functionality, maybe even too much in some instances. However, you can set detailed cleaning schedules, edit the map your robot made of your house, check cleaning logs, control the robot like a remote control car, and more.

You can also link these to your Apple, Google or Alexa home apps because they have Matter support. I haven’t used that as much since I found the standard routine feature to be enough automation for me, but it is cool to ask Siri to start the vacuum. And it’s even cooler when you can ask it to vacuum a specific room. Something about talking to the robot and then watching it scoot across the floor to tidy up my mess feels cool every time.

That being said, the app isn’t as straightforward as I would have liked. It is a bit confusing to navigate and could use a bit of a slim down on features. For instance, why is there even a toggle for the ‘AIVI 3D 3.0’ (AI Vision 3D 3)? It’s a feature to help the robot identify and avoid obstacles, so from my perspective, that should always be on.  The nature of it being a toggle and off by default will lead people to wonder if it should even be on or not.

I assume it’s like this so people who don’t want to use the camera features can disable them. However, it would have been more straightforward to have a privacy toggle that disabled the camera modes.

Smaller features and some issues

Both of these robots are quite thin and can fit under couches and beds that are taller than roughly 10cm.

The base station will charge the robots, empty the dust bins, empty/refill the water and blow hot air over the mop to dry it quickly so it doesn’t start to smell.

One area both vacuums struggled with was the tassels on my carpet. Sometimes, they’d get over them fine, but other times, they’d get jammed up. We ended up having to fold them all under the edge of the rug to avoid the problem. However, I’d love to see a way for robots to overcome this in the future.

While not a huge problem, the robots, especially the glossy plastic bits, get covered in dust over time, so you will have to clean them and their sensors every once in a while.

Again, when it comes to mops, this isn’t going to replace a traditional mop or steam mop, but if you think of it like a Swiffer-style dust mop, then it will hit your expectations.

A little help goes a long way

After using the EcoVacs Deebot X9 Pro and T80 Omni, I’m hooked on robot vacuums. For most people, the T80 is more than enough and priced quite reasonably at $1,299.

The X9 Pro is more expensive at $1,999, and while I liked knowing that it had added suction, and the ability to lift the mop head when cleaning carpets. I found that the ‘Clean carpet first’ mode worked just as well on the older model, and both cleaned my hardwood floors just as effectively.