You know that gratifying feeling of coming home to a clean house? With a family of five, that’s not a feeling I often get, if at all. Enter the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni.
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I’ve tested a fair share of robot vacuum and mop combinations, so I quite appreciate the experience of having a robot roaming around my home that picks up crumbs, dust, and everything in between. But the Deebot X2 Omni is easily the best robot vacuum and mop I’ve tried so far.
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Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni
This high-end robot vacuum and mop has been engineered to give users a hands-free cleaning experience.
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Ecovacs is launching the Deebot X2 Omni today, a new flagship robot vacuum and mop combo with a clear edge. After testing it out for a couple of weeks, I’ve found room for improvement in some tasks — largely outweighed by its long list of strengths.
The X2 Omni checks all the specs boxes for a high-end robot vacuum and mop. It has 8,000Pa of suction power, higher than the 6,000Pa of the current market leader, the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra. Using artificial intelligence (AI), the robot can detect and avoid objects strewn about the floor, such as socks and charging cables, and has a mopping pad that automatically lifts 15mm when carpets or rugs are detected.
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The Omni station charges the robot vacuum and mop, and also works as a base where it goes to empty its dustbin and self-wash and dry its mop pads. This feature means you only have to worry about keeping the base station’s clean water tank filled and its dirty water tank empty, which is a task you need to complete every few cleaning cycles.
Designed to be a hands-free experience, the base station is also self-cleaning. Running the self-cleaning option in the Ecovacs app will clean the base plate in the station — the spot where your mops are cleaned that typically sees water and dirt accumulation. This feature is a level above competitors like Yeedi, which requires users to periodically clean dirty water at the bottom of the docking station.
The dust bag holds everything the Deebot X2 sweeps from your floors and only needs emptying about once a month, although your mileage may vary.
This closure is supposed to hold four liters of clean water when you carry the clean water tank by the handle. Maria Diaz/ZDNET
One of my only gripes is that the clean water tank feels awkward to hold when filled — it almost feels like it’s not built to last, although I won’t know for certain until I’ve used it for several months. It’s a four-liter water tank with a handle to carry it on the lid, held shut by a plastic clip. I hold the tank from the bottom because I feel like using the handle to carry the full tank around will result in the closure failing and four liters of water going everywhere.
About the square shape
The Deebot X2 Omni has several superpowers, starting with its compact package. The squared edges stood out to me as a feature as soon as I unpacked the device, along with how narrow and short it was. At only 12.6 inches wide, it’s about 0.3 inches narrower than the Eufy X9 Pro robot vacuum mop, which had been my super mop until the X2 Omni arrived.
Although 0.3 inches sounds like a small difference in size, it’s proven to be considerable when a robot has to navigate through furniture legs. Case in point: the Eufy X9 Pro uses AI to avoid objects, but whenever I sent it to clean the first floor, it’d get stuck between the kitchen barstools legs. The stools are fairly lightweight, so the robot would drag them around instead of signaling it was stuck. I’d see my kitchen barstools gliding around my floor or randomly find one hanging out by the shoe bench.
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This isn’t a big deal and is highly subjective, so it’s not something I included in my Eufy review; it’s not the robot’s fault that it’s the exact size as the width of the distance between my barstool’s legs. But the narrower Deebot X2 Omni can clean under the barstools and figure its way back out, which means no more ‘guess where the barstools are today’ games.
The Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni making its way out of the traveling barstools.
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
The Deebot X2 is also almost an inch shorter than my Eufy robot vacuum, at 3.7 inches in height. The lower dimensions and narrow build allow the Deebot X2 to clean in places other robots typically can’t reach or navigate under.
Some AI-powered features
The Deebot X2 leverages Ecovacs’ AIVI 3D 2.0 and combines an AI processor with 3D-structured light sensors with dual-laser LiDAR technology. The result is efficient maps that allow the robot to intelligently detect objects during navigation and clean around them. This feature set means you won’t have to ensure your floors are free of charging cables, toys, or shoes before sending out the X2.
The AI-powered navigation and obstacle avoidance, backed by Ecovacs’ proprietary AINA Model, uses visual recognition and reinforcement learning that’s based on information collected by the sensors.
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The Deebot X2’s clever technology also makes for a customized cleaning process, if that’s your thing. The device’s AI-powered visual recognition, its ability to detect floor type, and its historical cleaning logs let the robot infer which room it’s cleaning, such as the kitchen, living room, or bedroom, and to adjust its suction power and mopping mode.
A new level of voice control
Voice control makes everything in my home easier. Countless robot vacuums let you use a third-party virtual assistant for voice control, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri. Saying, “Alexa, clean the floors” in my house dispatches the Eufy X9 Pro to clean my bedroom and hallway. However, these assistants are limited in the functions they can make the robot perform.
Sure, you can dispatch your robot with Alexa or Google, but have you ever been able to tell it to “turn right, move three meters forward, turn left, and clean there”?
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Ecovacs robot vacuums have a built-in voice assistant named YIKO that users can talk with to control the robot directly — and it works swimmingly. Saying “OK, YIKO” wakes up the voice assistant. If your robot is out cleaning, you can ask it to go back and clean the dining room again, or give it multiple commands in one sentence without pulling up the app.
ZDNET’s buying advice
The Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni is the company’s new flagship robot with all the smart features and a price to match, at $1,500. Over the past few weeks, it’s gained a top-dog position in our home, becoming the main robot to clean the entire downstairs floor — and that’s saying a lot.
The great thing about an all-in-one, self-emptying, and self-cleaning robot vacuum and mop is that it’s not best suited for some circumstances — it’s suited for all. Some mid-range models might be great at mopping but suffer from not having strong or effective suction, making them best-suited for homes with hard floors. Others might boast great suction power, okay mopping, and short battery life, making them best for mostly carpeted apartments or small homes.
The Deebot X2 Omni is great at all of these things. The biggest challenge in our home is downstairs because it’s mostly hardwood and tile with some area rugs — it’s the area where the dog comes in and out from the yard, where we cook, and where the toddler drops most of the crumbs.
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As mentioned above, the X2 Omni costs $1,500, which compares to $1,600 for the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra. Suppose I were on the market for a hands-free robot vacuum and mop that’s suitable for my home’s complex needs. In that case, I’d have to choose the Deebot X2 Omni over the Roborock’s flagship because the extra features, like the self-cleaning station and stronger suction, set it apart.
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