ECOVACS DEEBOT T90 Pro Omni review: top mopping, a carpet question

It's a low robot with a 10.6 in (270 mm) roller mop that rinses itself with fresh water as it goes. The dock empties the bin, washes and dries the roller, and doses detergent. You still fill and empty the tanks, because there's no water hookup. The box leads with 30,000 Pa of suction, the biggest number on it and the least useful.

Is the mopping as good as ECOVACS says?

Yes, and this is where the robot earns its money. ECOVACS promises a roller that scrubs with clean water instead of pushing yesterday's dirt around. Vacuum Wars, which bought its own US robot, scored it 157 on dried stains against that lab's average of 108. The water it left behind was a small fraction of the typical robot's. So the dried coffee drip under the table comes up, and the floor is soon dry enough for socks. On wood, a mop that doesn't leave puddles is the point.

ECOVACS rates the dock's roller wash at 167 °F (75 °C). Nobody has put a thermometer in it, so take that on trust. There's also no whole-home mop-only mode listed. That's a minor nuisance, and it won't matter to most homes.

Will it keep up with pet hair on carpet?

Pet hair, yes. Carpet itself, only so far. The same lab measured 100% pickup of pet hair flattened into carpet and 0% wrap of long hair on the brush. Over months in a real house, Just A Dad Approved saw no hair wound on the roller. That's why it leads our best robot vacuums for long hair.

The catch is carpet. On sand ground into medium pile it lifted 81%, a little above the lab average. The older T80S did better on the same test. Home testers found it "just okay" on carpet, and in a sponsored three-month video it sometimes jammed on one thick rug. Thin rugs and medium pile are fine. Wall-to-wall carpet or a shag rug is a different home.

For that home, look elsewhere. Thick area rugs on wood that must stay dry suit the Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow in our best robot vacuum and mop for hard floors. Deep rugs on hard floors with a hard shedder, or a home where clean baseboards and toe kicks matter most, get the Dreame X60 Max Ultra Complete in that same roundup. The X60 also wins our best robot vacuum for pet hair, for a pet that sheds hard onto lots of carpet. Carpeted homes whose shedders never have accidents, and whose doorways sit under an inch, belong to the Dreame L60 Ultra PE, which that roundup and our own review of it both back. On a tighter budget, our best robot vacuums under $600 sends a big shedding dog on mixed floors to the eufy Omni E25. It sends carpet homes that skip the mop and pick up first to the Dreame D20 Plus.

Will it get over the step into the kitchen?

Probably, and it beats its own promise. ECOVACS claims a single step of 0.9 in (24 mm), and 1.6 in (40 mm) only as two steps in a row. The lab watched it climb a single 1.3 in (32 mm) step. A maker that undersells its climb is rare, and I'd frame that spec sheet. At 3.7 in (94 mm) tall with no laser bump on top, it fits under a lot of couches. It avoided 23 of 24 objects in the lab's clutter test, well above that lab's average. You'll still pick up the phone charger, just less often. If a sill or sunken room tops 1.3 in and your pets never have accidents, our best robot vacuum for pet hair chooses the Roborock Saros 20 for steps between rooms.

Does it have a camera and a microphone?

Both. The US manual describes a camera for dodging obstacles and a voice-control microphone that hears its wake word from across a good-sized room. It doesn't say how to turn voice off. What the manual does spell out is a way to cut it off from the internet. Hold the dock's button for 30 seconds and the Wi-Fi switches off. You can run the robot by hand without accepting the app's privacy policy: press its button to start or pause, hold 3 seconds to send it home. It needs a 2.4 GHz network.

That off switch is a comfort, not a cure. If a lens on the robot is a dealbreaker and your rugs are low, our best robot vacuum for pet hair turns to the eufy Omni C28, which mops with no camera aboard at all. It suits a well-behaved pet that sheds, as long as someone clears the floor before each run. ECOVACS has a patchy security record on older robots, though no published advisory names the T90. If years of dated security patches and control without the cloud matter most, the Roborock Saros 20 is the robot we back on that score, in our guide to the FCC and robot vacuums. If you're house-training a new dog, or an older one still has the odd mishap indoors, our home page backs the eufy Omni S2 for mostly hard floors. For a hard-floor home with thin rugs and house-trained, ordinary shedders, we'd buy the T90.