The Ecovacs Deebot T90 Pro Omni is the company’s latest addition to its line of robotic vacuum cleaners. It’s designed to take care of your floor care needs without any input from you.
Where some vacuum cleaners require monitoring to ensure they don’t knock things over or get stuck, the Deebot T90 Pro Omni handles the job without many hiccups, giving you the confidence to let it clean on its own.
The newly designed robot has a wider mop roller for better floor coverage, and more powerful suction performance along with better battery life to cover larger floorplans.
Rating
Overall: 3.5 / 5
Pros
- Easy, unattended cleaning
- Thorough vacuum performance
- Simple to use
Cons
- Expensive
- Mopping performance isn’t the best
- Useless AI chatbot in the app
$2299 | For those who want a worry-free robot cleaner
Setup & First Impressions
Setting up the Ecovacs Deebot T90 Pro Omni was simple – there’s an easy-to-follow illustrated guide included in the box that takes all the guesswork out of set up.
You’ll need to find an appropriate spot for the docking station where the robot can return to recharge and perform its maintenance, then fill up the water and cleaning solution receptacles and connect to the robot with your phone.
Its companion app then guides you through connecting the Deebot to your home WiFi network for remote monitoring and controls.
Robot-Proofing Your House
One thing to keep in mind with robot vacuum cleaners is that you might need to robot-proof your house a bit. Robot cleaners don’t play well with items like cables, and even those with object recognition will avoid them entirely, causing it to skip rooms it doesn’t think it can safely navigate.
Another thing to remember is whether or not the robot can fit around all your furniture – like checking the clearance between your sofa and coffee table for example.
If you want a thorough clean you’ll have to clear a path for the Deebot T90 Pro Omni, but after just a few runs and observing it, you’ll have an idea of its needs and how to accommodate it for effortless cleaning.
Floorplan Mapping
During setup, the Deebot T90 Pro Omni will drive around your house, observing your rooms and the obstacles within them. It then creates a map of the home that you can check and make adjustments to.
During the mapping process, my Deebot T90 Pro Omni was confused by floor-length mirrors as it created a non-existent room where my built-in robes are – and when I left it to its devices it attempted to drive into the mirror.
This was solved by drawing a no-entry line on the map, but it’s an interesting hiccup – and quite amusing.
Design & Aesthetics
The robot and docking station are sleek and understated, so the Deebot T90 Pro Omni won’t look out of place in modern homes.
It features textured panels that help soften the aesthetic, and a futuristic-looking array of sensors on all sides of the robot.
Functionally, the Deebot T90 Pro Omni features a mopping roller that extends out of the side to help increase its ability to clean right up to the wall. Ecovacs calls this the Ozmo Roller 3.0 – it’s a microfibre pad that cleans and dries well, preventing streaks.
The robot also features a spinning brush that helps to sweep dust and debris towards the vacuum for pickup, and an anti-tangle vacuum brush bar that assists with agitating dirt out of carpets.
The docking station design is easy-to-use with clear markings for the clean and dirty water receptacles and easy access to the dustbin and cleaning solution. This unit automatically empties the robot, cleans and dries the mop roller, and refills consumables when the robot comes back to dock for charging.
Thanks to its compact design, the Deebot T90 Pro Omni was able to navigate around a lot of obstacles in my house with ease. It fit around my sofa and coffee table comfortably and was able to clean underneath my bed.
Life With The Ecovacs Deebot T90 Pro Omni
I’ve had the Ecovacs Deebot T90 Pro Omni for a few weeks, and it’s done several cleans through my apartment. During the time I’ve had it, I’ve been fairly pleased with its performance overall – though there were a few issues.
The robot is easy to use and doesn’t have much of a learning curve – it’s simple to just fill up its consumables and send it on its way. During the clean it will happily announce its progress with voice alerts.
The one thing robot vacuums give you is some free time back – it handles the day-to-day floor care while you relax or focus on other tasks. Not all of them are a full replacement for a manual cleaner, but the Deebot T90 Pro Omni honestly comes pretty close.
Positives
The Deebot T90 Pro Omni provides a thorough clean that surpasses most robot vacuums I’ve had in the past – and it does it all on its own.
