so today we're going to be taking a look at one of the most feature-rich robot vacuums that you
can buy this is ecovac's d-bot x1 omni and today we're going to put it to the test and this is no
easy it's going to clear up a couple of crumbs test this is a proper test a test it should fail
and the reason i do this test is that i want to find out what the absolute limit of this vacuum is
no vacuum is safe so first of all before i start i do want to thank ecovax for sponsoring this video
and for sending me this robot vacuum to put to the test but despite that i am going to be doing this
properly i'm going to be putting this to the test giving you the results and giving you my
honest feedback about what's great and what maybe isn't so great but first of all let's take a look
at what we got now essentially ecovax's d-bot x1 omni is broken up into a few different sections
you have ecovax which is the company the d-bot which is the sort of section of things that they
do which is one of their robot vacuums you have the x1 which is this particular model of vacuum
and the omni which is the base unit that it pairs up with the robot vacuum is pretty standard in
size compared to other robot vacuums but the base station is huge and the reason for it is that it
does an absolute megaton of different things and because of those things that it does it needs to
have certain storage space for things like a dust bag that it empties into and two water tanks for
clean water and dirty water now in the box we do get the vacuum itself along with the base station
and a bunch of different accessories we get two dust bags we get two sets of mop pads we even
get cleaning utensils to help us clean the vacuum and to clean the base station and the base station
has a bunch of components in it including the two tanks for the clean and dirty water now the base
station you will plug into a wall and that is where the vacuum's going to go back to charge
and it will also do things like empty itself and clean its own mopping pads also included in that
base station is a way of drying the mop pads after they've been cleaned so that you're not
getting a massive buildup of germs and bacteria as it just sort of sits on stagnant wet pads so once
we're physically set up we pair the robot to the ecovax app and we can do everything that we need
to do to control it from there now we're going to go into some of these tests and what i'm going to
do between these tests i am going to explain a few more different features about the vacuum
i have deposited two substances on my carpeted floor that is flour and broken up corn flakes
now some of these corn flakes are fine like dust and some of them are pretty whole run the test
so hello everyone and welcome to our first test the hoovering carpet test featuring flower and
cornflakes here comes the x1 so we begin by proceeding around the room and getting a decent
loop in so it can map out its entire environment to vacuum now once it gets its map in its head it
then begins on getting rid of these cornflakes and the flower so it's a pretty decent start from the
x1 and it gets that first bit of flower look at that straight sweep clean nothing wrong with that
at all and as you can see is absolutely powering through the cornflakes knocking them everywhere
it's even going around trying to pick up some of the pieces that it flicked around what a good
little vacuum it is now i will stress that this vacuum is not designed to be doing stuff like that
and oh mr big chunk there let's get a replay of that yeah you can see it just passing over a big
amount of flour now this vacuum isn't designed to be picking up such large quantities of stuff
especially uh the powder that's in the carpet that's a decent large amount of powder so and
i'm not surprised you didn't get it in the first go but we are going to be doing another
sweep so let's see what we can do by clearing up and going around another couple of times
so we have finished our first sweep and there is still powder residue on the floor so we're
going to keep going and see what we can actually do and how clean we can get this carpet all of
the conflicts gone on the first sweep massively impressed with that it's just this powder that's
stuck in the carpet so let's see what the x1 can do obviously after a couple of sweeps back and
forth we can see that there is a big difference from what we started with however it is still
obvious that there's been flower on the floor and i'll be honest i am actually massively impressed
this vacuum shouldn't be getting anywhere near a clean floor in this circumstance and i am
massively impressed at how much of a difference is actually made so before i jump into the next test
we're going to take a look at some key features of the x1 omni now on the front of the vacuum are a
few cameras and sensors as well as a lidar sensor on the top the lidar sensor is designed to help
map the area around that it's going to clean and then the cameras do things like detecting smaller
objects that it needs to avoid and you can detect if your pet is pooed on the floor so it doesn't go
on and clean it up but it can also detect things like wires and socks and that can stop it going
over anything that might get sucked up and cause it or the vacuum damage or just tangle up in the
vacuum and require your input to have to go in and fix it now as well as that is that you have
a camera that you can actually access from the app and i'll get on to that in a bit but we do also
have voice control just having a smart assistant straight away in the vacuum that's pretty cool and
