Eufy Omni C28 review: The best value robot vacuum/mop we’ve tested
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On this page
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Great value
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A solid base station
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High cleaning performance
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The Mop drying cycle is loud and long
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The dust collection station does not have a bag
In the Eufy space, machines with an E prefix, such as the impressive Omni E25 I recently tested, are high-performance models that boast the latest navigation technology, while the C series is intended to be basic and thus cheap.
The cheap part is true. The Eufy Omni C28 can be yours for £649 compared to the E25’s £849, although at the time of writing, Eufy is offering £150 off the former and £250 off the latter, taking the cost of ownership down to £500 and £600 respectively. As is always the case with robot vacuums, it pays to shop around and wait for a promotion.
What do you get for the money?
Price aside, the Eufy Omni C28 and E25 are similar. Both offer full-spectrum vacuuming and mopping, and both have a base station that can empty the robot’s dust cap and clean and dry the mop.
The C28 base station is small and light at 430 x 437 x 353mm and 6.15kg, but the robot itself is the same size, at 350 x 327 x 131mm and 5kg.
Eufy Omni C28 vs Omni E25
The Eufy Omni C28, however, is very different from the E25. First, it has less suction power (15,000pa vs 20,000Pa) and mop pressure (1kg vs 1.5kg), therefore less cleaning power. The C28 relies solely on LiDAR, while the E25 combines LiDAR with an RGB camera and AI enhancements. And the C28 is finished in matte black plastic instead of gloss, although I would consider this difference an advantage, as it makes it less prone to dust and lint.
Flip the C28 on its back, and you’ll find two side brush arms, a full-width mop roller, which retracts 11mm when traveling over carpet and a two-piece hair roller. It looks very similar to the arrangement presented in E25, which clearly shows the efficiency of cleaning and hair removal, both of which were the strengths of E25.
Another thing to consider if you’re planning intensive, multi-storey use is that while you can buy extra E25 docks (at £245 each), you can’t currently buy a C28 dock as a stand-alone item.
In the box
The basic retail package is, basically, just the robot, with a pre-installed dust bag, and the Omni dock in the box. There are options to buy the C28 with spare bags or a bottle of floor cleaning solution, but neither is required, and both can be purchased separately from the Eufy C28 accessory store.
The supplied dust bag is easy to remove and empty, while the C28 doesn’t have an E25 socket to take one of Eufy’s bespoke cleaner bottles, so it’s just a matter of adding a drop or two of your favorite floor cleaner to the reservoir.
How to use?
Initial setup
Even if this is your first dance with a robot vacuum, you shouldn’t need a fool’s guide, which is the first thing you get when you open the box. Simply remove the packaging bumpers, connect to the base station, click the ramp into place and press the robot into the dock to charge.
Next, it’s a simple task to download the Eufy app, set up an account, connect the robot to your 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network and turn it on for initial mapping.
I haven’t encountered any problems with this. A quick rummage around the upstairs and downstairs of my terraced house resulted in a surprisingly accurate map appearing in the app with all the major pieces of furniture and stairs spotted and marked.
Eufy’s ecosystem works with Alexa and Google Home and supports voice control through those services instead of directly. I found that the C28 responded reliably to basic voice commands like “clean the bedroom” once I connected it to my Google account.
Support for Matter and Apple Home is a gray area, so I reached out to Eufy for clarification. Apparently, support for Matter 1.4 will arrive in mid-May, which will allow basic integration with Apple Home.
A companion app
I have yet to come across a really bad robot vacuum app, but as a balance between features, ease of use, and design, Eufy’s app is one of the best.
I really like the way the maps are represented. In both 2D and 3D, they are simple, clear and very easy to understand. It’s also very easy to add small entry points if you want to mark certain points as out of bounds.
The app allows you to do all the things you would expect from a modern robot vacuum, including setting up to five different floor maps, manually controlling the robot’s movement and cleaning, adjusting the cleaning intensity (or leaving it up to the AI system’s decision), set cleaning schedules and change the way it cleans rooms.
