With iOS 18.4, Apple added support for robot vacuums to
HomeKit. There are a few Matter-enabled robot vacuums that can be added to the Home app for use with
Siri, including the Deebot X8 Pro Omni from Ecovacs. I've been testing the X8 Pro Omni for the last several weeks to see if it's worth upgrading to a robot vacuum with Matter support to integrate with Siri and HomeKit, as well as to check out its cleaning capabilities.
Design
The X8 Pro Omni is a circular vacuum that can both vacuum and mop, so it is an all-in-one floor cleaning bot. It comes with a base that has a dust bag, section for cleaning fluid, a tank for clean water, and a tank for dirty water.
This is not a small robot vacuum, and it's not going to be ideal for small spaces. It's almost 14 inches wide and about four inches tall. I have a TV stand that's four inches high and the vacuum does not fit underneath it, but it is short enough to get under most furniture, including my couch, bookcases, bed, and desks. Because of the width, it cannot get into spaces that are tight, such as a chair close to a table leg, or two chairs that are close to one another.
The base station is 21 inches tall, 14 inches wide, and 11 and a half inches deep, and you need to have enough area around it for the robot to dock itself. The X8 Pro Omni is black and gold, as is the station, but it's not garish. It blends right in, and even though the charging station is large, I was able to tuck it away in a corner.
There is a built-in camera at the front of the X8 Pro Omni, which is used for navigation, room mapping, and obstacle avoidance, plus it has a microphone for listening for voice commands and a speaker to respond and to ask for help if it gets stuck.
Cleaning
I've always been skeptical of robot vacuums, but I was impressed with the X8 Pro Omni. It has serious suction power (Ecovacs says 18,000 Pa) that was able to clean up cat hair and everything else on my floors, and running it regularly kept my floors a lot cleaner than my typical weekly vacuuming. The suction power is adjustable, and higher suction is noisier, but I mostly used it in the higher mode to get everything off of my floors.
I'm able to work in the room with the X8 Pro Omni running even at its highest suction, but I probably wouldn't take a phone call. It's the loudest when vacuuming, and is usually between 50 and 60 decibels with the standard mode. The mopping is quieter, and emptying the dust is the loudest operation.
There's a little spinning brush on the side that's meant to get around the edges of a room, and in the weeks that I've been using the vacuum, it's done a good job getting into nooks and crannies. There's also a mopping feature, and the mop that Ecovacs included is something special. It's a roller mop rather than the spinning mop that other robot vacuums have, and I think it cleans stains like dried cat food better than my other vacuum that has spinning mops.
With two passes, it was able to get most of the little bits of dried food off of my floor. I even tested it with dried ketchup that I put on the floor, and while it didn't get everything off in one go, it got close. The idea with robot vacuums is to have them clean daily or several times a week, and the X8 Pro Omni was able to keep my floor spotless with a schedule.
The Ozmo Roller, as Ecovacs calls it, is cleaned off with a water nozzle as the vacuum mops the floor, so dirty water is scraped off and clean water is reapplied. I like that concept better than a robot vacuum dragging dirty water along the floor, and it did seem to be effective. I don't wear shoes in the house and my floors are relatively clean, but the waste water was always dirty, so grime was coming up with every cycle. The X8 Pro Omni can clean the floor with just water, but it does accept cleaning solution that you can put in the base to fill the vacuum. Ecovacs recommends using its own cleaning solution to avoid damaging the vacuum.
I have wood floors, and I am careful with them. The X8 Pro Omni has not done any damage, but I do check the wheels and the mop to make sure nothing gets lodged there. The wheels are rubber and the mop is soft, so it doesn't seem like there's anything that would cause an issue.
I don't want to go on forever about the cleaning capabilities of the robot, so I'll wrap up by saying it did a great job, but there are a few caveats with navigation and obstacle avoidance.
The X8 Pro Omni needs to be able to get to the floor, and it will have a hard time in rooms with a lot of furniture or items on the floor. I have to do a pass before I have it clean to move cat toys and whatever else I might have on the floor. While cleaning, the robot will empty its dust bin on its own, wash its mop, and recharge, so you just hit the start button and it goes about its chore on its own.
It does require my attention with rugs, because it can't handle them. I have some thin area rugs that I don't have any kind of rubber padding under, and the X8 Pro Omni cannot deal with these. It routinely sucks up the tassels on one of my rugs and gets itself tangled up, and getting up to fix it every two minutes when it's doing that section of the room is frustrating.
