Pros & Cons
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- Exceptional vacuum performance
- Washes mop as it cleans
- Skillfully avoids obstacles
- Dispenses mopping detergent automatically
- Side brush and mop extend into corners
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- Sluggish controls
- Occasionally got stuck in testing
- Expensive
Ecovacs Deebot X9 Pro Omni Specs
| Battery Life (Tested) | 115 minutes |
| Dimensions | 13.9 by 13.8 by 3.9 inches |
| Mop/Vacuum Hybrid | |
| Phone Control | |
| Scheduling | |
| Virtual Walls |
The Ecovacs Deebot X9 Pro Omni robot floor cleaner debuts mere months after the launch of the Deebot X8 Pro Omni. The newer, more expensive model features a refined vacuuming system called Blast, designed to optimize airflow and improve debris pickup performance, while carrying forward its sibling's innovative roller mop design that washes itself as it works. The $1,599 robot vacuum and mop hybrid otherwise offers an attractive mix of features typical of its high price, including a base station that washes and dries the mop and keeps the robot topped up on clean water and cleaning detergent. Though it performed well in our rigorous real-world testing, the X9's Blast vacuuming system doesn’t offer enough of an improvement to warrant a $200 premium over the $1,399 X8, which remains our Editors’ Choice winner for premium robot floor cleaners.
Features: Blast Vacuuming, Roller Mopping, and a Self-Cleaning Base
Given the proximity of their release dates and the similarity of their features, I hesitate to dub the Deebot X9 Pro Omni the successor to the Deebot X8 Pro Omni despite the lineage implied by their names. Instead, they are closer to siblings within the same line, with the X9 touting extra vacuuming power brought by its Blast technology.
Blast stands for boosted large-airflow suction technology. To improve airflow, Ecovacs refined the intake system on the X9, using a wider inlet, a redesigned path from intake to exhaust, and a 100W high-torque motor and specially designed fan blades. The Blast system has 16,600 Pascals (Pa) of suction power to work with, a surprising step down from the X8's 18,000Pa. Roborock’s premium Saros 10 ($1,599.99) and Saros Z70 ($2,599) lead the field on this spec with 22,000Pa. Ecovacs is deemphasizing Pa in favor of more functional airflow, and touts a 16.3L/s airflow rate, which it claims is a 49% improvement over conventional systems.
Aside from Blast vacuuming, the X9 improves on the X8 by adding zero-tangle technology to the side brush and the main brush. The side brush on this model can also lift itself out of the way to avoid spreading stains and flinging large particles.
The X9 retains the X8's relatively unique roller mop design that’s becoming a favorite of mine over the previous standard of the two spinning mop plates like on the Dreame X30 Ultra ($1,699.99). Ecovacs' roller mop looks like a paint roller, and the robot scrapes the fibers as it cleans to limit cross-contamination. The mop spins at 220 rotations per minute, but oddly, the X8 applies more pressure with up to 4,000Pa of downward force compared with 3,700Pa on the X9.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)Like the X8, the X9 can extend both its side brush and its mop to better reach along walls and into corners. It navigates with a combination of time-of-flight sensors, 3D edge sensors, and a traditional camera. It uses structured light to help it avoid obstacles and has its main radar sensor embedded for a shorter stature relative to models with a LiDAR tower to better fit under furniture.
When it’s done cleaning, the X9 can return to the base station to empty its dustbin automatically. The base then washes the mop with heated water that gradually increases in temperature from 104 to 167 degrees Fahrenheit to specifically target and remove different kinds of dirt and grime. After that, the base dries the mop with air heated to 145 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent mildew. The base has separate reservoirs for clean water, dirty water, and mopping detergent to keep the robot topped up, and it can wash its own basin to maximize the time between manual maintenance.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)Other high-end robot vacuum and mop hybrids, like the Roborock Saros 10 and the Dreame X30 Ultra, offer similar self-cleaning features. The Deebot X9 also has a common but capable list of smarts: The robot connects to Wi-Fi for app control and scheduling, is compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant for third-party voice control, and has its own built-in speaker and AI-powered assistant called Yiko for direct voice control. Like other Ecovacs products, the Deebot X9 is compatible with Matter for even wider smart home device interoperability.
