The type of vacuum you have in your house is likely reflective of the stage of life you’re in.
When you’ve just moved out of home and in your budget-conscious 20s, a $39 vacuum from K-mart likely does the job.
Get a partner, become a bit more house proud and suddenly it’s a couple of hundred dollars being spent on a vacuum from a specialist store or higher end department outlet.
Get dogs and kids and suddenly you’re scoping out the special features of vacuums, becoming invested in the power and maintenance levels and spending the equivalent of an international flight.
Having entered my early 40s, I’m now in the next phase: the robot vacuum.
For the past few months I’ve been road testing (or is that floor testing?) the DEEBOT N30 PRO OMNI from Ecovacs.
Retailing at $1899, exclusively at JB Hi-Fi, this is no cheap household accessory. So does it stack up to its expensive price tag?
There is no doubt this is a game changing vacuum.
Game changing because it’s taken out a regular household chore. With a four-year-old commanding the household at present, there’s always ‘bits’ on the floors – crumbs, random paper off-cuts, sand, dirt… the list goes on. Vacuuming had become almost a daily task.
But with the DEEBOT N30 PRO OMNI, the work gets done for me. I set the auto-schedule to run every weekday at 11am, which means the vacuuming happens when I’m not at home. There’s something rather comforting, even elite, about getting a notification on your phone that vacuuming has started – and then finished – without you lifting a finger.
The result is a clean floor every day upon arriving home. I started with the mop and vacuum function every day, given we have largely hard floors in the main living areas with carpet in the bedrooms, but as time has gone on I’m sticking with vacuum only most of the time and using the mop function once a week.
You can set different scenarios and maps, so you’re pretty much unlimited in terms of how you clean and how often.
Setup was reasonably easy, although I admit I did have to go through it twice as it forgot everything from the first setup. A small hiccup.
The TruEdge Adaptive Edge Mopping system provides precise edge cleaning, while the OZMO Turbo 2.0 system removes stains and revitalises floors. With 10,000Pa suction and 9mm Auto-lift Mopping, it seamlessly adapts to different surfaces, lifting the mop when carpet is detected to avoid cross-contamination.
Now it’s important to note a couple of things. Having a robot do the vacuuming for you does not mean you can put your feet up and leave your vacuum to look after itself.
Maintenance is still required – and at times, it can be a little needy. But the odd issue with one of the mopping pads or a tangle here and there that needs to be sorted is far less work than doing the vacuuming yourself.
And when you clean that dirty water tank out about once a week, you’ll realise just what a great job it is doing.
The DEEBOT N30 PRO OMNI is no flippant investment. But it is now a permanent fixture in our household and after a couple of months I’m convinced I’d never go back. To top everything off, the station and overall unit looks pretty slick – so it doesn’t look out of place at all in your lounge room. In fact, it’s quite the flex.
Visit http://www.ecovacs.com/au/deebot-robotic-vacuum-cleaner/deebot-n30-omni.
Troy Dodds is Parra News' Managing Editor and Breaking News Reporter. He has more than 20 years experience as a journalist, working with some of Australia’s leading media organisations. In 2023, he was named Editor of the Year at the Mumbrella Publish Awards.