this vacuum allows you to summon it start and stop the cleaning tell it to clean particular rooms
or around particular items of furniture that it recognizes and remembers i can even find
your voice and come to you and clean in the area that you're stood now when you set the vacuum to
english because i am english i come from england it actually has an american english accent now
that's not going to be a problem for any of you that are american but if you are british like
myself and you have an accent like myself it can sometimes struggle to recognize you and you have
to sort of put on a funny american accent to get it to actually do anything so it still works but
i do sound like an idiot in front of my wife look my accent is my only decent feature and another
cool feature which is great with this rebel vacuum is the mop now there are a ton of vacuums that can
do mopping um but they tend to just sort of drag a bit of wet fabric across the floor behind it
this is an actual active mopping system it has two circular mop pads that will rotate
180 times per minute and as as it's going along is actively spinning around and mopping the floor and
it creates probably one of the most if not the best mop that you can get on a robot vacuum and
this leads us into our next test the mopping test so ladies and gentlemen welcome to test two the
mopping test the first substance is coffee on the top left on the top right we have some kids squash
bottom left we have some wine spilled from the night before and on the bottom right we have
some dried strawberry yogurt now all of these substances have been spilled and left to dry
for a couple of hours so we're straight into it and the x1 is going around and doing its loop
but it is already making a massive dent on this mess on the floor in the first sweep just going
around the edge we can see a huge difference made to the wine and also to the dried kids squash now
there's having a little bit more of a challenge with the coffee but it is making a big difference
let's see how it gets on going on the last two so for a mess like that which shouldn't be handled
by this i mean the x1 has done a pretty good job of getting into it but it hasn't actually fully
cleaned up any of the tiles on one swoop but we do have a bit of an issue over there by the squash
the mops aren't actually getting as close to that barrier as we can possibly see it is leaving just
an area of unmopped surface where it can't reach the actual area now that we're our final pass we
are seeing some of the progress that's been made by the x1 unfortunately it's not fully
done on two of the areas the dried yogurt and the dried milky coffee now that is obviously to
be expected it's not an easy thing to mop but let's see how it handles it in one final swoop
see back and forth over there on the coffee and actually that's made an absolutely huge difference
the toilet's almost pretty clean one as it's been for a while is completely gone and the yogurt
again that final swoop has made an absolutely huge difference and has pretty much cleared
the entire place the only real limitation is over where the mop wasn't able to reach
because it was too close to the wall now whilst not necessarily getting a perfectly clean floor
this has actually done an absolutely surprisingly fantastic job especially considering these are the
kind of substances that if you spill on the floor you need to be getting on your hands knees and
cleaning and you need to be scrubbing them to get them off the fact that this robot hoover has done
what it's done is incredibly impressive now before we get into the last test i'm just going to break
down some of the smart features that you can get with the camera on this robot vacuum so the x1 has
a camera on the front of it and you can log in on the app and remote control around your own house
and sort of check whether a door's been left open or the fridge is open or the oven's turned on
you can also check if someone's got home from work or the kids have gotten home from school
maybe you have a pet at home that you want to check on you can actually go into the app
and find them and even talk to them through the vacuum the vacuum has microphones on it that picks
up noises in your house but it also has speakers so that you can talk back through it and there's
also a feature on there to do an automatic sweep around the map of your house that you've made and
now i do pride myself on testing the things that i am reviewing and testing them properly and in
this next test i may have pushed that too far now i have to be honest when i'm testing something
like this i do get a little bit excited and i get a bit excited about cool features so the fact that
this has got these spinning mops i think that's amazing and the fact that it's got this super
awesome suction power i think oh yeah great what i don't fail to realize is that the tests that i
do aren't necessarily the tests that this thing is intended to be dealing with on a daily basis
like in the mopping test where ultimately if that stuff is on your floor you need to be cleaning up
yourself you're not going to be leaving that for your robot vacuum your robot vacuum is there to
clean the large area that you don't want to have the time to do if there's an intense bit of dirt
on the floor and you need to clean it like just get in your hands and knees what you're playing
at so what i did i dispersed flour and cornflakes as i normally do across the entire living room
floor and throughout some different obstacles for the vacuum to meet and try and avoid but what i
