Ecovacs Deebot T30 Omni review: All-in-one wonder

Multi-surface homes can be a pain to clean. Sure, a stick vacuum will do a good enough job with pretty much every surface. But if your home has a spread of carpet, tiles and/or lino-covered flooring, there’s a lot of pressure to eventually crack out the mop. And if you, like me, are resistant to that extra mopping step, modern robot vacuums are mercifully roaming in the direction of offering both cleaning options.

Cue the entry of the Ecovacs Deebot T30 Omni, which I tested over a weekend alongside the Ecovacs Deebot N20 Plus. While the latter Ecovacs robot vacuum is the cheaper choice, the T30 Omni is a pricier pick that has some neater features, including a more straightforward way to intuitively shift between vacuuming and mopping functions.

Simplified mopping and vacuuming: Default settings on the T30 Omni equate to a basic vacuum and mop, wherein the latter happens during vacuuming. Thankfully, the T30 Omni is smart enough to detect surfaces, so it wasn’t mopping the carpet (even when shifting across carpet-to-lino thresholds). But during the mop, it’s vacuuming in front of the dual-deployed mops out back: kind of like the mullet equivalent of a clean.

Sure, results aren’t as good as if you flick it over to dedicated vacuum-before-mopping mode, but it’s a nice time-saver, as is the standard mopping settings in terms of drying time. The T30 Omni automatically pulled in enough clean water from the base station to match its mopping needs. As I anticipated, it needed to drop off dust before fully cleaning the test area, which it did before automatically returning to finish the clean.

Straightforward setup: I had some wobbles while setting up the N20 Plus, but there weren’t any issues with the T30 Omni after lugging the 15kg+ combined heft up the stairs of my apartment building. The basic Lego construction at the start is both logical and clearly marked: just push in the base tray, pop the clean/dirty water receptacles on top, and snap the side brush onto the robot vacuum.

I like how the QR code under the robot vacuum lid is used to download the companion app and to sync the robot vacuum with that app. After a painless automated firmware update, it was good to go.

Larger-obstacle handling: As a tech reviewer, my lounge is often littered with boxes and cables, not to mention a foldable rowing machine that’s got some tricky angles. I was impressed with how the T30 Omni tackled those larger obstacles, including power cables.

Beneath my couch is reminiscent of my approach to bedroom cleaning in my younger years: namely, a hodgepodge of controllers, computer parts, manuals, and whatever the cats have dragged under there. I figured the T30 Omni would avoid most of the under-couch carnage. Impressively, it didn’t, and even when it got initially stuck, it did a great job of turning off the vacuum and wriggling itself free of manuals or nudging controllers out of the way for the kind of clean that carpet hasn’t experienced in years. No wonder it had to empty before finalising the cleaning.

Corner handling: There are a couple of tricky spots in the lounge that I figured the T30 Omni would give up on, but it didn’t. The first is a foldable Concept2 rowing machine, which covers a large space as far as human navigation is concerned, but still has potentially cleanable nooks with a stick or robot vacuum. The T30 Omni worked in and around the corners where it could fit in an impressive bumper-to-rower way.

I also have a large bookshelf that that has a lip at the bottom that’s a pain to get vacuum attachments under. It was great to see the T30 Omni’s side brush going to work in this space, getting as close as possible to the edge, including in parts where there are display items jutting out past the bottom shelf.

Cleaning time and longevity: On its first run with default settings, the N20 Plus took just under 20 minutes to clean a 16-square-metre area. But it took the T30 Omni just over an hour to clean a 26-square-metre space on regular settings. Admittedly, those default settings on the T30 Omni did default to two cleaning passes instead of one.

I’m all for thorough, but it was down to 61% battery life by the end of that clean of the front part of my apartment. I reckon it might not have the juice to do a max-suction vacuum with a high-water mop on a two-pass clean of my apartment, particularly when you factor in extra time to return to the base station to ditch dust. The base station did, however, give about 20% of battery life per hour of recharging.

First-run mapping: The initial mapping was fast for the test cleaning rooms, all done in about six minutes for the 26-square-metre space. That said, it should’ve taken at least a wee bit longer to properly map the front part of my lounge. Instead, it gave up after meeting some stiff resistance from a group of clustered charging cables attached to a power board.

Assumedly, the T30 Omni felt those cables were a wall or other impenetrable object and gave up. Despite this initial mapping mix-up, the robot vacuum did clean past where those cables were after I got them (but not the power board) out of its way.

Battles with smaller cables: That mess of thicker cables were treated like a wall, but smaller cables were treated as surmountable obstacles, albeit with mixed results. I had to pause the cleaning a couple of times to handle different attempted cable inhalations. The first was against a thin USB-C cable that it tried to eat. And the next was against a flat Ethernet cable that it got stuck on multiple times.

Sometimes, the T30 Omni admirably freed itself from the Ethernet cable, and other times its efforts to free itself put it in a worse position. Its cable battling is admirable, but I did wish for the option to tell it to give up on certain spots during the clean to avoid the deeper tangle.

Default settings mean ‘lazy’ mopping: The T30 Omni defaults to a ‘Vac and Mop’ mode. At first glance, that sounds great, but it means that the T30 Omni does vacuuming and mopping simultaneously on eligible surfaces. In theory, there is a method to this madness—the layout is roller first, vacuum second, dual mops in the back—but this setting doesn’t offer the best clean.

In particular, the T30 Omni had a habit of rounding up and ditching vacuumable debris in the doorway between rooms. These mini piles were easy enough to clean up, but infinitely more noticeable than any other little bits of missed scrap. I wish I’d noticed the AI button sooner to see how well that handled the overall clean which, outside of those doorway gripes, was an otherwise bang-up job.

My plan is to spend a lot more time with the T30 Omni to really put it through its paces, but it’s had an impressive start to proceedings. It’s easy to set up, quiet and thorough for the vacuuming part, and the self-cleaning base station is the cherry on top of an already impressive offering.