I live in an apartment with 21 floor-to-ceiling windows, which sounds great until it’s sunny or you have to clean them. That’s why I’ve been following developments in window-washing robot technology very closely. This Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni has been one of my most anticipated gadgets of the year because it offers so many advancements for not just cleaning windows, but keeping the window cleaner clean as well.
However, this approach leads to trade-offs — the unit is absolutely massive, there’s no longer a particularly neat place to store the robot part, and it’s $1,299. So, with all that in mind and after more than a month of testing – is it worth it?
First impressions
This robot is heavy and massive. Just an absolute unit of a unit, especially with the portable, purpose-built washing machine. On the W2 Omni, you stored the robot in the body of the anchor, making for a cleaner packing away experience. Here you just put the robot on a hook behind the included washing machine. It’s not bad, but it’s just not particularly elegant, and it takes up a lot of room.
There’s a lot going on here, and so much of it feels luxurious. Yeah, you could have a bare-essentials window washer (like the $249 Winbot Neo Mini), or you could have something with all the nice-to-have bells and whistles. From the time I opened the box, the bells and whistles and premium finish were apparent.
Setting it up and updating it in the app was easy, and moistening the washing pad in the miniature washing machine was a delightful novelty
Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni specifications and price
| Robot size | 76 x 270 x 270mm |
| Robot weight | 2.1kg |
| Base station size | 430 x 226 x 344mm |
| Base station weight | 10kg |
| Detergent reservoir size on robot | 80mL |
| Minimum glass thickness | 3mm |
| Base station battery | 9000mAh (130min run time) |
| Price (RRP) | $1,299 |
| Warranty | One year in addition to your Australian consumer law rights. |
| Official website | Ecovacs Australia |
The biggest thing to call out here is the battery in the base station. That means you can take it around your property to clean all your windows, even if you don’t have power in that area. While the weight of the base station limits its portability, it also acts as a good anchor in case something goes catastrophically wrong while cleaning a high window, so that’s nice.
Indoor windows
In the same way that robot vacuum cleaners and mops are just for maintenance cleaning, rather than addressing big spills or actual messes, window-washing robots are for dust and smudges. It’s not going to get wet pasta sauce (as families with young children have to contend with) off the window cleanly, or scrub the bird poo off. It’s just there to get rid of toddler handprints, condensation, and accumulated dust.
One day, I imagine these robots will get spinning pads, some kind of dirty water tank, and added suction to give windows an actual deep clean. Until then, this is an autonomous damp cloth that can spray a bit of window-cleaning solution as it moves. It’s not doing the same job a human would do. To be fair, you’re looking at buying a robot window cleaner, so I’m guessing you (like me) are also not doing the kind of window-cleaning job a human would do if they could be bothered.
With that in mind, the Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni does a good job of getting the dust, grime and fingerprints off my many windows. The candle wax and pasta sauce were a lost cause, and the little bits of mould in the corner from condensation required a couple of passes. Overall, though, my realistic expectations were met. Every now and then, it would exceed them.
The robot jiggles around a little bit in ways that the lower-tier robots cannot. As a result, it gets off more grime than previous generations. But it’s still not yet capable of doing more intense cleans.
At 7.6cm tall, the W3 Omni only just fits in one of my awkwardly shaped windows, and managed to get off most of a patch of dirt that’s been bothering me for almost eight years. That alone is worth the price of admission.
Outdoor windows
Living in a high-rise apartment building, this test is always nerve-wracking. But I felt safer than usual with the Winbot W3 Omni, because it has the big, heavy anchor of the base station. This station can also suction itself to the floor for even more hold just in case.
That said, I have only had two alerts from this robot, and both of them were on an outdoor window. One said the robot got stuck, despite only the bottom of the window touching one corner. I had to boot up the app and switch it to manual control so I could drive the robot to safety.
The other alert said that it was slipping because its tether got caught on the edge of the base station. Nothing makes you run faster than hearing “Winbot is slipping” when it’s a dozen floors off the ground over a busy street. Once again I had to manually navigate it back to safety, only this time more stressed.
When it did work, though, I used the screen on the base station to select thorough clean, and after one go round, the window was noticeably cleaner. I marvelled at how nice the window is. It looked almost professionally cleaned. I wish I could reach the outside of all my windows so I could do all of them with the W3 Omni.
Cleaning the cleaner
The most exciting part of the W3 Omni is the big washing machine body. That’s the selling point. Sure, you can just rinse the little mopping pad between windows, but that doesn’t clean as well if you have particularly gross windows.
I found the clean from the built-in washing machine to be excellent, but I’m frustrated that the machine can’t clean a cloth while the robot cleans a window. It’s a one-or-the-other situation, which is less convenient than I’d hoped. I like that it’s doing it all for me; I just wish it could do it all for me at the same time.
Also, it doesn’t dry the mopping pad, so you can’t just leave it in there when done, and you have to find somewhere for it to dry. It’s not a dealbreaker; it just is a bit less convenient on a luxury machine designed for convenience.
Who is the Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni for?
Ecovacs has two excellent window-washing robots available at the moment: the Winbot Neo Mini and the Winbot W3 Omni. The Neo Mini is for people who have only a few small windows that don’t get too dirty. The Winbot W3 Omni is for people who have a lot of large windows and not a lot of patience. Anyone else living in a similar glasshouse situation to mine would be well-served by the Winbot W3 Omni.
The W3 Omni is also great for people who need to wash other glass, like pool fences, away from power points. It’s a much more versatile device, even if you are paying for that convenience.
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