Eufy Omni E25 vs Omni C28: Is the Camera Worth $150 More?

Cleaning Performance

On the tests that measure how clean your floors actually get, these two are near-twins. The C28 posted an 89% carpet deep-clean score at Vacuum Wars; the E25 came in at 88% — a rounding error apart, and both comfortably above the roughly 78% category average. Pet-hair pickup splits the same hair: 100% for the C28, 93% for the E25, with both using the same DuoSpiral brush that wrapped 0% of hair in the 7-inch tangle test where the average robot wraps well over a third.

The one number that looks like a gap isn’t much of one. The E25 lists 20,000Pa against the C28’s 15,000Pa, but eufy’s headline suction has always run ahead of the bench reality — the E25 measured just 0.76 kPa of sealed suction and 13 CFM of airflow, both below average, so the pickup you actually get comes from the brush design, not raw airflow. In practice that’s why the carpet scores land a single point apart despite the 5,000Pa spec difference.

Winner: Tie — same brush, same self-rinsing mop platform, and carpet and pet-hair results within a point of each other. Nobody should choose between these two on cleaning power alone.

Navigation & Obstacle Avoidance

This is the section that justifies the E25’s existence. The C28 navigates on spinning LiDAR alone — it maps quickly and accurately, but anything lying on the floor is handled by bumping into it, and it showed: 15 of 24 obstacles avoided at Vacuum Wars, a below-average result. The E25 keeps the fast LiDAR mapping and adds an RGB camera trained on more than 200 household objects, and the score jumps to 21 of 24, comfortably above the 17-of-24 average.

For a lot of homes that single difference is the whole decision. If your floors carry phone chargers, kids’ toys, socks, or a dog that occasionally has an accident, the C28 will eventually find one and spread it across the room, while the E25 is far more likely to steer around it. Both robots map multiple floors and navigate efficiently — the E25 actually tested slightly faster at 0.9 m² per minute — but on pure obstacle handling this is a clear, meaningful gap, not a marginal one.

Winner: Eufy Omni E25 — the camera avoids what the C28 plows through. For any home with clutter or pets, this section outweighs everything else.

Mopping

Both robots run the same idea, and it’s a good one: a HydroJet roller that gets sprayed with fresh water and scraped clean continuously while it works, instead of dragging a progressively dirtier pad the way spinning-pad robots do. The C28’s version earned one of the ten best mopping results Vacuum Wars has ever recorded; the E25’s roller landed well above the category average on the same test. Neither leaves much residual water, and both handle everyday floors better than nearly anything at their price.

The small caveats cut in different directions. The E25 is only average at dried-on stains, and its roller doesn’t extend, so edge mopping trails what the CornerRover brush does for vacuuming. The C28’s roller lift over carpet is a touch lower (10.8 mm vs 10.5 mm), but at this level that’s splitting hairs — on thick rugs neither is truly safe with a wet mop.

Winner: Tie — it’s literally the same self-rinsing roller technology, and both mop far above their price class. This isn’t where the $150 goes.

Dock & Maintenance

The stations are functionally the same machine: both are full 5-in-1 Omni docks that auto-empty into a 3L bag lasting roughly 75 days, wash the mop, dry it with hot air, and refill the robot’s water tank. The E25 adds automatic detergent dosing, a genuine-but-minor convenience, and both docks are large enough that you’ll want to measure the corner you’re giving up before buying.

One practical knock lands on the E25: its onboard dustbin is only 300 ml, about 25% smaller than the 400 ml average. The auto-empty dock hides that most of the time, but on a big max-power run it fills faster and trips back to the dock sooner. The C28’s roller does a bit more of its self-cleaning on the robot, so its dock wash is a lighter job. These are small differences either way.

Winner: Tie — two complete self-maintaining stations that make either robot hands-off for weeks. Nothing here should move your decision.

Smart Features & App

Both robots live in the Eufy Clean app, and both inherit its familiar problems: mapping edits that save slowly, the occasional phantom room, and an automation layer that trails Roborock Home and Dreame by a comfortable margin. If day-to-day app polish is high on your list, neither robot — and honestly neither brand — is the pick.

What separates them is what the hardware feeds the software. The E25’s camera enables obstacle recognition with named object types, so its cleaning reports actually tell you what it dodged and where; the C28’s LiDAR-only reports give you accurate maps but no such insight. It’s not a large daily-use difference, but it’s real, and it tracks the same camera advantage from the navigation section. Worth noting the E25 still omits floor-direction mopping control and live video, so “has a camera” doesn’t mean “does everything a camera could.”

Winner: Eufy Omni E25 — narrowly. The camera makes the same laggy app a little smarter.

Value & Price

Here the C28 pulls the decision back. It lists at $799.99 but sells at around $500 for long stretches; the E25 lists at $999.99 and typically streets near $650. That’s roughly a $150 gap for two robots whose carpet and pet-hair scores land a single point apart and whose mop is identical. Per dollar of cleaning, the C28 wins comfortably — you’re paying the E25 premium for obstacle avoidance and corner reach, not for a cleaner floor.

That reframes the advice we give C28 shoppers. The C28’s honest weakness is that it has no camera, and the usual answer was to spend up to the X10 Pro Omni for one. The E25 is the better version of that upgrade — more suction, a better mop, and a higher Vacuum Wars ranking than the X10 — so if you’ve decided you need a camera, the E25, not the X10, is where the money should go.

Winner: Eufy Omni C28 — nearly identical cleaning for about $150 less. The E25’s premium is worth it only when you have a specific reason to want the camera and the corners.