A Weird and Wonderful Robot Window Washer

The latest smart home robot trying to take our most hated cleaning jobs is the Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni. It can clean windows and glass surfaces like an autonomous robot vacuum, sweeping back and forth. And although it has some specific limitations on the types of windows and mirrors it can clean, on the right surfaces it shines.

Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni

The Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni is a window cleaning robot with intelligent climbing system ensures smooth and easy travel while firmly adhering to windows.

Pros

• Battery-powered base station provides great portability
• 18-foot cord
• Robot suction never failed for me
• Works on windows, mirrors, marble, tile

Cons

• Can?t clean certain glass designs because of suction adhesion tech
• Pricey for potentially limited uses
• Less-than-compelling app functionality

Price and Availability

The Winbot W2 Omni is available for pre-order now and will be available soon. The cleaner retails for $599.99. Included in the price are the robot cleaner, the battery-powered base station with a power cord, and two cleaning pads.

The Portable Design Is Impressive

There aren’t too many products that I need to consult a manual for to get started, but the Winbot W2 Omni was one of them. Everything was packed neatly and labeled in some fashion, but it was a bit foreign to get the cleaning robot from the floor to a window.

The primary reason for that is because this isn’t just a new product, it’s a new device category for most people. Automated vacuums are common, but autonomous window cleaners aren’t.

As I journeyed toward my first use, all the pieces and their functions became more clear. The slight suction on the bottom of the portable base station was purposeful. The fold-down door was the perfect size to hold the robot when not in use. The Winbot W2 seemed well thought out. (This is probably because Ecovacs has been working on window cleaners of some fashion since 2011.)

While the company might have been able to make the unit less expensive by excluding the battery in the base station, it’s an integral part of keeping the whole unit portable and as useful as possible. It needs to go the extra mile on portability to reach the windows people will want to clean.

The biggest consideration for interested buyers should be where you want to use this cleaner. The piece of glass needs to be mostly square or rectangular and can’t have any cracks or protruding cross-sections. This solely has to do with the suction element and how it attaches itself to a window.

The Winbot W2 uses 5,500Pa of suction to keep itself vertical. Passing over any breaks or design elements could dislodge its attachment. Its 5,200mAh battery is advertised for about 110 minutes of use. If you have a really large area, the unit’s roughly 18-foot (5.5m) cord might limit the full range more than its battery life.

In practice, neither the cord length nor the battery duration hampered my use. Being able to place the base station near each job allowed plenty of room for the cleaner to zip (carefully) around.

If you’re placing the base station in a precarious spot, like on a ledge, and worried that if the cleaner loses suction and falls it will take the base with it, there is a security anchor in the compartment next to the power cord.

Cleaning Results of a Robot

Much like using a robot vacuum, there are two considerations for how good of a job the Winbot W2 Omni did. I was looking for whether it cleaned as well as a professional and, secondarily, whether did it a good enough job in general. Did it work better than a spray bottle and rag?

In the case of the Winbot W2, it cleared the second hurdle with ease but didn’t quite reach the first one. It did much better than handing a spray bottle and rag to one of my kids. It also probably did better than I could do in the same amount of time. To be clear, it did not clean windows as well as a professional could have, but I wasn’t expecting it to be able to.

Even on sufficiently dirty windows with caked-on dust, the unit did well at clearing most of the dirt without leaving much residue. The device uses two wide-angle water spraying nozzles (one on each side) to loosen dirt. I did notice some debris left in the corners and some edges. Those spots were easy enough for me to get cleared with a swipe of a paper towel or rag.

I could only clean two dirty exterior window panes (roughly 3-foot by 5-foot) before I needed to wash the Winbot W2’s pad. A lot more interior panes, less exposed to the elements, were able to be cleaned before I needed to rinse the pad.

It’s not only windows that the W2 Omni can clean, however. I tested the unit on a glass shower and a floor-to-ceiling closet mirror door.

The cleaning robot had no problem with frameless shower glass thanks to its built-in optocoupler sensor. Despite having no edges to bump into, it never ran off the side or top. With the mirror closet door, it stayed attached as expected and I couldn’t find any streaking once it finished. If you have slanted windows, the robot can work on 60- to 120-degree tilted surfaces.

I also cleaned a 5-by-10-foot wall mirror in my kids’ bathroom which came out better than I could have wiped the whole thing. Even if you’re lacking large windows that need to be cleaned, there may be other places the Winbot W2 Omni can be of use.

App

I appreciate that the Winbot W2 Omni is part of the Ecovacs Home mobile app—available for iPhone and Android—but I also like how it doesn’t rely on it. The app makes it easy to see and change the different cleaning modes—fast, thorough, deep, etc—but there’s a button available on the unit to do the same thing as well.

The most interesting feature of the app is that you can use it as a direct remote control for the cleaning robot. I thought that would be helpful, but in practice, the device was better at navigating vertical spaces than I was.

Unlike modern robot vacuums which need to map your room and can’t just be moved to a new house without some hassle, the Winbot W2 is much more flexible. It doesn’t know where it is, it just knows it needs to clean its current area. If you have two houses, want to lend it to friends, or need to use it in other locations, it works the same, no app needed.

Should You Buy Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni?

Based on the results alone, I was thoroughly impressed with the window-cleaning performance of the Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni. It’s a remarkable product. My hangups with it are more around the practical details. Its $600 retail cost is a serious investment for the presumably limited places it can actually be used.

Its value would be greater if it could clean any window, regardless of shape, embellishment, or design factor. Since it’s technically limited, you need to make sure that you have areas that will work, rather than simply hoping to find places to use it. But now that windows and glass showers are being cleaned by robots, I say, bring on even more specialized autonomous cleaners.

Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni

The Ecovacs Winbot W2 Omni is a window cleaning robot with intelligent climbing system ensures smooth and easy travel while firmly adhering to windows.