I recently reviewed the top-o’-the-line Narwal Flow 2 – my very first robovac ever, so I got a taste of the “country-club-rich-guy life,” and it did not disappoint. The thing absolutely rocks. At $1,400, I’d hope so. If I bought it as a consumer rather than being given a unit for review, I’d be big mad if it didn’t work.
Then Dreame asked if I wanted to review the D30 Ultra, its $540 “top-o’-the-line-o’-entry-level” robovac. Sure, why not? I was genuinely curious. It’s a vac/mop 2-in-1 unit like the Flow 2 … I’d also just moved into a new two-story house, and I’m not particularly interested in carrying the Narwal up and down stairs daily (multiple times if mopping).
Setup took all of ten minutes from opening the box to sending it out into the wild to let it auto-map my second floor. It took eight or nine minutes to map out three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a mezzanine.
For the last month and a half, the Dreame D30 Ultra is now the master of the vacuu-verse on the second floor … and honestly, I’m pretty blown away by how much a robovac at less than a third of flagship-model cost actually sucks … in a good vacuum way!
JS @ New Atlas
There are a few things that are annoying, sure, but in a month and a half, I haven’t seen the wife vacuum OR mop the second floor. She might have (she’s OCD, and prior to the Flow 2, was very anti-Roomba), but I haven’t seen it. And for the purposes of this review, I’m not going to ask her until this goes live. Point being, it MUST be doing a great job, else I’d hear her running the vacuum every day!
List of annoying things:
It’s rated at 25,000 sucky-units (Pa), but in order to achieve maximum suck, it’s pretty loud. I almost exclusively run it during the day when everyone is downstairs, but I can still hear it all the way down here sometimes.
It’s slow. When it vacuums, it does an acceptable speed as it zigs and zags around whichever room, but when it’s mopping, it’s incredibly slow. It annoys me on principle alone, but then I remind myself, “Does it matter that it’s slow? It’s doing the job FOR me—err, for my wife so she doesn’t have to. And why do I even care how fast it goes anyway? No one is even occupying the second floor …” If speed is your priority, the “D” in “D30” stands for “incredibly slow mopping function,” so you might rethink your four hundred US duckets and maybe how you prioritize first-world problems.
The dual mop heads are magnetic, and I don’t think they’re NdFeB magnets (that’s a real good magnet, if you’re wondering). I say this because I get semi-frequent “save me, Tom Cruise!” notifications from the app when a mop head has fallen off at the furthest possible distance underneath the king-size bed just outside of my nearly 4-ft reach. Like, why are they magnetic? Sure, there’s likely some engineering genius behind it, so they break away if necessary rather than yeet a robot into Neverland when it Hooks a shoelace or something … realistically, it’s because I’ve failed to pick something up that shouldn’t have been on the floor anyway.
Also, the D30 does not have an onboard water tank, so it must return to base (RTB) to rewet and wash the mop heads mid-task. There is a setting on the app where you can change how many square feet it can mop between RTB, which is nice, but then you run the risk of dry mop heads if you try to do too much.
Dreame
“AceClean™ DryBoard uses 20 high-temp spray nozzles to wash and drain the rotating mops in real time, keeping them clean and residue-free …” That’s what Dreame’s website says. I’m not 100% sure on that, as I’ve never felt heat coming from the unit while it cleans or wets the mop heads. As far as I can tell, it’s using room temp water. All said and done, the mop heads still look pretty clean.
Speaking of which, the base station also does not have a cleaning solution tank, meaning you’re effectively just rinsing the floor. Though, after a bunch of research plus a little finger crossing, I discovered that I can use the same solution that’s in my Narwal Flow 2 directly in the clean water tank. Just a little splash, though! It’s diluted about 500:1 or so.
The base station gets a little gross where it cleans the mop heads. You’ll have to get down there now and again to clean it/wipe it off … granted, I have the white version, so it shows any grime proudly once the robovac leaves the dock.
JS @ New Atlas
It can’t quite reach into a 90° corner. While the little side brush (the little brush thingo that acts like a crab’s mouth parts that throws food at it) does a great job along baseboards, it doesn’t have enough reach into the corner. Same with the mop heads – the right side will reach out to get all the way to the wall, but won’t reach the corner either.
