You can create room dividers in open layouts to better separate seating and dining areas, and place furniture to indicate what to expect in certain spaces. The app’s AI also tried to add furniture during some of the mapping, but it wasn’t accurate.
The 2D map is the main one on which you will edit and see detailed information, but you can also see it in 3D. The 3D map version was hilarious, as many random objects were visually displayed as a bathroom (including the X30 Ultra’s own base station); I didn’t find it as useful as 2D.
Editing the map within the app wasn’t as intuitive as I would have liked, but once I mastered the tools, it was easy enough to customize it with room labels, separation for more specific cleaning, and floor types. On the map you will also see an option for zones, where you can draw a zone box for cleaning a specific area.
Get in a swirl formation
Photography: Nena Farrell
The X30 Ultra did a good job moving around all types of objects and from various heights of carpets and floors. It even managed to navigate through the tricky legs of my toddler’s high chair and the C-shaped legs of my vintage dining table. However, I had a little trouble figuring out the rug in my living room; I ended up using zones to focus on my carpet so I could vacuum at the right time. Otherwise, he was constantly on a mission to squeeze himself into the smallest crevices he could, bless his little digital soul.
The robot did well at vacuuming up things like Cheerios, food and cat litter, but it never got 100 percent. That’s pretty normal with robot vacuums, but a little disappointing given the high price. For example, it doesn’t do the edges as well as you’d expect; There was still a bit of trash at the edges of the hallway, which is what the flexible arm promised to fix.
Overall, it’s a pretty good hybrid robot vacuum and mop, and I love being able to leave the wet mop pads off the carpet. But it’s a steep price for the removable mop pad and that flexible arm, which didn’t even work that well. You’d really have to want the vacuum to be worth it (or have a huge house that requires the X30’s long battery life). Otherwise, the rest of these features can be found in cheaper vacuums.