Overall cleaning performance: 93.04
Pet hair score: 86.2
Vacuum size: 13.9 inches x 13.8 inches x 4.1 inches
Station size: 21.8 inches x 17.4 inches x 20.8 inches
Modes: Vacuuming, Mopping
Smart home compatibility: Alexa & Google Assistant
Try as they might, robot vacuums can rarely get every speck of dirt off of your floor. The Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo seeks to eradicate all those errant corner crumbs by pairing a capable robot vacuum and mop with a handheld vac. Add in the self-emptying base station that automatically cleans the mop heads, and the Deebot T30s Combo looks like a winner on paper.
This latest robot from Ecovacs also includes an on-board voice assistant for easily ordering the Deebot T30s around your home. While all this technology comes with a hefty price tag, the Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo lives up to the hype, making it one of the best robot vacuums and best robot mops I’ve tested.
Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo review: Price and availability
The Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo pairs a self-emptying and self-cleaning robot vacuum and mop with a handheld vacuum for $1,199. The station also houses the handheld vacuum and features a drawer to hold the handheld attachments. The Deebot T30s Combo Complete adds a power floor brush for an additional $99. If you’re only interested in the robot, the Ecovacs Deebot T30s is available without the handheld vac for $849.
Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo review: Design
The Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo solves the age-old robot vacuum question of what to do about stairs and couch cushions. Since neither the Deebot T30s nor any other robot vacuum can manage stairs, Ecovacs smartly paired it with a handheld vacuum that charges and self-empties right alongside the robot. There’s even a drawer built into the station that stores the hand vac attachments.
The robot itself is impressive. It’s basic black with three buttons on top for spot cleaning, initiating a full cleaning, and returning to the base. The underside has three-spoked side brush, roller brush, and two large mopping discs with washable shaggy pads.
There’s also an onboard dustbin that can be removed and emptied manually, which is helpful when hair or other objects get lodged between the bin roller brush. I appreciated that the water filling port on the Deebot T30s is strictly for use by the station and doesn’t require tedious filling, emptying, and drying by hand.
Ecovacs OMNI station is aptly named: It seemingly does it all. Though at 21.8 inches wide and 20.8 inches high, the station isn’t small, it looks more refined and less utilitarian than the similarly large Roborock S7 Max V station. The clean and dirty water bins are hidden inside the matte black plastic casing, while the dustbin sits horizontally under them. To the right is the handheld vacuum’s home. In order to charge and empty, the hand vac’s accessory nozzles must be removed. Conveniently, there’s a built-in storage drawer with a guide for arranging the mini power brush, the flat brush, and the crevice so that they all fit. It’s a tight fit, but it works.
The handheld vacuum adds a lot of value to the Deebot T30s. With two suction modes, it was powerful enough to suck the crumbs out of my couch cushions using the crevice tool on low. On high, the mini power brush, with its own brush roll, was able to clean up the kitty litter the Deebot T30s missed in the carpet cleaning lab test. The mini power brush was also effective at vacuuming up the dust on my carpeted stair treads. After vacuuming with the Deebot T30s, the crevice tool was great at getting the corners in my kitchen that the robot couldn’t reach. It’s a perfect complement to a robot vacuum’s inherent limitations.
Though the handheld vac can be emptied via the OMNI station, I removed the filter to clean off some excess hair. The mesh filter inside the handheld is sturdy and easy to remove and reinsert since it’s held in place by a magnet. It’s an appreciated, upscale touch for a device that isn’t the main event.
Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo review: Vacuuming performance
I was impressed with how well the Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo performed on our vacuum tests, earning an overall score of 93.01. The Deebot T30s beat the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra, another vacuum and mop combo, by just under two points, and bested the vacuum-only iRobot Roomba j7+ and Samsung JetBot AI+.
As the Deebot T30s vacuum my floors, I noticed another perk: It’s a quiet cleaner, too. In standard mode vacuuming, I could easily hear the TV while the robot cleaned around my chair.
Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo: Combined cleaning performance scores
The Ecovacs Deebot T30s performed admirably on our hardwood tests, notching a perfect score when cleaning up Cheerios cereal, and an impressive 97.40 cleaning up dog hair. Though some hair got caught between brush roll and the intake vent, it was easy to remove after it wasn’t scattered on my floor. It stumbled a bit on the kitty litter, picking up 92.45, approximately two points less than Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra and the iRobot Roomba j7+. Though it doesn’t rank among the best robot vacuums for pet hair, it’s no slouch.
Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo: Hardwood Floor results
On carpet, the Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo closely matched its hardwood performance, earning a near-perfect 99.5 picking up Cheerios, and a score of 93.85 for cleaning up kitty litter, slightly better than its hardwood score. However, the Deebot T30s encountered difficulties cleaning up dog hair from our carpet test area, scooping up just three quarters of the hair. Most of the hair left on the ground had been pushed further into the carpet by the vacuum’s own wheels. Despite its score of 75, the Deebot T30s still bested the iRobot Roomba j7+’s score of 72.5 and the Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra’s middling score of 58.
Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo: Carpet tests
Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo review: Mopping performance
Mopping with the Ecovacs Deebot T30s is nearly as impressive as vacuuming. Plus, the two tasks can be done at the same time or consecutively. Once you add water or water and Ecovacs proprietary cleaning solution to the clean water tank on the OMNI station, it takes care of the rest. The station automatically fills the robot, empties the dirty water, and uses heat to dry the mopping discs for up to four hours.
I had no fear leaving the Deebot T30s to mop our first floor unsupervised after observing a few test runs.The mopping discs automatically raise and lower as needed depending on the surface the robot detects. It does this using a sensor that detects the difference in energy of an ultrasonic echo signal to make a distinction between carpet and hardwood.
Though the Deebot T30s raises its pads, you may want to be careful with thicker pile, as there’s still not a lot of clearance between the pads and thicker carpets. However, on my standard pile rugs and carpet, the clearance was great enough to prohibit the pads from dampening the rug. My dog’s wet paws do more damage after a walk on a rainy day.
Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo review: Setup, app and mapping
Getting the Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo up and running took about 10 minutes. After following the instructions for removing the OMNI station, robot, and handheld vac from the giant box they arrived in, I was able to assemble the station, including the mini ramp that leads the robot to the mop washing station in a few minutes.
After downloading the Ecovacs Home app (Android and iOS), I scanned the QR code under the lid of the Ecovacs Deebot T30s robot and was able to quickly pair the robot with my phone.
I was impressed with how fast the Deebot T30s mapped my mostly open floor plan on the first floor. On its first run, it created a complete map in about an hour while vacuuming and making a few trips to empty its dustbin during the process. On the next couple of runs, it refined the map further.
It’s a good thing its mapping was accurate; manually editing the map to define rooms and add furniture was tedious. Frustratingly, it doesn’t seem like Ecovacs has updated its room division logic since I reviewed the Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo T8 in 2020. I was unable to use the room division function in the app to divide up the large room the Deebot T30s automatically created. In reality, it’s my kitchen and dining room, but, no matter how many different ways I tried, I was unable to create a full solid line within the mapping section of the app to splice up the imaginary room.
Even after I dragged and manipulated the line within the app, I still received a message that the room division failed. Eventually, I gave up trying and moved on to placing virtual furniture in the map’s interpretation of my home. I had more success adding coffee tables, sofas, and table and chair sets to the map, though, again, it’s more of an interpretation than an exact science. The app has preset size limits for the furniture, which is a minor annoyance, especially when I realized that my dining room table didn’t conform to the size options.
You have a bevy of options for vacuuming and mopping within the app. You can choose to vacuum and mop on the same run, vacuum first and then mop, vacuum only or mop only. I found the controls to be a little finicky when testing the spot cleaning button function. Despite having it in vacuum only mode, the controls would revert to the vacuuming and mopping mode.
The Ecovacs Home app also has options for auto cleaning, room-specific cleaning, zone cleaning, and scenarios, which allows you to vacuum one room and mop another. With all of these options, you can specify one or two cleaning passes, the water flow rate, the suction power, and the overall cleaning speed. Not sure what you need? Turn on Intelligent Hosting, which will generate cleaning settings based on your cleaning habits, cleaning history, flooring type, room types, and the dirtiness of the floor.
Ecovacs also included their voice-activated assistant Yiko on the Deebot T30s. To activate it, say, “Ok Yiko.”
The robot will reply with “I’m here,” and you can ask it to take on a variety of robot vacuum- related tasks, such starting or stopping a cleaning, cleaning a specific room, or returning to its base station. It’s especially useful when your phone isn’t in reach and you want the Deebot T30s to get out from underfoot. It’s also slightly faster than using Alexa or Siri to make changes, presumably because you’re skipping the middle man voice assistant.
Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo review: Verdict
There’s a lot to like about the Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo. It’s a combo robot vacuum and mop that handles both tasks well, including earning high marks in our vacuum tasting. It’s paired with a well-thought-out OMNI station that raises the bar on looks for self-emptying dust and water stations, plus the nifty hand vacuum dock that keeps its accessories neatly tucked away. Though it’s an investment at $1,199, consider that you’re getting almost three cleaning devices in one package: a robot vacuum, robot mop, and a hand vacuum for reaching all the areas the robot misses. Though I was frustrated by the mapping experience, the rest of the app functioned well, including the voice assistant. With all of that technology onboard, the Ecovacs Deebot T30s Combo is worth considering as an addition to your home.