One useful feature is a child lock that separates the home buttons from the power of the robot itself to prevent accidental pressing by small children or pets.
Is it good to find your way?
I saw no real difference between the Eufy Omni C28 and the E25, which is a feather in the cap of a cheap machine, as it lacks the camera of the E25.
When it came to avoiding the likes of power cords, shoes and random little boxes, the C28 did pretty well, and it maneuvered smartly around my office chair and the rat’s nest of cables under my office desks.
The C28 didn’t try to get under my bed, which is only a few millimeters higher than a standard robot vacuum, but I’ve come to consider this a good thing because retrieving robots stuck in the middle of a king’s bed is no fun at all.
Avoiding the top of the stairs was no problem, however, but the Eufy managed to stick to the space between my bedside cabinet and the wardrobe. This is a common problem I encounter, because the space between the two is not much wider than most robots, so if someone tries to turn around rather than go back out, they can find themselves in the middle.
Other than that, it worked fine. Moving the C28 from ground to ground worked seamlessly, taking about 20 seconds for the robot to recognize that it has been flown and figure out which map to use.
Eufy says it can overcome obstacles 20mm or less, and that matches my comment. Certainly, the fibers between carpeted and hard floors were not a problem. I’ve found that it works well on rugs, too, I roll them easily but don’t rub them and pull them out of place.
How well does it clean?
Our lab tests are designed to show how well the vacuum picks up flour, rice and dog hair on both carpeted and hard floors. The method is simple: we measure how much material we have placed on the surface, let the robot vacuum do its thing, and measure how much has been collected.
In our tests, C28 performed the same way as E25, proving that the difference between a vacuum rated at 15,000Pa- and 20,000Pa is more present on paper than on carpet or linen.
Cleaning benchmarks
The Eufy Omni C28 passed our tests on rice and dog hair, scoring 98% and doing equally well on flour in the tough test. In the carpet flour test, the C28 still managed to absorb about 62% of the flour, which is just shy of the E25’s record.
Machines like the Dyson Spot+Scrub and the Dream Aqua10 Ultra can do a better job of removing flour from carpet, but they are more expensive and more powerful than the C28.
When it came time to clean the kitchen floor, C28 also didn’t offer anything significant to E25. The roller on the new machine may use less power, but it spins faster at 270rpm compared to the E25’s 180rpm, so the result is very similar.
No Eufy machine can match Dyson on this front because it has an AI-powered stain system, which makes it worry about stains until they disappear.
The C28 has a manual override, so you can disable it on a stubborn pitch, but it’s easier to just grab a kitchen towel and lend a hand manually.
There is a large performance delta when it comes to speed, however. C28 took 32 minutes to complete the 20m journey2 surface area of my house compared to 23 minutes for E25; that’s 39% longer.
Battery performance is also the same as E25. That’s not surprising, given that the E25 and C28 use the same 5,200mAh battery. That’s 20m2 a big vacuum blast took 35% out of the battery. Once back on the dock, the battery is recharged to full in just under 30 minutes.
Finally, it’s worth pointing out how quiet the C28 is when cleaning. Once you’re back at the dock, however, the mop drying process makes a distinct hum, and this can take up to five hours. If you have a station in the living room or bedroom, it is loud enough to sleep or listen to TV at a low volume.
Eufy Omni C28: Should you buy it?
Given that the C28 offers little, if anything more than the more expensive E25, the machine I gave the five-star Best of, it’s impossible not to give the C28 the same strong recommendation. Indeed, the new C28 ranks alongside Tapo’s RV50 Pro as the best mop’n’vac combo you can get for around £600.
I would describe the cleaning and cleaning performance as good rather than great but I was always happy with the results. My carpets always looked up and hairless, my floors clean and shiny.
The real power of the C28 is that it just gets on with the task at hand without any drama and with little intervention from the user. To quote Todd Howard, it just works.
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