did felt realize is that unlike with something like salt which dissolves pretty easily in water
flour doesn't do that flour turns into a disgusting doughy mess and the last thing you
want to be doing is vacuuming up dough let's run the test so ladies and gentlemen welcome to test
number three the vacuum obstacle test today we are going to be hoovering up flour and cornflakes now
we are fully aware that this has been set up in a way that could cause some issues we're going to be
sending out the vacuum with the mop mode activated so what is the water gonna do to this flowery mess
we shall have to see okay so the x1 has begun its vacuuming journey it is currently going
around the outside of the area to map exactly where needs to be cleaned so then it can go in
and work out the middle afterwards as you can see initially not many issues currently going
around the edges seems to be doing a pretty good job the only problem is is that the brushes on
the outside are flicking and moving the obstacles and the things that it needs to clean up away from
the vacuum in certain areas so let's see if the vacuum can handle that and go and pick up the bits
that it knocks out of the way now the next one has successfully dodged a few obstacles there is doing
absolutely fantastically now we've got these little steps that aren't really recognizable
to the vacuum as a particular object but is doing a perfectly fine job of navigating its way around
and what it does is it stores a map of exactly where it's been so it knows if there's an area
that's missed and it can go back and get that particular area just as it's doing right now
i've got to say the look of determination on the x1 is inspirational this is a challenge that it
never should have to face and i doubt it will ever face again but it is taking it on like an
absolute champ the majority of the floor has been taken care of already and is still going
back to get all the missed pieces now according to the x1 it's saying that it thinks it is done
and has found its way back to the base station now as we can see there are some areas that has missed
and this will be down to the obstacles that in the way it just couldn't quite find itself
an easy path through to collect it now there are quite a few areas where they are hard to reach and
the vacuum has missed certain things and despite pretty much clearing up about 90 percent of the
area there is an almost fine film of flower across the floor where it struggled to clean the wood
so i do have to be honest it didn't pass this test and that isn't its fault it shouldn't pass this
test no robot vacuum is ever going to pass this test and if it does pass this test well then fair
play but what i do have to say is that with the areas that it could get to it cleaned up all of
the flour i mean it almost killed the vacuum but it did the job i'll be clear the vacuum didn't die
it was just covered in like this doughy mess and after spending a little bit of myself and some of
the cleaning utensils that are included in the box i did manage to resurrect it and i managed
to clean it up and it's working just as well as it did before but from these tests i have a few
key takeaways i have some positives and i have some negatives this is probably one of the most
feature-rich vacuums that you can possibly buy it's got an unbelievable amount of things that
it can do and there's a massive variety of things that you don't have to do because it does it all
itself now unfortunately with these spinning mops you have positives and negatives the positives are
you get cleaner floors than you would get with any other robot vacuum except at the
edges of a room it actually struggles to get those mops around the borders so if you have
skirting boards anything around the borders of your house you're going to struggle to mop the
direct edges unless it's turning around at that point now the fact that this has voice control
and you don't actually have to get your phone out to tell it to do stuff you can get it to do stuff
with just your voice that is actually probably one of my favorite features of this robot vacuum
the fact that i have to pretend to be an american is probably one of the most annoying things
but i love the voice control and i think that if you're looking for a vacuum that just gives you
a level of ease i would say that's probably one of the main features of this vacuum
that should sell it for you the self-cleaning is fantastic and the fact that it deals with the mops
all by itself brilliant and it isn't completely human intervention less you do have to do some
things so if you want to switch between vacuum and mopping mode you have to take off the mops
it's easy to do but it's something that you have to do i mean that lends into a positive that this
will detect carpets by the fact they automatically vacuums more on carpet obviously that's a good
thing and they'll actually detect carpet and not go on carpet if the mops are on it means you're
not going to be getting your carpet wet but also not going to be spinning these horrendous mops
around your carpet and ruining it either and obviously you do have to empty the tanks for
now i'm more than happy to go in and fill up the water tank and empty out the dirty water
um between cleans obviously you're not gonna have to do it between every single mop it's gonna take
a couple of weeks or so to be able to have to do that so guys those are my
thoughts about this robot vacuum what are your thoughts stick them in the comments
below and click one of these videos to see more from me and i'll see you in the next one