“Capable of cleaning both floors and itself, the Deebot T20 Omni is a versatile robot vacuum.”
- Sleek design
- Powerful mopping pads
- Enough suction for thick carpet
- Mop cleaning with hot water and hot air
- Not ideal for thick carpets
Ecovacs launched the Deebot T10 Omni earlier this year, offering a solid robot vacuum with an impressive docking station, great cleaning prowess, and the ability to double as a robot mop. The smart home gadget wasn’t perfect, but Ecovacs seems to have fixed every complaint about the T10 with its latest robot vacuum — the Deebot T20 Omni.
With the ability to mop and vacuum in a single run, the T20 Omni wants to become the one-stop shop for all your floor-cleaning needs. Beyond cleaning your home, it can also clean itself, thanks to a docking station that utilizes both hot air and hot water to disinfect its mop after each cleaning cycle. It’s a much more robust product than the older T10 — and it’s an easy recommendation for nearly every type of home.
The price tag is a bit steep — and its mop-lifting skills still aren’t perfect — but there’s a lot to love about the Ecovacs Deebot T20 Omni.
Straightforward setup
The setup process is one of the most daunting parts of adding a robot vacuum to your home. Cheap vacuums often require you to babysit them as they roam about your home during the mapping process, or they produce maps that aren’t accurate. That’s not the case with the T20 Omni.
Once you snap on a few brushes to the underside of its chassis and fill up its clean water reservoir, you can start the mapping process using either voice commands or a smartphone app. And after a few minutes of roaming your home, you’ll have a shockingly precise floorplan. From there, you can easily set restricted areas or tweak the layout to your preference.
The Ecovacs Deebot T20 Omni is practically ready to use right out of the box.
In other words, setting up your Ecovacs T20 Omni is a breeze. The hardest part might just be getting the dock out of its packaging — it’s a pretty bulky unit — but once you’ve placed the dock and vacuum in your home, everything else is as easy as pressing a button.
The water reservoirs and dustbin are also easily accessible, with the water canisters located underneath a hatch on the top of the unit, and the dustbin is tucked away near the bottom. All three are entirely hidden from view. The brushes on the robot are the only thing that truly needs to be installed; everything else comes ready to use right out of the box.
Heaps of features
What sets the T20 Omni apart from other premium robot vacuums on the market is its list of features. A robot vacuum that can both mop and vacuum in a single run is nothing new — you can already find that on the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra or Roomba Combo j7+. But the T20 Omni takes things to a new level with the introduction of both hot water and hot air mop cleaning cycles.
When the T20 detects that its mop is dirty — or after a standard cleaning cycle — the T20 Omni will head to its dock. Once there, the two mops located on the bottom of the robot will be blasted with hot water to remove any dirt and debris. Then, a hot air cycle will activate to completely dry the mops, preventing the buildup of mildew and bacteria.
The cleaning offered by T20 Omni’s hot water and hot air cycle is superior to most other robot vacuums.
This is a pretty big selling point for the T20, as it prevents you from having to perform any manual cleaning on the mops between cycles. Other products might require you to pull the mopheads off and clean them in your sink, something that’s less than ideal after dropping hundreds of dollars for a robot that “automates” your cleaning.
The cleaning offered by this dual hot water and hot air cycle is superior to many other products. Most robot vacuums that use a cleaning cycle today don’t feature a hot water rinse. The T20 Omni, meanwhile, can heat water to 131 degrees to better clean and disinfect its mops. These cleaning cycles do take a bit of time to complete, however, and your robot will largely be inaccessible while they’re running. But that’s a minor tradeoff to keep your hands clean and away from dirty mops.
For rugs or low-pile carpets, the T20 Omni is perfect.
Along with hot water washing and drying cycles, the T20 Omni can lift its mop 9mm, which is higher than most other robot vacuums. In practice, however, this still isn’t ideal for homes with thick carpets. The mopping pads on the T20 are much larger than those of other products, and the 9mm of clearance isn’t enough to prevent the pads from skimming across the top of extra-plush carpets.
For rugs or low-pile carpets, the T20 Omni is perfect. But if your home is a mixture of high-pile carpet in living spaces and tiles in kitchens or dining spaces, you might want to consider disabling the mopping feature when vacuuming.
Incredible performance across all types of floors
As you’d expect, the actual cleaning performance of the Ecovacs Deebot T20 Omni is incredible. Its two, counter-rotating mop disks can spin at a rate of 180 rotations per minute to handle even the nastiest of floors, while the 6,000 Pa of suction expertly cleans both tile and carpet.
The T20 also has the added benefit of leaving oddly satisfying tread marks in its wake, making it easy to see where exactly it cleaned. The warm water and air-drying cycles also worked well during testing, with mopping pads that still look new despite several weeks of use.
Best of all, the dustbin that’s built into the docking station is rated to hold debris for up to 60 days, letting you go weeks before diving in for a replacement. When combined with the self-cleaning mop, you’ve got a robot vacuum that’s about as automated as it gets.
Verdict
The Ecovacs Deebot T20 Omni is a remarkable piece of engineering. Offering powerful cleaning performance and top-of-the-line maintenance features, few robot vacuums can compete with the T20. It’s a bit pricey at $1,099, but that’s relatively affordable when compared to the competition. The Roborock S8 Pro Ultra offers many of the same features but starts at $1,600, and the Roomba Combo j7+ is $1,000 (though it lacks many of the self-cleaning skills of the T20).
The only reason to give pause to the T20 is if your home has high-pile carpets. Otherwise, it passes all tests with flying colors. Ecovacs is also running a launch discount that slashes the price by $100 through June 30, making it more enticing than usual. But even at full price, the Ecovacs Deebot T20 Omni is a stellar robot vacuum that deserves a spot in your home.
