Ecovacs Deebot X11 OmniCyclone review: powerful cleaning with questionable smarts
Ecovacs' flagship robot vacuum is very good, until it forgets where it is
đ Review score: 3.5/5
â
Pros
đ¨ Strong suction with a handy arm brush for reaching every crevice
đ Slim design that fits well underneath most furniture
đď¸ Bagless dumpster for easier (and cheaper) clean-up
đ Long battery life with fast charging
𤍠Quiet performance
â Cons
đ¤ AI features often lead to curious missteps
𧴠Cleaning solution is a bit pricey
đ It nearly destroyed my Christmas tree skirt
đ° Pricey for features that donât add any value
The Shortcut review
Ecovacs crammed a lot of impressive technologies into the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone, the companyâs latest flagship robotic vacuum cleaner. It has powerful cleaning tools that have kept my apartmentâs floors free from stains and dirt, it charges very quickly, and you donât need to worry about refilling fluids often or emptying trash bags from its docking station. It could be the perfect robotic vacuum cleaner, if it were just smarter.
See, this $1,500 vacuum cleaner (regularly on sale for around $1,100) technically has the tech to navigate your whole room, sans a case of stairs. Using LiDAR, AI, and a bunch of other sensors, it can map your whole home and take care of all the spots that need extra attention. But more often than not, the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone likes to do something thatâs just plain dumb. Whether it tries to inhale your bathroom carpet, tries to climb over the foot of your desk and gets stuck, or loses its place randomly in a space no bigger than 900 square feet, its intelligence can only carry it so far.
The X11 OmniCyclone is a fantastic product when it comes to cleaning your floors, but itâs not the sharpest tool in the shed (or, in this case, your living room). If you keep things basic and avoid the AI-assisted features in the vacuum cleaner, youâll have a much easier time managing it. Otherwise, youâll be trying to figure out where it got stuck again.
âď¸ Review notes
đ Good design that gets out of the way. The X11 OmniCyclone has a basic design thatâs not too big or clunky. It has a low profile, so it fits underneath most cabinets and furniture in your home, and its docking station avoids being too tall or wide to feel intrusive. I placed it in the living room of my apartment right between a shelf and our media console, and forgot about it. As much as youâd think a huge chunk of black plastic could be an eyesore, this oneâs totally fine.
đĄ Lighting the way. I tend to run my vacuum at night after my girlfriend and I are finished making dinner, so itâs great that the X11 OmniCyclone includes a little headlamp on the front to light the way. The advanced LiDAR tracking system is great for avoiding obstacles and knowing where itâs located in your home, but the light helps to illuminate everything, so it doesnât miss any of the mess you made.
𦾠Powerful suction and a handy sweeping arm. With 38 CFM airflow and 19,500Pa suction, the X11 OmniCyclone really⌠sucks. This powerful vacuum cleaner regularly gets all the dirt, food crumbs, hair, and more off of my floors. The sweeping arm that Ecovacs built into the vacuum helps to get into hard to reach places, like the space between the floor and my oven. It also helps to reach into corners and edges, which it seems to never miss. The vacuum rollers also come with ZeroTangle 3.0 technology, which means even the thickest of hair wonât become a tangled mess and stop the X11 from doing its job. When itâs done vacuuming, it empties into the dock that doesnât require bags, which means you simply empty it once in a while into a trash can - another nice convenience.
đ Only loud if you crank it up. The X11 OmniCyclone is also good at keeping quiet. If you set the suction strength to âStrong,â youâll just barely hear it in the background as you go about your day. The only setting thatâs a bit of a noisy nuisance is âMax,â which I generally only turn on when we arenât watching Netflix. Iâll use it during deeper cleaning sessions before guests arrive (or, yâknow, when I havenât cleaned the floors in a while).
đŤ Stains be gone. The mopping functionality on the robot works really well. The roller mop is wide enough to clean stains and other messes without having to spend a ton of time on them, and when you have one thatâs a bit harder to get out, the X11 activates Deep Re-mop Mode. Itâs an AI feature that knows when a stain isnât completely gone after a pass or two; the robot will return to it and make sure itâs completely gone as a result. Iâve used it to clean grease stains off my floor after frying up chicken cutlets, and it works beautifully.
𧚠Right up to the edge. I also appreciate the X11âs ability to get right up to the edges of the flooring in my apartment. The sweeping arm and design of the lower portion of the vacuum allow it to grace the sides of the wall and suck up any debris in its way, ensuring your entire floor is clean. I did have to remap the robot once to ensure it would get all the way up to the edge, but after I did, itâs been able to clean my floors without issue.
