Ecovacs Deebot X5 Pro Omni review: My wife’s fallen in love with the new bot
It didn’t take long. Within hours my wife was infatuated with our new bot. It wasn’t its new shape, fast learning capabilities, or even voice-assisted AI. But our dog is not so sure.
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It didn’t take long. Within hours my wife was in love with our new bot.
It wasn’t its new shape, fast learning capabilities, or even voice-assisted AI.
It just sucked, cleaned and mopped really well. And it can even keep a remote eye on the pets and kids at home.
Ecovacs Robotics new flagship Deebot X5 Pro Omni not only does a great job, but it cleans itself, right down to drying its mop heads to ensure it doesn’t smell in the Australian humidity.
I’ve named her Avabot because she’s the bot that cleans up all the little black hairs on our white tiles from our beautiful dog Ava.
Ava is still getting used to our new high tech companion, especially the gurgling noise of it preparing for a clean or the hurricane suction sound of it emptying its dustbin back at the Omni Station.
So how does it all work?
The vacuuming and mopping bot can be controlled via an Ecovacs Home app or via voice control with the more advanced Yiko 2.0 AI.
After connecting the bot to its app on your phone via bluetooth and your home Wi-Fi, the first and most important job is to let the bot map your home.
Once mapped you can edit your map, if you want, and divide the rooms into different areas.
We have an open plan home so I made sure I clearly labelled high use areas like the kitchen, the dining room, and the bathrooms.
YOU CAN CONTROL BOT FROM YOUR WATCH
Then cleaning can be as simple as cleaning the whole house or just one particular area -and it can be done by simple voice commands or via wearables like your Apple Watch.
In the app, you can change your clean to vacuuming or mopping only, mop after vacuuming or vacuum and mop. The default is the latter which worked well.
Suction power can be set to quiet mode, standard, strong or maximum, which uses more power and takes longer given you have to recharge more.
You can also change the water flow rate, cleaning speed and even change to two cleaning passes for particularly dirty areas.
SUCTION POWER WAY ABOVE MOST BOTS
The X5 Pro Omni comes with 12,800Pa suction which is more than double what your standard bot offers.
We’ve reviewed earlier bots and this one is a big leap forward.
The slimmer, lower profile D-shape design means the bot gets under your couch, bed and other furniture more easily while its ‘TrueEdge technology’ allows the mopping much closer to edges and corners.
The technology to get it to within a claimed 1mm proximity is pretty clever with a continuously variable mop extender, supported by ‘multi-sensors with a 3D omnidirectional collaborative algorithm for accurate distance calculation and optimal corner coverage’.
Multiple sensors, such as dToF LIDAR, 3D structured light and edge sensors, help the robot keep track of irregular edges and inclined obstacles resulting in mopping pads being kept close to the edges of walls, chair legs, and furniture.
It also uses very precise obstacle avoidance, which adapts to changing circumstances, for when you open or close a door, move items, or just get in its way.
My wife was pretty impressed with the way it navigated over the bottom of our clothing drying rack, powering up to get over the base.
STILL PAYS TO CLEAR OBJECTS LIKE CABLES
That said, it still pays to get rid of things that might become a problem – like phone charging cords on the floor.
A couple of times we lost the mop heads under the couch after the bot went over a power cord and they just fell off.
If you can’t move something, the problem is easily fixed by just adding a virtual boundary on your map to keep it away.
The flagship Deebot features ‘ZeroTangle Anti-tangle Technology’ in the form of a roller brush, with 21° flat bristles, outward-rotating angled bristles and flexible conductive wires to remove static. It saves users from the hassle of cleaning the brush manually after each vacuum.
Ecovacs says the front and rear comb teeth arrays in the main brush compartment, combined with the new high-suction fan, keeps the robot running smoothly and more quietly.
We certainly found it stopping a lot less than earlier models.
The 200mm extended main brush removes dirt and debris at the seams of carpets, boosting cleaning efficiency by a claimed 19%.
NEW MOP SYSTEM USES 70 DEGREE WATER
My wife, who has in the past shunned bots in preference of doing a better job herself, is a new convert after seeing how well it both vacuums and mops the house.
The better mopping is the result of an upgraded Omni Station which uses 70 degree hot water.
It’s easy to use. You just add clean water to one container while another container stores the dirty water sucked out of the bot.
An ‘intelligent deep mopping’ feature uses sensors to detect the mop dirtiness during cleaning with ‘deep scrubbing’ deployed for more dirty areas.
We bought a scented cleaning solution, which requires only two capfuls for the container of water, to improve the clean even more.
The 360° hot air drying system uses a low-noise fan to blast away moisture in about two hours, preventing bacteria and odours from taking hold.
An extra-large cleaning tray needs attention around twice a year, while one-button self-cleaning gets rid of lingering water or dirt.
Fast dust extraction is achieved through a powerful 27kPA hurricane suction system, while the 3 litre dust bag should only need emptying every three months.
‘PUT YOUR BOT ON PATROL’
One of the most fun features of the bot is that it can ‘go on patrol’ using its cameras so you can check out what your pet is up to or who’s home with your teens at your place via the app.
It also allows you to see what’s under the couch or bed (we found about four of Ava’s toys) and of course see what areas need to be cleaned again.
The auto-grade 960P starlight-level camera and RGBD sensors also allows the Deebot X5 Pro Omni to detour automatically instead of knocking an obstacle a few times and determine whether areas marked as inaccessible can be explored for further cleaning.
Watching it at work, particularly the way it changes from mop mode to vacuuming using its 15mm auto mop lifting tech, is pretty cool to see.
Is it perfect? No.
The voice control is pretty good but the ‘come and find me’ and clean functionality was a little hit and miss for me.
And yes, it definitely takes a lot longer for a bot to do our whole house. Cleaning 25 square metres took about 33 minutes while a 52m2 vacuum and mop took 83 minutes.
If the bot runs low on power it just returns to the station and recharges before setting off again.
The whole point, though, is that these things are designed to just set and forget and for the most part it definitely is.
It can be as easy as just hitting auto clean for the whole house or scheduling vacuuming and or mopping for high use areas.
SO WHAT DOES IT COST?
The Ecovacs Deebot X5 Pro OmniI has a recommended retail price of AUD $2,499.
It is available from Bing Lee, Harvey Norman, JB HiFi, Retravision, Robot Specialist, The Good Guys, & ECOVACS Online.
Would I buy one?
While the price is steep, I’ve always believed in the saying ‘Happy Wife, Happy Life’.
And I’ve never seen my wife so happy with a new bit of technology in a long time – especially after she put me in charge of keeping our floors clean.
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Originally published as Ecovacs Deebot X5 Pro Omni review: My wife’s fallen in love with the new bot
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