From the very top of the middle of Ecovacs’ extensive (16 models!) collection of vacbots, the $1,700 Deebot T30 Pro Omni is distinguished from its $50 cheaper sibling the Deebot T30 Omni, because it is white and will double-mop especially dirty floors.
Perhaps taking a leaf from the proud history of British sports cars, the Deebot T30 Pro Omni justifies its Pro badge with a couple of extra features – otherwise, this bot is identical to Ecovac’s previous top-middle model, the T30 Omni. Above the T30 Pro Omni are the X2 and X5 models which add such features as a matching handheld vac.
The T30 Pro Omni brings a more advanced mopping behaviour (it detects “stains” and mops them twice) as well as integration of Ecovac’s own YIKO voice control (it also works with Alexa and Google Assistant).
Not that you need voice control because this bot lets you start cleaning by giving it a good kick in the slats. By which I mean a foot-tap against the front obstacle bumper.
Ecovacs Deebot T30 Pro Omni review
- First impressions
- Specs and price
- Design and ergonomics
- Setup
- Vacuuming vs mopping
- Cleaning performance
- Who is it for?
First impressions
The Deebot T30 Pro Omni has a notably shorter and narrower base station compared to other vac+mop designs. Ecovacs says the station is 30% shorter and 10% narrower than its older models – at 490mm tall by 480 deep, it fits easily under most side tables with enough vertical space left to lift the water tanks off and on.
Like other vacbots, the T30 Pro Omni uses lidar to map its surroundings, and a combination of a visual camera and infrared ranging cameras to more precisely avoid obstacles from pot plants to shoes. It also knows to avoid power cords, which will be a welcome addition to anyone upgrading from an older vacbot.
More advanced features are accessed via the Ecovacs app, which is fine as apps go except it has a very irritating “points” system where you earn points for getting the robot to do certain things. Like “initiate a mopping-only cleaning task: 100 points”. Accrue points to “win” various social media type awards/medals. Maybe Ecovacs has done market research that shows lots of people like this kind of thing. To those of us who don’t exactly find vacuuming to be that fun of a thing to do, it’s almost like adding insult to injury.
Ecovacs Deebot T30 Pro Omni specs and price
| Suction power | Up to 11,000Pa |
| Features | Vacuum Mop Auto-empty station with 300mL capacity Automatic mop cleaning with hot air drying App control Auto carpet detection TrueMapping 2.0 navigation TrueDetect 3D 3.0 obstacle avoidance |
| Battery | 5,200mAh |
| Price (RRP) | $1,799 |
| Official website | Ecovacs Australia |
| Warranty | Two years |
Design and ergonomics
The Deebot T30 Pro Omni is notable for being “the white one” in the T30 range, and this makes it well-suited for setting up its base station in a family room or a utility room. Will the white stain or discolour over time? I didn’t have long enough to test this, and it may be a legitimate concern for some buyers.
The cover over the dust box is also completely loose – it just sits on top of the robot instead of being hinged or clipped on. This can make it fiddly to remove and replace if you need to inspect the dust box or push the wireless button which is hidden under it for some reason.
Otherwise, the design is fairly typical of a circular vacbot. The front is a large bumper for last-centimetre detection of obstacles, there’s a side brush (fixed) and two mops (one of which can extend, and both of which can lift by 9mm when vacuuming carpet).
A plethora of the usual sensors means the bot is good at detecting carpeted vs hard floors and in my testing, it was 100% successful at avoiding accidentally soaking the carpet while mopping.
Setup
You can run the T30 Pro Omni in fully set-and-forget mode. Plug it in, connect it to Wi-Fi, and then tap the front bumper with your foot to commence cleaning. It will map your house and go about its business.
A mapping wrinkle I encountered: After successfully mapping our back room once, the next time it went to work the T30 Pro Omni noticed the curtains across the back doors – which are glass – were open and it mapped part of the outdoor area as another room. It also partially mapped a view through another outside door, adding a huge open room to the map. It’s possible to block these areas off so the T30 Pro Omni won’t attempt to go outside, but it made a mess of the otherwise easy-to-read map.
Of course, to see this it’s necessary to set up the vacbot with the Ecovacs app. It’s a straightforward process but like with other vacbot apps, you have to provide an email address and a password. Then the app will keep asking you to sign up for this or that or look at this or that new feature or product every time you just want to do a quick vacuum of the back room.
Vacuuming vs mopping
Vacbots like the T30 Pro Omni have not yet reached the same level of performance as a good-quality handheld vacuum from the likes of Dyson or Samsung. Even after two passes across a wool rug, with the vac set to its highest power level, the T30 Pro Omni still left about two-thirds of a canister’s worth of grift behind (where one canister equals the bin on an old Dyson V10).
The combination of the small mouth and the 300ml dust box means the T30 Pro Omni fills up quickly. There’s no “dust box full” detection, instead the bot returns to the base station to empty based on vacuuming time. I recommend setting this to as frequently as the app allows.
Mopping is also basic, and best thought of as a way to freshen up floors rather than thoroughly clean them. Ecovacs says the T30 Pro Omni will detect heavier stains and mop over them twice, but our floor mustn’t have been dirty enough to trigger this. The bot did a good job of detecting slate vs carpet and mopped right up to the edge of the carpet without getting it wet.
You can set the “mop wetness” in the app, again I’d recommend the wettest setting, but it probably depends on your type of flooring.
Cleaning performance
The app includes an Intelligent Hosting mode where the bot will make all its own cleaning decisions. I found this slowed the cleaning process and usually didn’t get as good results as when I manually set every cleaning option to its maximum.
With vacuum strength at maximum, mop wetness at maximum, and the cleaning pattern set to Deep Clean, the Deebot T30 Pro Omni did a good job in parts of the house, and an adequate job in others. Once I got into a routine and had the bot work every second day, the results were more consistent. So if you do take the plunge and grab a T30 Pro Omni for yourself, it’s probably worth doing one more manual vacuum of the house before you set it up.
One annoyance – for a bot that does a good job of detecting obstacles and even knowing the difference between shoes and power cords, the T30 Pro Omni seemed prone to getting stuck between the legs of our standard dining chairs. These chairs don’t have thin metal legs or anything, they are just normal wooden chairs. The bot can move in between the legs and then jam itself in a way where none of the sensors seem able to detect what is going on. The bot then calls out for help.
Who is the Ecovacs Deebot T30 Pro Omni for?
As we’ve noted in other reviews, the bot side of these vacbots is now very impressive, with their mapping capabilities and object avoidance (dining chairs excepted). But the teeny tiny dust box in the T30 Pro Omni – despite being industry standard at this price point – really limits the potential of its 11,000Pa vacuum.
At $1,799 this bot should allow you to set and forget the business of vacuuming the house, but enough glitches remain that you may have to attend to its needs once or twice a clean.
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