It’s exceptional at cleaning, but the ECOVACS Deebot X11 OmniCyclone has one big flaw

The ECOVACS Deebot X11 OmniCyclone ($1299.99 at Amazon) is capable of superb, edge-to-edge cleaning, and has AI-powered navigation tools. The roller-style mop head is an excellent tool, and the powerful vacuum has handled every mess I’ve thrown at it.

Along with the top-tier features on the bot itself, the base station is a step up over most. It features two detergent canisters that automatically add detergent to the bot, stores both clean and dirty water, has a large dry debris collection canister, and offers multiple bot cleaning tools.

In the right environment, this is a contender for the top robot vacuum on the market. But there’s one massive caveat that I can’t ignore: not once has it completed a full cleaning cycle without needing to be rescued.

Okay, so let’s start this review off properly with the positives. After the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone passes through a room, it leaves my hard floors all shiny and clean. While it sweeps along the edge and right into the corners, the mop roller assembly follows and only misses a tiny bit in the corner. This is called TruEdge 3.0, which extends and retracts the brushes as needed to best clean your space, and it works very well.

It’s a powerful cleaner, with a whopping 19,500Pa of suction pressure, and overall, I like the look of my floors when it’s done its rounds of vacuuming and mopping. It also leaves almost no smell, which I appreciate.

As far as mapping and navigation go, the AIVI 3D 3.0 sensors do a great job at discovering the layout of the house and navigating the bot through all gaps, wide or narrow. There is nowhere that this bot has failed to reach, and it properly handles closed doors and identifies new areas that it hadn’t previously seen.

The built-in AI is able to detect many objects, from furniture to toys and more. It even identifies extra messes, sending the bot back over them until they’re clean — no mess is left behind.

Unfortunately, that’s where things fall apart somewhat. Despite all the great things the sensor suite and AI can do, the bot is failing three crucial tasks in my home. First, it does not identify black socks as objects to avoid. It runs them over every time, and they get stuck in the main vacuum brush.

The second action that causes errors is my bath mats. If you’ve read any of my previous reviews, you know that those thick-pile mats are a headache for most bots, but most either know this and avoid them, or lift themselves over it with threshold clearance lift action (which the Deebot does have up to 2.4cm). The Deebot X11 OmniCyclone refuses to bypass them, though, and gets stuck every time.

Third, and most importantly, the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone actually failed to identify a cliff during my testing. I have one step from my kitchen down into my living room. It’s a tough one, as both floors and the step are the same material, but the X11 is one of very few bots that I’ve run through my home’s gauntlet that fell into the living room. Had that been a flight of stairs, the bot would have tumbled and very likely sustained some severe damage.

If you do buy the ECOVACS Deebot X11 OmniCyclone, there are ways to at least mitigate the problems I’ve encountered. The easiest option is to use the ECOVACS app, which has tools to edit your floor map and set boundaries and warnings for the bot to follow.

The bot itself also auto-updates every time it runs, so things get better the more you use it. It wasn’t until my fourth run that the bot finally identified that there was a dangerous threshold that falls into the living room. I had previously told the map to avoid the living room entirely, but that threshold remained a struggle.

After setting virtual boundaries, setting specific rooms and areas as out of bounds, and establishing how the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone should clean each carpet in my space, it still managed to find trouble, though. The bot did not see the leg of one of my light stands, a thin black tube at an angle. I appreciate the sensors triggering a warning that halted the bot, but that is a scenario it shouldn’t have been in, and could have easily just backed up to recover.

In terms of raw floor cleaning capabilities, I can only compare the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone against the very best robot vacuums on the market, considering its premium price tag.

The Narwal Flow ($1099.99 at Narwal) features a tank-tread style mop roller that covers a large swath of the floor, but is otherwise functionally the same as the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone’s extending mop head unit. The clean similarly well from edge to edge, but the Flow remains my top pick at this time for mapping and navigation.

The Roborock Saros 10R ($1599.99 at Amazon) is a leader in navigation. In part because it is one of the shortest bots around, so it fits nearly anywhere, but also because the AI-powered navigation on the Saros series of bots is very good. The Deebot X11 OmniCyclone does a slightly better job at scrubbing.

Honestly, the ECOVACS Deebot X11 OmniCyclone isn’t a bad robot vacuum, but the fundamental issues I’ve encountered make it a tough sell. It is able to match or surpass the very best in terms of floor cleaning. If I had a home with only straight-legged furniture, and ensured that small objects, like socks, remained off of the floors, then this bot could be amazing.

Ultimately, though, obstacle avoidance and cliff detection are critical factors in the autonomous operation of a robot vacuum, and I feel safer with other options available at this price point. I am encouraged by the thought that a software update could completely fix my concerns in the long run, but I can only review what I have in front of me at the time of writing.

ECOVACS robot vacuums are traditionally quite good, and there’s no question in my mind that the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone is the best they’ve ever produced in terms of floor cleaning capabilities. With a launch price that is on the high end for robot vacuums and the aforementioned teething issues that could well get fixed, I’d recommend watching for sales and deals in the coming months.