Design: An Elegant Textured Finish
Ecovacs hasn’t changed much about the Deebot X9's looks compared with the X8 or even its 2023 flagship model, the Deebot X2 Omni ($1,499.99). The robot itself is mostly black and disc-shaped, with the same dimensions as the X8, measuring 13.9 by 13.8 by 3.9 inches (LWH).
The top of the X9 has a textured matte brushed finish instead of the smooth black cover on the X8. The top cover lifts away to reveal a power toggle, a QR code for setup, and the robot's internal dustbin in case you need to manually empty it. A three-prong control button (shaped like a Y) carries forward from past models. It’s visible even with the cover in place through a cutout, with each prong acting as an indicator light that shines orange under ordinary circumstances or red if something is wrong. Tap the button once to start or pause cleaning, hold it for three seconds to cancel a job and send the robot back to the base station, or double-tap it to release the roller mop for manual cleaning or replacement.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)The back of the robot has charging contacts and a dirty water reservoir that pulls free with an inset lever. The front has a bumper and a clear panel covering the robot's primary sensors.
On the bottom, a caster wheel sits in front, the side brush is located in the left corner, and edge sensors circle the perimeter. The side brush has all of its bristles tucked to one side to increase its centrifugal force. The brush roll is just north of center, with V-shaped bristles interspaced with rubber fins. The bristles and fins work together to keep the brush free of pet hair. The brush roll looks visibly identical to that of the X8, with no outward signs of the refined Blast intake system.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)The main wheels flank the brush roll, with the roller mop slotting in underneath. One side of the slot is open for easily removing the mop if it needs manual maintenance, and so the robot can extend it to the side during cleaning.
The X9's base station looks sleeker than that of the X8, with its clean and dirty water reservoirs tucked into a recess on top. The X8 has a more modular look with the tanks visible from the front. On the X9, you can lift them out of the base with the silver handles, and the lids pop open by lifting the notch in the front.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)Most of the base is black, with the same brushed finish on the front panel as the top of the robot. The front panel pulls free to reveal the dust bag and the detergent compartment. An indicator light sits just above this panel and shines red if the base needs your attention or white if the robot is charging. Beneath that, the robot's bay has charging contacts in the back and a ramp that clicks in place in the front. With the ramp in place, the base measures 18.1 by 13.3 by 19.7 inches, which is longer, but slightly thinner and shorter than the X8's base (18.8 by 13.8 by 21 inches).
Unboxing and Setup: Simple and Stress-Free
The Deebot X9 Pro Omni box includes the robot, the base, the ramp, and the power cord, plus a quick start guide and instruction manuals. When you unbox everything, be careful to remove all packing material, especially the foam pieces tucked to the side of the robot’s bumpers that are easy to miss.
One dust bag comes preinstalled in the base, but Ecovacs doesn’t include any extras. You can buy a three-pack of replacement dust bags for $24.99. The robot also doesn't come with mopping detergent, and Ecovacs recommends sticking to its own branded solution. A one-liter bottle goes for $27.99.
To start setting up the Deebot X9, you first need to find a spot for the base. It only requires 0.16 feet of clearance on each side and 2.62 feet of clearance in front so the robot can freely come and go. The base should be positioned near an outlet, in an area with good Wi-Fi coverage, and on hard flooring rather than carpeting.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)After you get the base in place, snap on the ramp. It took a little more force than I expected, but it’ll click in place with appropriate oomph. Plug in the base, fill up the clean water and detergent reservoirs, and then the base is set. Remove the vacuum's top cover to flip on the power switch.
At this point, you’ll want to download the Ecovacs Home app (for Android and iOS) and create an account if you don’t have one. You’ll then be able to add the device in the app, which will prompt you to scan the QR code on the robot and reset its signal by holding the Wi-Fi button. The app will then walk you through the steps to connect the robot to your home Wi-Fi network.
Once it's connected, the app will ask you to name your robot and select hours for Do Not Disturb mode, which prevents it from starting. By default, this mode is set between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. Finally, put the robot into the base station so it can charge, and the app will prompt you to allow various updates.
Controls and Mapping: Comprehensive, But Could Be Easier to Use
Once you’ve given the robot time to install updates and charge, the app will prompt you to send it on a mapping run. The Deebot X9 Pro Omni finished mapping my 1,500-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment in 8 minutes and 6 seconds, taking slightly longer than the X8 (7 minutes and 46 seconds). It's still a speedy mapper, though, finishing well ahead of the Roborock Saros 10 (12 minutes).
