Ecovacs X8 Pro Omni review: The hard and software of it all

Ecovacs products always seem to have a divide between the hardware and software, and the X8 Pro Omni doesn’t buck this trend. While there has been a clear and successful focus on building out the robot vacuum’s cleaning ability, it still needs a heavy helping hand to successfully navigate an average home. It is perhaps the perfect example of why we review products in real world environments.

In isolated testing the new OZMO roller mop head is a slam dunk. On hardwood floors it has a near 100% clearance rate for wet, sticky, and dry debris - it is truly unheard of performance in a mopping robot. Yet despite its new AIVI 3D sensor, and zero tangle roller I still had to manually untangle fur, and save it from underneath furniture and tangles of usual household items. On the show floor it is flawless, but in your home it is still a work in progress.

Ecovacs has openly said that the X8 Pro Omni is designed with hard floors in mind, so there is little doubt that its hard floor performance trumps its carpet. Pitted against tomato sauce, honey, sprinkles, dry oats, and water, the X8 entirely cleaned the floor, edges and all, with one pass on a high water flow rate. Other excellent mopping devices like the Roborock Qrevo Curv manage around 97%, so to have a totally clean testing surface is seriously impressive.

The hardware is entirely to credit for this stellar performance. This is the first Ecovacs model with a roller mop head which cleans itself as it goes. While most mopping systems return to the dock to clean themselves every 15 minutes or so, the OZMO roller system perpetually cleans itself with fresh water, scraping off the dirty water and bringing it into the tank. Usually after these tests we end up with a thin film of sticky residue on the floor, but the self-cleaning system has seemingly done away with this issue.

This clearance rate is relatively consistent throughout the entire cleaning process, although once the roller gets tangled it drops off significantly. Despite the ‘anti-tangle’ moniker I did still have a few issues with pet fur and sewing threads getting tangled up in the roller. Once this happened the vacuum quickly became clogged, not only vacuuming poorly but dropping debris that was lodged in the chassis. I have been reviewing a lot of vacuum cleaners lately so there isn’t even that much animal fur plaguing my floor, yet the anti-tangle rollers still couldn’t handle it. Fur-laden households beware.

On carpet the performance dips significantly with a clearance rate of around 92%. The majority of the debris settles on the edges of walls where the carpet dips in, but even on open floors smaller particles have a lower pick up rate. It doesn’t take much to remedy this with a good stick vacuum, but mixed floor households will need to concentrate more on manual carpet cleaning with the X8 Pro Omni.

Performance aside, reliability isn’t the X8 Pro Omni’s strong suit and that is due to its intelligence features. All the building blocks are in place - the latest AIVI 3D sensor allows for better obstacle recognition, the 270 degree field of view should help with recognition and avoidance, but in practice there are still frustrating flaws. 

The most difficult to underwrite is the cleaning routine. At times the robot vacuum would simply ignore large sections of my home during a clean. I understand returning to the dock to clean the mop and then heading back out, but on more than one occasion the X8 Pro Omni would deal with the lounge and dining room, peek its head into one of the bedrooms, and then take itself back to the dock. At these times it was still at over 70% battery so it didn’t need to recharge, it was just done for the day I guess. Some days are like that, even for robots.

It also isn’t the greatest judge of height and would routinely get stuck underneath my entertainment unit. The device would edge up against the unit and then visibly accelerate to slip itself underneath. Once it was done cleaning it would then not be able to get out and would keep ramming itself at the exit, with greater strength to try and get out. The only other robot vacuum I can recall doing this was the Dyson Vis Nav 360 which isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

This issue is easily fixed in the mapping section of the app. You can set up no go zones, and manually keep the robovac from disappearing into the abyss, but it doesn’t give the best impression off the bat.

When it comes to obstacle avoidance on household items it does a pretty good job. Ecovacs told Reviews Australia that the only things the device might get tangled up on are those it could run over. If it is that low to the ground then sensors can’t pick it up so you’ll need to instead. The main culprit of things like this are charging cables, socks, and strewn clothing. Our testing proved this to be accurate. The X8 Pro Omni successfully navigated almost everything in my admittedly messy home, but when it came to (what I call) The Corner of Doom it fell victim.

The CoD holds a bunch of chargers, a tipped over basket of clothes, tight spaces, and in this instance a coat hanger. All things that could potentially trip up the X8’s sensors. By and large the robovac just plowed straight over everything, and while it did get tangled the carnage wasn’t as chaotic as usual. I credit the roller mop. Dual spinning mop heads tend to pull cables and clothing in more readily and will either pull the cables out or the mop heads will fall off. In this case the X8 only ran off with one USB-C cable, which was a pretty good result all things considered.

Retailing for $2,499 the X8 Pro Omni is an expensive robot vacuum, but not as pricey as some.  is a pricey robot vacuum, but not quite as pricey as they come. Most other robot vacuums with similar performance and features sit slightly above this price point, usually ranging from $2,799 - $2,999.

The device is available from a range of retailers across Australia, but the pricing is consistent regardless of who you decide to shop with.

The better Ecovacs gets at creating outstanding hardware the more stark the pitfalls of its software become. It is something to do with the contrast. The brighter the white, the darker the black looks in comparison.

I can confidently dub the X8 Pro Omni the best mopping robot on the Australian market, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the overall user experience will live up to that. Making your Deebot experience seamless will take some ironing out. You’ll need to be ready to dedicate a bit of time to finding the parts of your home that trip it up, and manually training it out of it. Provided you live in a primarily hard-floored space then it will be worth the effort, but don’t expect perfection out of the box.