A unique bot and deep cleaner combo

I review a lot of robot vacuum cleaners, so it’s always nice to check out a product in the category that tries something new. After unboxing the eufy Robot Vacuum Omni E28, I was met with a good-looking robot vacuum, but also some oddities that were attached to the oversized base station — most notably, a great big hose on the side.

That grafted on hose and other compartments are key to the eufy Robot Vacuum Omni E28, which is a combination robot vacuum with a base station that doubles as a portable carpet deep cleaner. The eufy team is doing a great job thinking outside the box to satisfy all of your floor cleaning needs, but is this the right solution for you? I tested it to find out.

The eufy team at Anker has released two unique bots this year, the first being the stick-robot vacuum hybrid I reviewed earlier this year. The eufy Robot Vacuum Omni E28 takes a different approach by offering a deep cleaner for carpets and other fabric surfaces like sofas, mattresses, and car seat covers.

First and foremost, the E28 is a capable and reliable robot vacuum. The E28 has the “Omni” designation, meaning it vacuums and mops your floors in robot vacuum mode. The bot delivers up to 20,000Pa of suction pressure, paired with a full-width mop roller.

I had to rescue it from some snags, but no more than the average for all bots I’ve tested, and there are very few places in my home that this bot could not reach to clean. The bot’s mop also does a great job of not only scrubbing the floor but also soaking up the water as it passes, so my floors are only mildly damp after cleaning.

It’s also equipped with many other new features, including improved anti-tangle brushes, the CornerRover Arm for edge sweeping and reaching into corners (the edge mopping is a bit weak, still), and an improved mop roller system. Fewer tangles, a cleaner mop roller, and big suction power make for a capable cleaning robot vacuum.

It’s not all great, though. While the bot runs quietly during normal operation, it can get noisy when it struggles to navigate around new impassable objects in my space. For example, if I leave a door closed, the E28 fails to recognize that that room is now inaccessible; it continues to bump into the door, looking for a gap to sneak through.

It also hits one of my tables a lot. The bot itself is short enough to fit under the bar, but the LiDAR turret is too tall. Because of this, the bot continually attempts to run under the bar, stopping when the LiDAR turret makes contact. The bot seems confused and continues trying to get through the space. I’ve come to ignore the 30 seconds of continual thumping until the bot gives up on that spot.

I also wish the object detection were a little less aggressive for leaves. I commonly track small leaves into the house from my back yard, they are usually dried and would pose no issue for the vacuum systems, but if they are curled up just a bit too tall, the E28 treats them as an object to be avoided.

The latest navigation and object detection sensors are still an improvement over previous eufy robot vacuums. Smart Dirt Detection, Smart Carpet Cleaning, AI object detection, and laser navigation all result in more reliable floor cleaning. However, the above issues aren’t things you’ll encounter with the best robot vacuums you can buy.

While I’ll admit it’s not the best robot vacuum I’ve tested, the eufy Robot Vacuum Omni E28 is above average in terms of capabilities and reliability; that’s a win in my books when you consider the real reason you’d want to buy it: the deep cleaner function.

Here’s where the eufy Robot Vacuum Omni E28 really gets smart. For those harder-to-clean surfaces, the top half of the base station lifts off and can be carried away as a fully operational deep cleaner. Pop off the cover on the left side to reveal the hose and cleaner head with sprayer jets, scrubbing surfaces, and a suction slot. The water tanks are affixed to this top half, so the bot and the hand-held cleaner use the same reservoir of water and detergent.

I’ll be blunt: I really like the Deep Cleaner function. Gone are the days of renting a huge cleaner from the grocery store if you have a little spill on your favorite carpet. Since the E28 uses the same water system for the bot and the deep cleaner, the Deep Cleaner is always ready to go. The hardest part about getting set up for a deep clean is unplugging the cord and plugging it back in where you need to clean. Seriously easy.

In my particular situation, the E28 is the perfect companion bot for my house. I have the eufy Robot Vacuum E20 ($549.99 at Amazon) in my living room, but my living room is on a different level than the rest of the house, and it’s filled by a big rug, perfect for a unit that only vacuums. With the E28, I can clean and mop my main floors separately with the deep clean function and let the bot do the rest.

The only real downside is that the bot works through the water reservoir fairly quickly. For normal floor mopping, it lasts a long time, but the deep cleaner can eat through an entire tank in just a few minutes. That’s its job, of course, so it’s not really surprising. There’s more than enough water for some spot cleaning, but I only barely made it through a quick once-over of my little rug.

If you want a quality robot vacuum that doubles as a deep cleaner for your carpets, this is the bot for you. If you don’t care about the deep cleaner, but still want a robot vacuum that excels at mopping, the eufy Robot Vacuum Omni E28 is still a good contender in its price range, as long as you can live with some strange navigation quirks.

For a more rounded robot vacuum, the Narwal Freo Z10 ($798.99 at Narwal) and Eureka J15 Pro Ultra($799.99 at Amazon) stand out in this price range. The Eureka bot is a last-gen flagship model, and the Narwal unit is more of a mid-tier current-gen unit, but they both navigate similarly and produce similar cleaning results.

The bonus of the deep cleaner makes the eufy Robot Vacuum Omni E28 a valuable purchase, but only if you need a deep cleaner in your home. If you don’t want the deep cleaner, one of the other mid-tier bots might serve you well, or stay tuned for the upcoming eufy Robot Vacuum Omni E25 that is on pre-order now, and will begin delivery a few months after the E28. The E25 shares most of the same hardware as the E28, but saves you some cash by not including the deep cleaner in the base station.