It does better with the thicker rugs I have in the bathroom that do have a sturdier backing, and it can navigate and vacuum those with fewer issues. I have one large area rug that isn't a problem, and it does fine, but that is the extent of the carpet in my house so I haven't been able to test carpet suction beyond my rugs.
For context, it takes two hours for it to deep clean a 600 sq ft room, of which it can access about 400 sq ft (because of furniture). A standard clean is closer to an hour. I've locked it in my office for this review, but were it to clean my whole house, it would take several hours and would likely need to recharge. The two hour deep clean does not require recharging, and leaves it with about 30 percent battery at the end. When used in standard mode, the X8 Pro Omni can run for over 3.5 hours before needing to charge. For a full recharge, it takes approximately four hours.
Upkeep and Performance
There are filters that need to be changed, water that needs to be added and emptied, and components that eventually need to be replaced. The Ecovacs app has a detailed Maintenance section that lets you know when you need to perform maintenance. A filter lasts for 120 hours, and the mop works for 150 hours. In the month that I've been testing the X8 Pro Omni, I haven't had to do anything other than add more water to the clean water bin.
There is some cost associated with upkeep, as components will need to be replaced over time. A new roller mop, for example, is $30, and three dust bags is $25.
I have not run into issues while testing the X8 Pro Omni. The robot is responsive, it has not gone offline, and the app has been stable. I also haven't had hardware issues, and Ecovacs does have a standard one-year warranty.
HomeKit and Siri
iOS 18.4 and its sister updates add support for Matter-enabled robot vacuums, so to be able to control the X8 Pro Omni from the Home app and via Siri, iOS 18.4 or later is required.
Functionality is limited, compared with the feature set that is available with the Ecovacs website. In the Home app, there's a button to start the robot and to choose whether the robot vacuums or mops. Specific rooms that have been set up with the Ecovacs app can be selected, or you can choose to have the X8 Pro Omni clean all rooms that it has access to.
There's also a built-in toggle for Quick or Deep Clean, which controls the cleaning pattern that the robot uses. Siri commands can be used in lieu of the Home app, so you can say something like "turn on the Deebot" to start a cleaning cycle (I named the robot Deebot in the Home app).
Commands like "tell Deebot to vacuum" or "tell Deebot to quick clean" didn't work with Siri, because Siri just kept telling me there was no Deebot in my contacts list. It was a frustrating experience trying to use Siri to activate and control the vacuum, and using the Ecovacs app or the Home app was simpler.
It's not Ecovacs' fault that Siri is less than capable, and the Ecovacs app is an easier solution for the most part, though I was also perfectly able to control the vacuum from the Home app.
Ecovacs App and Mapping
The Ecovacs app has a much deeper feature set than is available with the Home app or with Siri, including its own personal assistant that can respond to voice-based commands.
Operating the X8 Pro Omni requires the Ecovacs app for setup and for specialized controls. Setup was a super simple process, and the app is complicated, but easy enough to figure out. There's an overarching "Home" that houses all of your Ecovacs products, and tapping into one brings up controls. You can start or pause the robot from this interface, or send it to recharge, and additional options are available by tapping the "Enter" option.
Before starting to vacuum, the X8 Pro Omni maps out all of the rooms of the house, or the rooms that it is given access to. It's surprisingly good at identifying objects, distinguishing between flooring types, and separating areas into rooms. It can misidentify smaller spaces. For example, it merged my office bathroom into the main office area and split a closet into two rooms when it's one. I can view and edit the map to fix it, create boundaries for the vacuum, identify different rooms, and label furniture. There is a multi-map option for houses with more than one story, or for separate areas.
The X8 Pro Omni is continually scanning its surroundings as it cleans, and it is good at not bumping into furniture or objects. It also does well with pets. My cat loves the robot, and when it vacuums, he'll follow it around and get in its way. The X8 Pro Omni gently nudges him out of its path and continues on with its task.
As the X8 Pro Omni cleans, it shows a white line on the map of where it has vacuumed, so it's easy to ensure that it gets into every nook and cranny that it can reach. Mopping is shown with a more diffuse line over the vacuum line.
