Dreame X50 Ultra Review: This Robovac Sucks and Mops Like a Champ, Except in One Location

Gizmodo

2 days ago

Who says a robot vacuum can't be a statement piece? While it may not have the name recognition of Roomba or Roborock, Dreame has quietly been making some of the best (and most attractive) robot vacuum/mops for the last few years, and its new flagship model—the X50 Ultra—has all of the features you expect from a top-of-the-line unit (with a price to match). It fared better in some of my toughest tests than any other robovacs to date, but it also hit some snags along the way.
See X50 Ultra at Amazon
For starters, the X50 Ultra looks a lot like every other high-end robovac on the market today. Seriously, it bears so much resemblance to Roborock's Saros 10, I would think it's the same vacuum just with different labeling. It even has the same retracting LIDAR turret, which also makes me wonder if these are all made in the same factory. That digression aside, the vacuum's docking station looks sleek and modern. I'd call it the most attractive one I've tested to date, which is good because at 13.4 x 18 x 23 inches, it will be somewhat prominent in your home. The dock can wash the vacuum's mop pads with 176-degree Fahrenheit water, which is good for killing bacteria. The two water reservoirs (one for clean and one for dirty) are both massive, and for the three weeks of my testing, I never had to change them. It also comes with a disposable vacuum bag pre-installed and a small reservoir of floor cleaning solution.
Dreame X50 Ultra
If you can stomach the price, the Dream X50 Ultra handles vacuuming and mopping like a champ.
Pros Excellent vacuum power
Excellent vacuum power Brush system easily sucks up hair and large food bits
Brush system easily sucks up hair and large food bits Nearly silent mopping
Nearly silent mopping Very good-looking dock
Cons Struggles to clean at the edges of rooms and furniture
Struggles to clean at the edges of rooms and furniture Slower than other robovacs which means a hit to battery life
Slower than other robovacs which means a hit to battery life Expensive
Underneath the vacuum, you'll find split, dual roller brushes (again, uncannily similar to the brush system on a lot of Roborock models), and it can suck at a considerable 20,000 Pa, putting it right up there with the most powerful competitors. The X50 Ultra also has dual, rotating mop pads, one of which can extend away from the body to clean closer to walls; the mop pads can detach and remain in the base during vacuum-only tasks. There's also a sweeper arm with three brushes that can extend outwards to help bring debris into the path of the vacuum. The bot features a LIDAR turret (which retracts when going under low furniture) as well as extends in the front for navigation.
Setting up the X50 Ultra is straightforward—you pretty much fill the clean water reservoir, install the detergent bottle, and plug it in. Then, you control everything using a companion app, which first requires scanning the QR code under the robot's hood, installing any firmware updates, and then having your home mapped. The initial scan of my apartment was very quick. The X50 Ultra didn't drive everywhere, so I was worried it missed some areas, but it managed to account for every square foot. You'll have to spend a few minutes naming the rooms and editing the dividing lines between them, but that's par for the course with robovacs.
For my first clean, I just selected CleanGenius mode, which is the default and its most 'intelligent' mode. It suggested I start with an initial deep clean, which I thought was a nice touch, but it didn't exactly impress me out of the gates. For starters, the X50 Ultra picked a wildly inefficient route for cleaning my apartment, starting with my kitchen (fine) and then driving all the way across to the bedroom, skipping several areas in between. Then it skipped to the living room, and so on. Within the room, the X50 Ultra seemed to waste a lot of movement just kind of looking around, spinning in circles, and generally meandering. The pattern it made on my carpet was just randomness. The whole vacuuming took 80 minutes total, which was 11 minutes longer than the next slowest vacuum I've tested (the Roborock Saros Z70), even on their deepest-cleaning modes. While the X50 Ultra made it through my one-bedroom apartment on maximum power, the battery was down around 30% by the end of it. That means in a bigger house it might have to stop and recharge mid-cleaning before it continues (or you could reduce the suction power).
The X50 Ultra also missed a fair amount of dirt on the initial run. I was surprised by how many little bits and pieces were still strewn about the kitchen and hallway, so after the floor dried, I sent the robot back to those areas, but this time on Max+ vacuum power. The robovac is a lot louder in that mode, but it did manage to suck up everything in the middle of the rooms. Unfortunately, the edge cleaning was a serious letdown. Even with its extending sweeper arm, it just missed a ton of stuff near the walls.