It took a couple of successful runs, but eventually I was satisfied that the robot could complete the job unsupervised. That’s a really important feature – the ability to trust the robot to perform the cleaning on its own means you can send it out while away from the house without stressing about it knocking something over or getting stuck.
Navigation was another strong point – the robot correctly avoided all obstacles in my home and didn’t knock anything over during its cleaning. It was surprisingly precise with its movements, even cleaning between the wheels of my bicycle with confidence.
You can easily check in on its progress during the clean with the companion app, and it will notify you of any problems it has run into like blocked areas that it couldn’t access.
While cleaning, the Deebot T90 Pro Omni is impressively quiet, producing good suction power without making a lot of noise. It was noticeably quieter than my Dyson stick vacuum.
During mopping the robot doesn’t leave any streaks behind, as it uses a minimal amount of water to get the job done. That means the floors dry quickly even in humid climates or at nighttime.
On its first autoclean pass, the Deebot T90 Pro Omni correctly identified my carpeted rooms and didn’t try to mop them – something I was apprehensive about at first. When it approached the room, it pivoted around a few times and the map updated the room to carpet flooring.
Negatives
The biggest negative point I observed about the robot was its inability to climb my thresholds. I have two bathrooms with a 3-centimetre step up and the robot was unable to pass into these areas consistently.
When trying, it would take a runup and try to launch itself up the threshold, but it failed to make the gap more often than not, so I ended up keeping these doors shut during its cleaning process.
For such an expensive vacuum cleaner, it’s unfortunate that I’d need a second device or manually lift the robot in just to take care of these areas.
Mopping performance was generally good, but the robot failed to pick up a couple of sticky stains that came up easily with a manual wipe. It’s not a complete dealbreaker, but I would have expected slightly better performance.
The vacuum takes quite a long time to complete a cleaning pass – even for my 90-square-metre apartment it took about two hours to complete a vacuum and mop cycle. Thankfully, it’s the robot doing this task and not me, but I found this point a bit surprising.
The companion app includes an AI chatbot that I found completely useless – when looking at particular settings, the app will automatically open a chat with the AI and autofill a question about the setting, but the AI failed to make a response every single time. It’s worse than bad – it’s a waste of resources and diminishes the user experience.
Performance & Reliability
The Deebot T90 Pro Omni mostly does what it promises – it gives you a thorough, hassle-free floor clean at the push of a button. It doesn’t fully replace a deep clean with a powerful vacuum, but it makes day-to-day maintenance effortless and gives you access to more frequent cleaning.
The unit comes with a two-year warranty, but many people probably expect an purchase like a vacuum cleaner to last significantly longer than that. It’s hard to say what the reliability will be like, but with the amount of moving parts it’s probably more expensive to service than a conventional vacuum cleaner.
Overall I was pleased with the Deebot T90 Pro Omni’s performance, and the concerns I have about its longevity apply to pretty much all robot vacuum cleaners.
Practical Considerations
The Ecovacs Deebot T90 Pro Omni has a sizeable docking station that takes care of maintenance like recharging, cleaning and drying the mopping pad, emptying the dust and dirty water receptacles, and refilling with clean water and cleaning solution.
It’s a fairly sizeable unit and you’ll probably want to have it on a hard, stable surface which might limit your placement options.
If you’ve got pets, the Deebot T90 Pro Omni promises pet-friendly options like pet zones and good fur performance. Ultimately its usage will depend on how your pet reacts to the robot.
The emptying and mop pad cleaning process is a little disruptive – the docking station makes a loud suction noise and blows hot air continuously at the mop pad to dry it after a mopping pass, which might be a minor annoyance.
Value & Alternatives
Ultimately, $2299 is fairly expensive for a vacuum cleaner, so I’m hesitant to say the Deebot T90 Pro Omni is good value. It does take a lot of effort out of floor care, but it does so at a pretty high price, and there are cheaper options available.
Some close alternatives include the Roborock Saros series that offers similar functions at a lower price.
Of course, if you’re comfortable with a manual alternative you’re likely to get significantly better performance for the same money or even significantly less.
Would I buy it with my own money?
Yes. If I was in the market for a robot vacuum cleaner, I think you could do a lot worse than the Deebot T90 Pro Omni. It’s a bit more expensive than other options, but it’s ultimately good at its job, and gave me the confidence to use it unsupervised.
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