That said, the Saros 10 generated a much more detailed map than both Ecovacs models. The Saros had detailed boundaries and clear divisions; it got some of the rooms right, and I only needed a few minutes of tweaking in the app to make it perfect. The X9’s map looked blocky and plain: Most of the rooms were grouped together, and I struggled to even find good spots to divide them manually.
Editing the map in the Ecovacs app is also slightly more tedious and error-prone than I’d expect of a long-standing robovac maker. It took me a while to add simple room divisions, and knowing which button to hit to confirm my changes is counterintuitive enough that I got it wrong despite recently going through this same buggy process on the X8. The app offers plenty of map-editing options like no-go zones, flooring type labels, and no-mop zones, but it took me roughly 15 minutes just to set up a basic floor plan with proper room names and divisions.
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Oddly, the robot's physical controls also feel unpolished. The button response is sluggish to the point that I often tapped the prongs again before it acknowledged my first touch, so I’d end up trying to pause a run, only to have it pause and then restart when it finally processed both taps.
That said, once the map is set, controlling the robot with the app is intuitive and easy. From the main device page, you can initiate cleaning by tapping on the big blue Start button at the bottom. Swipe up just above this button to open a drawer with cleaning customization options. You can have the robot clean with default settings in auto clean mode, or turn on AI Intelligent Hosting to have it automatically adjust its settings for optimal cleaning based on your habits, flooring types, and other factors.
(Credit: Ecovacs/PCMag)Otherwise, you can manually configure cleaning settings, selecting from three modes (vac, vac and mop, or mop after vac), four suction power levels, and your preferred water usage rate for mopping on a scale from 1 to 50, with 30 as the default, medium amount. You can also set the number of cleaning passes (one or two), adjust the density of the robot's navigation pattern (normal, deep cleaning, or quick), and/or tap individual rooms or create zones for targeted cleaning runs.
In-app controls for the base station allow you to manually initiate the dustbin-emptying function, and the mop washing and drying processes. Advanced controls under settings let you configure the robot's carpet recognition sensitivity (useful if you have thin rugs it might miss) and/or enable an option to have it vacuum carpet before wetting the mop.
Below the main settings menu, you can access Lab Settings to enable additional features still being refined, such as having the side brush lift when the robot detects large particles to prevent inadvertent debris spread, or allowing it to use AI to help with strategic mopping of stained areas.
A camera icon at the top of the main page allows you to see a live stream from the robot’s camera and manually control navigation like an RC car.
Navigation: Thorough Coverage, Modest Obstacle Avoidance
As prompted by the app, I sent the Deebot X9 Pro Omni on a vacuum-only run for its first cleaning job, and it finished in 60 minutes. The X8 took 61 minutes to complete the same task. After that run, I turned on AI Intelligent Hosting for most of the rest of my testing to let the robot set its own cleaning parameters.
I also configured it to vacuum the carpets before wetting the mop, and on its first combined run, it successfully covered both the long runner in my bedroom and my fully carpeted office and living room before returning to the base to wash and wet its mop. Given that I hadn’t indicated floor types when setting up the map, it did a good job of automatically recognizing carpeting and rugs.
(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)It completed the first combined run in 86 minutes because it took its time in the living room, going back and forth over the center of the floor a couple of times. The X8 completed the same task in 77 minutes, and the Saros 10 took 88 minutes.
After the run, my apartment floor looked mostly terrific. Like the X8, the X9 dropped a small amount of cat litter when moving over the threshold between my living room and my kitchen, but it otherwise did an excellent job, thoroughly sweeping the edges and collecting all the fur shed by my two feline roommates without any tangles or dust bunnies.
While cleaning my home, the X9 excelled at rerouting itself around obstacles I had intentionally placed in its path. I test obstacle avoidance with cat toys of various shapes and sizes, including large and small plastic mice that blend in with the carpet, colorful plastic springs, and a reflective foil ball. The X9 avoided all of the toys with barely any contact, an even better result than the X8, which also dodged everything with only an occasional bump. Both models avoid obstacles with much more competence than the Saros 10, which ran over everything.