See X50 Ultra at Amazon
Dreame's robovac does a very good job of mopping, and it managed to clean up three ketchup spots at varying stages of drying as well as some congealed grease on my floor. Unfortunately, again, it struggled to clean the edges. I'd spilled some juice on the floor right next to my sink (a common place for liquid accidents), and the spot was basically aligned with the edge of an overhanging cabinet. Somehow it didn't get to the spill at all, even though it was well within reach of its extendable mop pad. I will say, though, that the mopping action is whisper quiet. Some of the mops on Roborock's bots scream like banshees. The X50 Ultra was easily the quietest mop in a robovac that I've tested.
Generally, the object recognition on the X50 Ultra is strong. It carefully avoided an orange USB cord on hardwood, and it dodged a white cord on a white rug. Its object detection isn't always perfect—one time it slurped up a black cord on the white rug (which you'd think would be the easiest to see), and I had to turn the bot over and free it from the vacuum brush (a very easy, tool-less affair). The X50 Ultra managed to avoid things like socks and slippers, though, and often labeled them correctly on the map when it saw them. Dreame claims the X50 Ultra can identify over 200 objects, and you can have it set to automatically photograph them if you want that for some reason.
For its toughest test, I threw down my notorious Snack Gauntlet, consisting of goldfish crackers, pumpkin seeds, pistachio shells, some scattered oats, and bits of oregano around the edges of walls, and I distributed them both on hardwood and a medium-pile carpet. It's mostly good news here. The X50 Ultra fared better than any other robovac I've tested in the areas that it reached. Almost all bots really struggle with the pistachio shells and tend to sort of choke on them. This bot didn't bat an eye, hoovering them up effortlessly and quietly. It also didn't crush or regurgitate any of the goldfish or seeds, which is a common issue. The X50 Ultra even got some oats hiding under my TV cabinet—something no other robovac that I've tested has achieved. The vacuum and spinning brush system performed incredibly well here.
The X50 Ultra still suffered from the aforementioned edge issues. Cleaning along the walls was spotty (I used dried oregano so I could clearly see places it missed). The robovac was also inconsistent in the corners, nearly always leaving at least a bit of debris (sometimes more). If a piece of food was within an inch or so of some furniture or a wall, it just missed it completely. I put a couple of shells under cabinet overhangs (which it can get under), and the bot missed those, too. It's especially frustrating because the X50 Ultra performed better than any other vacuum in the open floor.
There are some other excellent features worth mentioning. For starters, the X50 Ultra can vault itself over thresholds up to 1.65 inches tall, which is the biggest climb for any robovac on the market, and it does it with two clever extending legs that sort of catapult it over things. It's cool to watch, and it worked well. The X50 Ultra also has voice commands built right into it, so while you can pair it with Google Home, Apple Home, or Alexa, you don't have to, and you can give it very specific commands (e.g., 'vacuum the bedroom,' 'mop the kitchen,' etc.)—and it will hop to.
I also love that the X50 Ultra leaves its mop pads on the dock when it doesn't need them, which should help keep your rugs drier. Even if you're doing both at once, the robovac will raise up the mop pads a full 10.5mm (0.4 inches), which should be enough to keep them above most (non-shag) carpets. It can also lower its LIDAR mast, making the bot roughly 3.5 inches tall. Overall, Dreame's companion app is solid, and while it doesn't have quite as much polish as Roborock's apps it offers effectively all the functionality you could want, including remotely controlling the bot with POV video, taking photos of your pets, and pretty granular adjustments for all of the features, such as how much water the mop should use, how aggressive the sweeping arm should be, etc.
Ultimately, the X50 Ultra is a very good robot vacuum/mop. While it's slower than I'd like, the real thing that keeps it from being Great with a capital G is its poor performance around edges, corners, and furniture. I will say, though, that it seems to be a limitation of the software rather than the hardware, which gives me some hope that this could be addressed in future firmware updates. But for now, for a robot vacuum that currently sells at between $1,400 and $1,700, I expect to not have to vacuum/mop any edges by hand after it's done its main cleaning.
See X50 Ultra at Amazon