There are multiple options for controlling how it cleans. There's a vacuum only mode, a vac and mop mode where it vacuums and then mops at the same time, and a mop after vac mode where it will go around and vacuum first, then mop afterward. The benefit to that last mode is that it'll vacuum before it starts washing the floor, so there's no water from the roller mop getting on carpets or anywhere else.
You can adjust suction power for the vacuuming, water flow rate for the mopping, and the cleaning speed, which increases or decreases the space between the passes that it makes on the floor. Deep cleaning has little space between each pass (it cleans in lines along the floor), and quick clean has more space. There are also options for a single pass or two passes, and you can select specific areas of a room for even more cleaning to get up tough stains.
It's ideal to set up a schedule to have the X8 Pro Omni clean each day or multiple times a week. Depending on how large the area is that it's cleaning, it may need to stop and recharge, and there will be multiple stops to empty the dust bin or wash off the mop. Since it can take some time for it to finish, there is a Do Not Disturb option that prevents it from turning on during specific times of the day, and Auto Resume can also be turned off if you don't want it cleaning half the house, charging up, and then resuming late at night when you're trying to sleep.
With a large house, it would probably make sense to set the robot to clean a room or two each day, which would keep the floors clean without having it run for hours. It can also be scheduled to run when you're out of the house, which lets you avoid the noise, plus there are options for cleaning up eating areas after meals and keeping pet areas clean.
There is a voice assistant built into the X8 Pro Omni, called Yiko. Saying the "Ok Yiko" wake word activates listening mode, and the robot accepts commands to start a clean, continue a clean, stop a clean, go charge, and more.
Yiko is more capable than Siri, and can understand commands to vacuum specific rooms, under specific furniture, and multi-step commands like sweep around the pet feeder, then mop. It can re-clean rooms on command, spot clean, and clean at specific times. There's even an option to have it come to where you are and clean, and you can send it away with a "don't clean here" command.
While the X8 Pro Omni is cleaning, you can view the camera to see what it's doing and what it's seeing. When it's not cleaning, you can enter the live view and have it patrol your house and communicate with whoever is in the house, so it's also sort of a mobile security or pet camera. I can direct it to go check in on my cat, using an on-screen remote control, and it can snap photos, take videos, and let me talk to him. It's fun to play with.
I do wish I could have it vacuum/mop while I control it, but that's not an option.
Privacy
Ecovacs is a Chinese company, and this is a product that includes a camera and the ability to map your house, which some users will be wary about. Ecovacs does have a clear privacy policy surrounding data storage, and footage from the camera is stored locally and encrypted.
Visual data can be uploaded to Ecovacs' servers for obstacle avoidance purposes, but this is an opt-in feature. There are multiple privacy controls in the app, with toggles for opting out of data sharing, though some of the opt-outs reduce functionality.
Bottom Line
Unfortunately, all of the robot vacuums that have Matter integration are higher-end models, and it's not a feature that has trickled down to entry level models. The Deebot X8 Pro Omni is over $1,000, and other robots with Matter support and similar features also have the same general price point.
Given that HomeKit-based controls for robot vacuums are limited in scope compared to what you can do in the apps designed for robot vacuums, Matter integration shouldn't be the sole reason to choose a particular product. Maybe it will get better over time, but there are a lot of advanced features you can't get to without the dedicated app, and it makes the most sense to set up a schedule and think little about the robot after that.
Where Matter might be more important is if you want to have a vacuum that interacts in some way with other HomeKit devices, because you can set up multi-device automations. If you want to have the robot vacuum whenever people leave the house, the Home app can do that. You can absolutely clean, mop, and operate the X8 Pro Omni with Siri and the Home app, it's just more efficient to use the Ecovacs app.
Even with somewhat weak HomeKit integration, I do think the X8 Pro Omni is worth considering just for its cleaning capabilities. The roller mop that it has for washing the floor works well, and the suction more than keeps up with a multi-pet household. It's good at avoiding obstacles, and the app does come with privacy controls and policies that are appreciated.
How to Buy
The Deebot X8 Pro Omni can be
purchased from the Ecovacs website for $1,300, and it is
also available from Amazon. Retailers like Best Buy, Costco, and Home Depot also sell Ecovacs products, so it's worth looking for discounts and promotions.
Note: Ecovacs provided MacRumors with a Deebot X8 Pro Omni for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.This article, "
Review: Ecovacs' X8 Pro Omni Robot Now Works With HomeKit" first appeared on
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