Obstacle avoidance is merely a suggestion and not a rule for the little robovac. If your dog poops on the floor, you’d better hope you get to it before the D30 does. It has no cameras for detecting objects and relies solely on a straight-line laser up front, coupled with the LiDAR unit on top. That means cables, socks, Legos, kids’ pajamas, and everything else not taller than the unit itself are up for grabs, Pac-Man style.
That being said, it has a perfect track record of not falling down the stairs while cleaning right up to the edge, so there’s that.
JS @ New Atlas
End of list of annoying things:
Realistically, those are all my complaints. And maybe not really even complaints, just things that could be better – if you wanted to throw more money at the problem, things that more expensive units have. And none of which are deal breakers BECAUSE if everything is picked up and your dog didn’t poop on the floor, the D30 Ultra just does the thing with almost no complaint. It borders on flagship-level productivity, but at a third of the cost.
The dust bag says it’s supposed to last up to 100 days before needing any attention. I’ve only been using it for about 45 days, and everything looks good so far. The D30 will reliably do its thing, RTB, and dump whatever goodies it found along its journey. I even accidentally found a spare dust bag that came included when I was checking the status of the dust bag! I had no idea it had a spare freebie.
I’ve never had to worry about the battery. Dreame says 230 minutes of run time while vacuuming … and I did say it’s slow, but it’s not that slow. My second floor is about 1300 sq ft (121 sq m), and it always gets the job done in one shot without recharging.
The app is pretty good too. I’ve tested a lot of products, and the Dreame app is easy. Tons of features if you like dialing in the nitty-gritty, but also the easy buttons too, if you just want to send it off without having to think about it. Though the map went a bit wonky on me once, which made it impossible for me to select a specific room or rooms to clean. I asked Dreame about it, and they said to update the robovac and remap the second floor. Another 9-10 minutes later, and my auto-map was back to looking how it was supposed to. Maybe a glitch? Either way, it basically autonomously fixes itself.
JS @ New Atlas
The roller has an interesting feature called the TriCut Brush, where it basically cuts hairs so they get sucked up into the vacuum and not stuck on the roller itself. I’m the only male in my house. The other four are long-haired females. Even my dog is a girl. Not to mention I’m rocking a sweet faux-hawk-to-mullet, so my hair is longer than most guys as well. Not once have I had an issue with hair tangles. When I flipped it over after a month and a half to see what was happening under there, there were a couple of stray hairs on the side brush, and nothing at all on the roller. Even the mop heads were pretty clean – and I’ve seen the dirty water that comes out of the tank – so the base is doing what it’s supposed to do.
JS @ New Atlas
For what it’s worth, I have 80-year-old hardwood floors with zero carpet in my house, so I haven’t tested it on carpet proper, only bathroom mats, really. Admittedly, I have a baby powder addiction, and my bathroom floor mats are always clean after D30 makes a pass through there. Dreame says the D30 Ultra has a 0.41-in (10.5 mm) carpet lift for the mop heads, but I’ve not tried it.
Another thing I wanted to mention is that my floor is seamless, with no thresholds anywhere. I’ve seen mention that the D30 Ultra might have issues with taller thresholds, as it doesn’t have jumpy-feet like some of the more expensive models. That’s something to consider, for sure.
If this were the very first robovac I ever bought, I’d be ecstatic with its performance. And if I only ever had a top-tier robovac before, and this was my second one, I’d still be absolutely stoked by how good a job it does.
I’m pretty new to robovacs (this is my second one I’ve tested), to be honest, and I’ve personally shopped them before – reading this and that, trying to make a decision – and the $1,200-$1,500 models always have all the specs that make me think, “I want that!” Then I see something in the $400-$500 range and assume it’s probably garbage, so I end up buying nothing. ~$1,500 for a vacuum isn’t how I was raised! Instead, I watch the wife vacuum every day and mop once a week while I’m pecking away at the keyboard.
But that’s where the D30 Ultra surprised me. I’ve seen it priced as low as $400, but even at full-MSRP $540, I now know it’s a solid bargain. No, it doesn’t have every fancy flagship feature, but bang for your buck, it’s hard to argue with what this thing actually does.
Product Page: Dreame D30 Ultra or $400 on Amazon
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