Ecovacs T30 Pro Omni: Clean but not polished

Ecovacs’ T30 Pro Omni seemingly ticks all the boxes; it has an auto-empty station that handles mop water, extendable mop for better edge cleaning, object detection, and a great battery life all for under $2,000. Although it certainly accomplishes the tasks it sets out to do, it doesn’t do it smoothly.

Ecovacs came out with this model just ten months after the T20 Omni, and that quick turnaround really shows on the new features. There are a handful of small issues that once added together make the T30 Pro Omni feel unpolished. Unsecure mop heads, loud operation, so-so object detection, and unreliable auto-lift on carpets overshadow a lot of the great things about this device. These rough edges make the T30 Pro Omni feel like a work in progress.

The actual vacuuming and mopping performance of the T30 Pro Omni is excellent, but when the device starts to get fancy the problems set in. Vacuuming suction obliterates small and medium debris, but the ZeroTangle rollers make the device prone to blockages in particularly furry households. Mopping is powerful and efficient, but the extendable mop arm tends to get caught and fall off. While the latest Ecovacs device nails the basics, the hero features that justify the price still need some work.

Mopping with the device seems substantially better than other robot vacuums. Despite not having the option to include a cleaning solution, my floors look shinier after a run of the T30 than other robot vacuums in this space. In part this has to do with the waterflow, but the bristled mop heads also do a better job at dislodging built up grime. Equipped with an extendable mop arm, these benefits stretch out to edges and corners but the mop head isn’t fitted quite snug enough. Almost every single run the mop head would get caught and dislodge on a cable or a chair leg. Working from home this is fine, but I can see it become frustrating quickly if you can’t immediately save the arm.

When it comes to vacuuming the T30 Pro Omni performs well against the usual dirt and dander build up in a home. It even manages to clean up edges and corners with high accuracy. Performance starts to break down when we get to some of the more titillating claims like ZeroTangle Anti-Tangle technology.

Anti-tangle technology is the thing this year in robot vacuums, and everyone is doing it slightly differently. Ecovacs is using a new roller brush, and a comb tooth system which the T30 claims minimises hair tangle rates to as low as 0%. Ultimately the comb brushes through the hair, pulling it off the roller before it gets sucked into the dustbin. In my household of two lusciously haired individuals, and one shedding Kelpie x Border Collie, we didn’t quite get to 0%, but there were significantly less tangles than I found on the Ecovacs Neo 2.0 Plus. There were, however, more blockages.

I found the assorted hair would cling to the comb and block the dustbin. There were a couple of times when I manually had to pull a chunk of hair out mid-clean to keep the device going. Admittedly I do think that my household is an edge case, but the combination of shedding here pushes these kinds of claims to their limit, and other robot vacuums with similar anti-tangle features fared better under the same circumstances.

On the subject of pets, I have to point out that my dog hated this vacuum. She is pretty used to having robovacs skirting around the house, and even managed to make peace with the exceptionally messy Dyson Vis Nav 360, but she couldn't stand the T30 Pro Omni. In fairness, it is a loud device. Louder than most other robovacs. Even as it sits in the dock drying it emits a humming that is hard to ignore. She even took to giving it a nudge with her snout as she walked past it, and a little “ruff”. I'll let her round out the issue in her own words.

Puppy preferences aside, the T30 Pro Omni has a lot of potential that it isn’t hitting just yet. Unfortunately the hardware is a little bit behind the intelligent software required to pull off the claims Ecovacs has come to the table with. 

Perhaps the most important aspect of a robot vacuum cleaner is its intelligence. Ideally you want a robovac to be able to handle its own independently - that’s the promise. To be able to pull this off a robot vacuum needs to have great object detection, and smart home mapping including the ability to identify flooring types. These two combined allow the robot to clean while keeping carpets dry, and avoid potential hazards like cables and strewn socks. T30 Pro Omni doesn’t quite deliver on either of these, but it does talk to itself while it cleans which is equal parts creepy and endearing. 

Ecovacs generally has pretty solid mapping even if the zoning is a bit off. While the device’s lidar scans the room and adds barriers well, in the app it takes some liberties in separating out those rooms. In previous models it has identified my bed as a room unto itself, while this time round it separated the main bedroom into three different rooms. These issues can be ironed out in the app, but it does result in some mopping and object detection misfires.

Since the mapping is somewhat off, auto-lift on the mop isn’t entirely reliable. In theory auto-lift keeps carpets dry by lifting the mop head out of the way when the robovac is on carpet. Due to the mapping malfunctions in some cases the T30 Omni Pro ends up mopping on sections of carpet. In the bedroom for example, the first ‘room’ it identified is partly in the hardwood hallway, and partly the carpeted bedroom. By default it keeps the mopping function on in this section, which means the transition from hall to bed ends up damp. You could argue that the mopping function is working just fine - after all there is a section of hardwood - but these technologies need to work in tandem. Even though you can fix up the room setup in the Ecovacs app, there is no way to identify the floor type as ‘carpet’. You can only pick between wood, tile or auto. Perhaps ‘auto’ is carpet, but I could do without the ambiguity. 

These snafus continue while actually cleaning. The T30 isn’t great at avoiding cables or other floor-level obstacles like clothes, or dog toys. As mentioned before, sometimes these tangles end up taking the mop head with them, while other times I had to fish socks and in one case a whole singlet from its jaws. At its best, a robovac will identify obstacles and swerve to avoid them. We’ve seen this play out on some of the best robot vacuum cleaners we have reviewed, but as of late Ecovacs is lagging behind in this tech.

Through the whole cleaning process the Pro Omni has a habit of muttering to itself. I’m yet to catch anything that it is saying, but I can distinctly hear it chattering away every few minutes. There isn’t much more to say on this except that I am yet to come across another robot vacuum with this same mannerism. I get it, I also talk to myself to make sure I don’t miss anything, but this behaviour in a robot is unnerving at first. After a while it fades into the usual hum of the house, but if you think you’re hearing things I want to assure you that you’re not losing your mind.

The T30 Pro Omni retails for $1,799 from various retailers. In some cases (like on Amazon), you may be able to get about $50 off.

The T30 Pro Omni has the basics hammered out but its new features need finessing. The first round of new technologies on any product are generally a bit uncouth, and a bit more expensive. While the device falls in line with that first point, the comparably low price for these features is the T30 Pro Omni’s saving grace. Roborock’s S8 MaxV Ultra has an almost identical spec list, but charges $2,999 for it. Those extra dollars don’t get you much extra on paper, but practically they buy you what feels like a more mature product. At a little over half the cost, the fact that Ecovacs is even able to offer such a similar set of features is impressive, but those savings have to come from somewhere. What you gain in dollars saved, you lose in the details.