Review: Deebot X1 Omni

I hate mopping, but I hate mopping robots more. And I especially hate robot vacuum-mop combos. During my years reviewing robot vacuums, I can’t count how many times I've had to unhook a minuscule water bin off the bottom of a robot, fill it with a thimbleful of water, and watch it laboriously drag a barely moist towel across my kitchen floor. It never seemed worth the effort when you just could grab a Swiffer.

That was until I installed the Deebot X1 Omni from Ecovacs. My 7-year-old had just shaken sugar off her toast all over the kitchen floor, so once she was off to school, I moved some chairs out of the way and plugged the mopping attachments onto the X1 Omni's bottom. 

I summoned my bot with the command “OK Yiko,” and there was a massive rumble as it stirred. The mopping attachments rinsed themselves in a pool of clean water at the base of the machine before it trundled off. In 15 minutes, it covered my entire 200 square-foot kitchen floor, scrubbing furiously all the way. It never moved off the hardwood onto the carpet. (It did make a tentative pass into the open laundry room door, but only once.) Once it returned to base, the cleaning station used hot air to dry the little mops. After my floor dried, I took off my socks and walked hesitantly around. No sugar grains remained. The floor wasn’t even sticky. I finally found a mopping vacuum that can do its job. 

Much to my surprise, I found the X1 Omni to be much more useful as a mop than as a robot vacuum.

Photograph: Ecovacs

A few years ago, I predicted that every robot vacuum would have its own cleaning station. The stations have arrived, and they keep getting taller. The X1 Omni’s tower stands almost 2 feet high, 17 inches wide, and 17 inches deep. We have a 2,000-square-foot downstairs, and the only place I could find to put it was directly in the center of my house, in the kitchen next to the trash can.

The vacuum itself is a pretty standard 4 inches tall, able to fit under the sofa with ease. It comes with two side brushes and two mopping attachments that you can easily detach and reattach. Inside the tower are two water bins, one for clean water and one for dirty mopping water, and space for a 3-liter disposable dust bag for the vacuum’s auto-empty function.

You'll need the auto-empty function, because the dustbin in the body of the vacuum is a relatively small 0.4 liters. (Most robot vacuums I've tried have 0.6-liter capacity or more.) Instead, the X1 Omni’s body houses Ecovacs’ (possibly overbuilt, but more on that later) camera, microphone, and navigation system. 

Ecovacs’ proprietary navigation system is called TrueMapping, which combines two navigation techniques. AIVI, Ecovacs’ AI-powered camera vision system, identifies common household objects. TrueDetect 2.0 uses laser scanning to create a 3D map of your house. 

It also has an onboard speaker so you can talk to your family from your robot vacuum. Yes, you read that right. And rather than tackling the complicated matter (pun intended) of integrating with third-party smart speakers, the X1 Omni has its own voice assistant named Yiko. Ecovacs also offers the X1 Plus, which has an auto-empty station but no cleaning station.

Photograph: Ecovacs

The Deebot surprised me a lot, but the first shock came when I initiated Quick Mapping. With nearly every robot vacuum, accurately mapping the cleaning area takes awhile. It’s usually three to five cleans, or a week where you have to stay home while it's cleaning to pick everything off the floor and be on hand to maneuver the robot around unforeseen obstacles. 

Somehow, the X1 Omni developed a pretty accurate map of my home in its first pass. It took 120 minutes to clean about 570 square feet, and the battery was almost dead when it straggled back to base, all tuckered out, but it got the job done!

I was also surprised that saying “OK Yiko” actually worked. I was skeptical, given that Apple, Google, and Amazon all amass tremendous amounts of language processing data and still fail. I suppose it helps that there are a limited number of commands you can give to Yiko and “OK Yiko” is a surprisingly distinctive wake phrase—though I wish you could alter it in the app. 

In fact, “OK Yiko” is a much easier way to command the vacuum, much better than navigating Ecovacs’ surprisingly opaque app. (I should note that the app was in beta when I tested it.)

The only aspect to the X1 Omni that gives me pause is the video feed. I really, really dislike the idea of giving any autonomous robot the ability to view and record your family in their most intimate moments. Ecovacs notes that the X1 Omni is the first robot vacuum to meet the TÜV Rheinland privacy and security certification; TÜV is an independent, third-party organization that certifies devices to meet the specifications of ETSI TS 303 645, which is a prominent internet-of-things security standard. 

For example, you can protect the video manager with an additional security number, and Ecovacs encrypts the data as it passes to the cloud. However, the company doesn't offer basic protections like two-factor authentication.

I also question the utility of taking up valuable onboard space with a speaker and microphone. It’s convenient that the mapping function can pinpoint trouble spots in your house and let you look at them through the robot’s camera—especially when it’s lost. It’s much less useful to be able to talk through a robot vacuum. 

In an especially creepy move, I rolled the vacuum up to my daughter as she played with her iPad on the couch. “Hi, baby,” I said. 

She looked at it dubiously, as I looked up at her from the vantage point of her feet. “Mommy?” she said, and got down on the floor. “Is the robot vacuum talking?”

“Yes,” I said. Then I switched the camera off and returned the vacuum to the cleaning station. I really don’t see the potential of very many heartwarming moments here, unless The Lives of Others is your idea of a romantic film.

Photograph: Ecovacs

Of course, many robot vacuums have onboard cameras, including my favorite iRobot Roomba J7+, which takes pictures of obstacles around your house that you can check in the app. However, its camera is aimed downward at obstacles, not upward at your feet—or worse—children. I don’t think paying extra so you can talk to your family through your vacuum is a particularly good use of money.

There are other dedicated robot mops—most notably iRobot’s Braava mops. But the X1 Omni’s cleaning process is much more thorough than the Braava spray-and-wipe system, and it’s much less expensive and less complicated than buying two separate products and linking them together. I do wish Ecovacs recommended cleaning solutions you can buy in the US, but the company has cleaning solutions available in other markets, and hopefully those will be here soon.

If you live in a household where small people get your kitchen floor conspicuously dirty every day, the X1 Omni is pretty much a godsend. It's amazing that I can quickly and easily mop the kitchen floor in the time it takes to brew and sip a cup of coffee. However, if the idea of a camera creeping on your kids gives you the heebie-jeebies, I completely understand. You have many other options.

Check out our full list of the best robot vaccums.