Ecovacs Deebot X1 Omni review – finally a robot vacuum that’s a smart cookie

A few months ago, I inherited an iRobot Roomba 980. It’s an older model and the battery is starting to fade, but it does a decent job of keeping on top of visible pet hair and other debris in our small house.

Above all else, it’s endearingly stupid. When it takes off to go cleaning, it simply runs in one direction until it crashes into a wall, turns and goes back the same way. Eventually it covers the house but not in the most logical fashion. On most cleaning trips, it gets caught under a chair in our lounge and needs to be rescued, or it'll run out of battery oh-so-close to its charging station.

Like all robot vacs, the dust collection bin is puny and needs to be emptied after every trip around our modest home. I accepted these quirks because my house was looking cleaner than it ever has before – but surely things can be much better than this?