However, it faltered a bit with real-world obstacles, getting stuck a couple of times during my whole home tests. Once, it drove up onto a chair leg and elevated its wheels in an unsuccessful effort to get unstuck before sending an alert that it needed help. It also occasionally wedged itself on top of a pipe protruding from my living room baseboard. For comparison, the Saros 10 never got stuck during testing.
Battery Life: About Average
I test battery life on robot vacuums by running them repeatedly until they call it quits and head back to their base station for a charge. The Deebot X9 Pro Omni lasted 115 minutes in this test, which is surprising because the X8 lasted 134 minutes with the same 6,400mAh battery. The Saros 10 lasted 118 minutes.
All three models well exceed the 90-minute threshold that we consider sufficient for most homes. The X9’s shorter battery life compared with the X8 may be the result of Blast vacuuming using more power.
Cleaning Performance: Blast Vacuuming Makes a Minor Difference
Next, I put the Deebot X9 Pro Omni through an extensive measured testing process to find out whether its Blast vacuuming actually makes a difference in terms of cleaning performance. For this, I closed the robot in two different 100-square-foot rooms, one with wall-to-wall carpeting and the other with hardwood. I spread a specific, weighed amount of debris on the otherwise clean floor, and then sent the robot to vacuum the room. I weighed the robot's dustbin before and after each test to find out how much of the debris it picked up. For these tests, I use two different types of debris—rice (representing everyday debris particles) and sand (representing stubborn debris)—in separate runs.
Sand on carpeting is a suction power stress test, and the X9 picked up just over 41%. That might not sound like much, but it’s actually an excellent result and one of the highest scores I’ve seen on the test. The Dyson 360 Vis Nav ($1,199.99) has many flaws, but it posted the best result on this test to date at 53.6%. The X9 just edged out the Saros 10, which also did well, picking up 40.7%. The X8 was closer to the typical range for high-end robot vacuums, snagging 37.7%. Blast vacuuming did indeed make a difference in this test.
The benefit of Blast vacuuming was less apparent in the other tests. Rice on carpet is the easiest test and mostly allows me to check for coverage. The X9 picked up 98.8% of rice on carpet, a solid result that falls just behind the X8's 99.9%. The X9 dropped more debris when entering and exiting its base station than the X8 did, which likely made up the difference in the result.
On hardwood, the two Ecovacs models traded blows. The X9 picked up more rice than the X8 on hardwood, with a score of 93% compared with the X8’s 90%. However, the X8 snagged more sand on hardwood, grabbing 82.3% compared with 79.9% for the X9. Both models are capable hardwood cleaners that minimize flinging and effectively scrape dirt out of corners. The Saros 10 performed similarly to both Ecovacs models on hardwood (95.1% rice, 82.8% sand), and it dropped less debris when entering and exiting its base station.
The Deebot X9 Pro Omni is certainly a capable cleaner, but its Blast vacuuming technology only made a noticeable difference in one out of four measured pickup tests. Otherwise, the X8 went toe to toe with its pricier sibling. The X9 also took longer to complete the measured test runs on both carpet (12 minutes and 18 seconds on average) and hardwood (18:26) than the X8 (9:48 and 13:18, respectively).
On our mopping stress test, the less expensive X8 outperformed the X9, likely due to its increased downward pressure on the roller mop. For this test, I spread 0.25 ounces of raspberry jelly in a single glob on my kitchen floor and observed how much of the mess the robot wipes up and how much it spreads to other parts of the room.
The X9 missed two stray seeds and left a noticeable splotch. It didn’t spread any seeds to other parts of the room, but the floor was slightly sticky after the mopping run. For comparison, the X8 missed three seeds, but I didn’t notice any sticky residue after its test. Both models performed better than the Saros 10, which smeared the stain and spread seeds and stickiness to all parts of the room. The X9 is a highly capable robot mop, even if the more affordable X8 is slightly better.
In terms of self-maintenance, the X9's base station effectively washed the mop, removing all evidence of the jelly. It performed this task better than the X8's base, which left a few jelly seeds along the spindle after the mop-washing process.
Meanwhile, after one run, the X9's self-emptying dustbin didn’t work and appeared to get clogged with all of the pet hair it picked up. That only happened once, though, so I’m willing to write it off as a fluke.