Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: The best robotic mopping can get…for now

There was a time when robotic vacuums competed more on features than performance, when all of the flagship models started to add convenience-related features like mopping, mop pad cleaning, and so on. Now, however, we’re past that. All of the top robotic vacuums support vacuuming, mopping, mop pad cleaning, and the ability to refill the vacuum’s water tank with a larger tank in the base. So, how do companies compete now? Well, with actual cleaning performance. That’s where the new Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni comes in.

The X8 Pro Omni gets all the bells and whistles of modern flagship robot vacuums, but it also steps things up a little with features like a roller mop pad that can apply more pressure to the floor when cleaning, and improved smart home support.

But does the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni’s focus on performance translate to the ultimate robotic vacuum?

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni specs

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: Design

The overall design of the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni is perfectly fine, but it doesn’t necessarily change all that much compared to other robotic vacuums. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — it looks fine, and should fit in any home.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

The docking station is a little thinner than some others, but also taller. It has separate tanks for clean and dirty water, and a dustbin that the vacuum can empty into when it’s done with a job, or as needed during larger jobs. It also has the hardware needed to heat-dry the mop after a job. It’s easy to remove the water tanks and dust bin as needed, which is always handy.

The dock is larger than some, but I didn’t find it to be too large, and actually found a perfect spot for it between a side-table for a couch and a wall. I should note that Ecovacs recommends keeping more space between the dock and any obstacles beside it, but I didn’t follow those instructions, and found that the vacuum had no trouble docking.

The vacuum itself is similar in design to other robotic vacuums, too — though it’s also a little sleeker thanks to new technologies. The vacuum doesn’t have a node on the top for LiDAR, despite still having a LiDAR sensor for more accurate mapping. That means that it can better fit under furniture.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

At the bottom of the X8 Pro Omni is its headline feature: The roller mop. The idea of the roller mop (as opposed to the mop pad) is that the vacuum can apply more pressure to the floor for more thorough cleaning, and that it can continuously wash the mop as it cleans. The vacuum can also extend the mop pad out to the side, which helps it better clean corners. It’s a neat design touch.

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: App and smart features

I quite like the overall design of the Ecovacs app, though I did find its mapping to leave a little to be desired. After you first set the X8 Pro Omni up, it’ll create a map of your home, and while it wasn’t bad at identifying the different rooms, it seemed to create an additional space outside of the home, where it never went during the mapping run. The map-editing tools aren’t bad, but they can be a little buggy and a bit finicky, so while I was eventually able to edit the app to be more accurate, it took a while.

Once the map is set up properly, you’ll be able to set the vacuum to vacuum, mop, or both, with options for different suction and water levels. You can also set it to vacuum first, then mop, and you can have it do two cleans for deeper cleaning. I found it easy to find these features, and tweak settings for things like voice controls, dock settings, and schedules.

The Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni is one of the first Matter-compatible robotic vacuums. I predominantly use the Apple Home ecosystem, and despite running iOS 18.4, HomeKit labelled the vacuum as being incompatible. Hopefully, this will change with a software update to either the iPhone or the vacuum. Others have successfully added the vacuum to HomeKit, so it’s possible I just needed to try connecting them a fourth or fifth time — though I had a flight to catch, so I wasn’t able to keep trying before writing up this review. After I get home, I’ll re-test and update this review.

When the vacuum is added to Home, its functionality will be limited to selecting rooms and cleaning modes. You won’t be able to tweak more complicated settings, edit the map, and so on. But, I don’t mind this — it’ll do the trick once the map is set up the way I want it, and it means my wife can more easily access the vacuum without needing to get a complicated app. I’m perfectly happy being the one to set up and tweak advanced settings as needed.

The battery life on the vacuum was solid. The day I set the X8 Pro Omni up was a few days after my wife and I had moved. Despite just moving in, the floors were quite dirty from all the chaos and the simple fact of having a one-year-old. From a full charge, I had the X8 Pro Omni map the four-bedroom house, then immediately run a full vacuum, then a full mop. It did all this without needing to take a long break to charge (just breaks to empty the vacuum, clean the mop, and so on). At the end of it all, it had around 30% battery left. That’s pretty good.

The Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni is extremely similar to the Yeedi S24 Plus (Yeedi is a sub-brand of Ecovacs), but the Ecovacs model has some advanced AI features and a camera feature.

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review: Cleaning performance

While the Deebot X8 Pro Omni competes on features, it competes on features that have a positive impact on its cleaning performance — like the roller mop. Ecovacs calls it the Ozmo Roller Mop, but regardless of its name, I found that it worked quite well.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

To be clear, I’m not necessarily sure its ability to clean stuck-on messes is that much better than the mop-pad system in the Roborock Qrevo Curv that I was using before, but it does have one clear advantage — it can extend the mop into corners and edges more easily, ensuring that the whole floor is clean. This is a solved issue compared to the Qrevo Curv, which I found often missed edges and corners. The X8 Pro Omni was good at getting corners more easily.

While arguably similar in performance to a spinning mop system like that on the Qrevo Curv, the roller mop system has another advantage — the mop pad rotates into the vacuum, where it can be constantly cleaned as it goes. The theory is that this allows it to better clean the floor without leaving residue. It’s difficult to say if that’s the case or not, but it did clean small spills just fine.

The suction power was pretty good too, though I wish that the excellent suction power was combined with a better vacuum brush system. The single roller brush on the bottom of the X8 Pro Omni is fine, but it sometimes got tangled with hair, and other times, it wasn’t able to dislodge my wife’s long hair from a rug. This is in contrast to a vacuum like the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra, which combines its comparable suction power with a dual brush system that’s both better at avoiding tangles and better at picking debris and hair up from a carpet. I wish you could get a vacuum with the best of both worlds — a dual brush vacuum and a roller mop — but for now, you’ll have to pick one or the other. It’s only a matter of time before that changes.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

Still, that’s certainly not to say that the vacuum itself was sub-par — on the contrary, it was excellent at getting debris from hard floors, and very good at getting it from rugs and carpet. It just didn’t quite compete with the best systems out there in vacuuming.

The Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni isn’t overly loud, but it’s quite a bit louder than the Roborock Qrevo Curv that preceded it in my living room. I felt perfectly comfortable setting the Qrevo Curv to clean rogue cat litter pellets in the middle of the night without waking our 1-year-old, but I wasn’t confident enough to set the Deebot to do that. And, on top of being a little louder, it was also slower.

These are all issues I can deal with though. It’s not a big deal to me to have the vacuum clean the cat litter area in the middle of the day, and it still wasn’t loud enough to compete in noise with my studio speakers in my office during a work day. I was able to work around those issues.

Ultimately, the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni is among the best-performing robotic vacuums I’ve tested, and I’ve tested a lot. But it wasn’t necessarily head-and-shoulders above the competition, and it’s still meant more for day-to-day cleans rather than cleaning Kevin’s chili. That’s something you’ll have to clean manually.

Conclusions

The Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni is amongst the better robotic vacuums you can get right now, but its cleaning performance advantages over other models are somewhat incremental. To be clear, it’s a very good robotic vacuum, and it combines great suction power with excellent mopping performance, but I found its ability to get into corners and edges more easily more important than how good it actually was at mopping. Still, that’s not a knock against it — just don’t expect revolutionary changes, like I did.

As a whole, the X8 Pro Omni is an excellent product. On top of its excellent cleaning performance, it also offers modern smart home features (that might need to be ironed out with an update or two), and an app that’s decently easy to use.

The competition

The competition is very fierce in the robotic vacuum space. For now, I would argue that the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni is a little better at mopping than Roborock’s best models, however Roborock’s best models are a little bit better at vacuuming, especially when it comes to hair in carpet. It is, of course, worth noting that Roborock’s best models are more expensive than the Deebot X8 Pro Omni, so perhaps this isn’t a fair comparison.

Should I buy the Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni?

Yes. It’s an excellent robotic vacuum with great features at a solid price.