𧌠Dodges objects well⌠I was impressed with the X11 OmniCycloneâs ability to dodge objects in its way. Being a tech reporter, I always have random wires all over the place, and the vacuum never even attempted to suck one up. Instead, it managed to avoid them all and keep my tech safe. It also avoided sucking up socks, gloves, and other misceleneous objects on my floor.
đ ⌠but not always. The one thing the X11 OmniCyclone regularly gets confused by is carpeting. While it probably works fine in rooms with large aerial rugs or edge-to-edge carpeting, my apartment has hardwood floors with a single protective chair mat at my desk, and it continuously tries to suck the life out of it and mop all the dirt out of it. Itâs a few millimeters thick, so thereâs never anything to scrub out of it, but the X11 can never seem to catch onto that. At Christmas time, we had a skirt around our tree that it repeatedly tried to suck up, despite me telling it to avoid it before cleaning. Itâs those instances where Iâm like, âthis thing should be smarter than this, no?â
đ¤ AI slop in a robot vacuum. I blame it on the AI features that Ecovacs built into the X11 OmniCyclone. I had a vast majority of my issues with the vacuum while using Agent Yiko, an AI bot that can intelligently navigate your home and clean your floors according to what it deems best. It learns over time your cleaning preferences for certain rooms, can detect larger stains and pay more attention to them, and more. The problem? Itâs awfully dumb. When I ran it, the AI would essentially forget about the map it already recorded and start guessing where to go, where my furniture was, how much time to spend in certain sections to ensure itâs clean, and more. I ran it over 10 times, and every time it was just as dumb as the time before. I stopped using it, of course, and run the whole operation manually. I recommend keeping away from Yiko to get the most use out of this vacuum (and save you a headache).
đ¤ Baffling forgetfulness. I also noticed that the vacuum will forget where it is sometimes. It doesnât happen a lot, but if you move a piece of furniture or choose to clean a custom area of your home, it can occasionally forget its place and just⌠stop. This has reduced my confidence in running the vacuum on my way out the door in the morning, since I donât want to get a notification later saying âDeebot doesnât know where it is, please return to station.â
đ Very fast charging and long endurance. The X11 OmniCyclone can last for a good while on a charge. Iâve done a number of full apartment vacuum jobs with it and it never had to return to the station to recharge before completing the job. Thatâs roughly 700 square feet of cleaning with Max suction power enabled; afterward, it had around 60% left in the tank, so it could easily do double the amount and still have power left over. Ecovacs incorporates its unique PowerBoost Technology to quickly charge the vacuum, which works efficiently. The company says you can get a 6% charge in just 3 minutes, and in my testing, that was accurate. Even if it does conk out before itâs done cleaning your floors, you wonât be waiting around for it to finish charging.
đ HomeKit integration is mediocre. While the X11 OmniCyclone technically works with Appleâs HomeKit, integration is very bare-bones. You can trigger it to go clean your floors, but you canât customize any aspect of the cleaning process. Youâre at the mercy of the vacuumâs default settings, which arenât great for every cleaning you might want to do. Still, the convenience of asking Siri to send your vacuum to clean the floors is kind of convenient, so it might be worth the trade-offs if youâre a big voice command user.
đ° Kind of expensive. This is Ecovacsâ flagship robot vacuum, which makes it the most expensive. At $1,499.99 (when not on sale), itâs a high barrier to entry to get it into your home. Pair that with two cleaning solutions thatâll run you about $30 a bottle, and youâll quickly realize this is a big investment for a vacuum that does perform well, but has a ton of extra features that donât add much value. The cleaning performance remains top-tier, but itâd be nice if the other features could help justify the price a bit better.
Should you buy the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone?
Yes, ifâŚ
â You need a long-lasting vacuum and mop
â You have a large home or apartment
â Your current robot vacuum doesnât have edge cleaning
â You donât want to worry about dust bin bags
No, ifâŚ
â You want the best value
â You want better integration with your smart home
â You have thin carpets on your floors
â You want a set-it-and-forget-it robot vacuum thatâs trustworthy when you leave the house
Max Buondonno is an editor at The Shortcut and co-host of The Shortcut Live. Heâs been reporting on the latest consumer technology since 2015, with his work featured on CNN Underscored, ZDNET, How-To Geek, XDA, TheStreet, and more. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop and Instagram @LegendaryScoop.