Dreame L40 Ultra Review: Powerful and flexible vacuuming and mopping

Verdict

A brilliant robot vacuum cleaner and mop, the Dreame L40 Ultra has a huge amount of suction power, and can lift or drop its mop pads to work with any type of carpet.

Using hot water and detergent, the mopping system can deal with very tough stains, although the selection of 32 choices of water levels is a bit overkill.

Vacuuming is excellent, bar the occasional navigation mishap, while the AI camera on the front helps the robot spot and target stains, and avoid common obstacles.

Introduction

Although probably better known for its more budget-focused robot vacuum cleaners, the Dreame L40 Ultra is a step up in terms of features for the company.

Extendable side brushes and mops, AI-powered navigation, lots of suction and hot water mop cleaning make this one of the best all-around robot vacuums and mops that I have reviewed.

Design and features

• Self-empty, self-clean dock
• Highly configurable cleaning options
• Clever edge cleaning features

As is getting more common, the Dreame L40 Ultra comes with a self-empty, self-clean docking station. This has a 4.5-litre fresh water tank for cleaning the mop pads and filling the robot’s water reservoir and a 4-litre tank for dirty water. There’s an optional Water Hookup Kit, so you can connect the docking station to your mains water and drains for fully automatic use.

Unusually for a robot at this price, there’s also a solution tank that takes Dreame’s cleaning solution, which helps boost cleaning performance and is used for sanitising the mops and wash deck. I normally only see cleaning solutions as an option on more expensive models, such as the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra or the Eufy Omni S1 Pro.

There’s a 250ml bottle of cleaning solution in the box, with replacement 1-litre bottles costing £12.99.

This dock also takes 3.2-litre dust bags that clip in next to the detergent tank. These are very large, so you shouldn’t have to replace them for at least two months of regular use. Replacements cost £14.99 for a pack of three.

The robot itself looks much like any other robot cleaner, although this one is packed out with the latest technology. LiDAR is used for navigation, but there’s also a camera at the front, which is used for dirt detection and obstacle avoidance.

Open up the top and there’s a small 300ml bin inside the robot. You won’t have to empty this yourself, but it’s worth removing once a month so that you can clean the bin out properly, and wash the filter to preserve maximum suction power.

There are dual microfibre pads on this robot, which spin to agitate and remove dirt. As you’d expect, these mop pads can lift off the ground for carpet avoidance.

There’s another trick: the mopping pads can be dropped off completely, which lets this robot tackle deep pile carpets without the threat of getting them wet. The only other robot vacuum cleaner that I’ve seen that can drop its pads off or raise them is the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ 3-in-1 Cleaning VR7MD97714G.

Dreame uses 65°C water for washing the pads, which helps clean them more thoroughly and eliminates odours, and it means that the robot goes out with hot pads for cleaning. Pads are washed at regular intervals, so this robot can keep cleaning without starting to smear dirt around. Hot air drying also helps prevent bacteria and odour build-up.

There’s a standard floor brush but Dreame also provides its TriCut model that channels hair into the bin to prevent tangling. If you live in a home with pets or people with long hair, the TriCut brush is what you want.

A SideReach brush is also there. This can extend to tease dirt out from corners and edges.

Control of the Dreame L40 Ultra is via the Dreamehome app. It doesn’t take long, following the wizard, to get the robot connected to Wi-Fi and ready to go out for a mapping run.

Once done, the app has a guess as to where rooms are, but you can merge and split a map to suit the layout of your home.

As well as basic rooms, I could add furniture to the map, which can make cleaning up easier: I could select a dining table, for example, to just have the robot clean around that.

As you’d expect, there are also no-go and no-mop zones, so you can prevent the Dreame L40 Ultra from going where you don’t want it.

There’s also an option to add the flooring type to a room. Select horizontal or vertical floor types for hard floors, and the robot can be set to clean along the direction of the floor, to deep clean and get dirt that could get trapped between gaps otherwise.

After the first clean, the app will suggest adding carpet zones. However, I found this a bit over-the-top, as selecting the default option covered the map with carpet, and prevented the robot from mopping my hard floor areas. I found that I didn’t need to add carpet to the map, relying on the robot’s built-in carpet detection.

For carpets, the default option is to raise the mop when vacuuming, but you can set it to remove the mop pads instead. With the lift option selected, the Dreame L40 Ultra will still drop its mopping pads off when in vacuum-only mode.

There’s also control over SideReach, which lets the robot swing out its side brush, and MopExtend, which is similar but for the mop pad. With MopExtend, the robot can be told to use this mop for gaps (reaching under furniture, such as fridges, that the L40 Ultra can’t physically get under), and there’s an option for intensively cleaning around furniture legs.

As the Dreame L40 Ultra has a camera for detecting and avoiding common obstacles, you can also choose to remotely view the feed. This requires physically turning the feature on by tapping the robot’s Home button three times, and setting a PIN for security.

As the camera is so low to the floor, you don’t see much of what’s going on, but it could be a handy feature if you need to check on your house while away.

For cleaning, you can choose to clean the entire home, a specific room (or rooms), or draw zones on the map. The default option is to use CleanGenius, where the robot intelligently optimises suction and mopping based on need.

This can be used in tandem with the Auto-recleaning mode, where the Dreame L40 Ultra will return to heavily soiled areas to give them a second clean. This feature is very useful, as you don’t have to manually send the robot out again.

Alternatively, you can select the settings manually, with a choice of vacuum, mop, vac & mop, mop after vac, and custom room settings, which lets you set the cleaning mode per room.

With these options, you get a choice of suction mode (quiet, standard, turbo and max), and a choice of wetness for the mop. There are 32 wetness settings, which honestly feels too much, and simpler settings would have been preferred.

For most modes, there’s a choice of quick or standard routing, but with the mop mode, you also get intensive and deep modes for even deeper mopping.

There’s also a feature for Stain Recognition, where the robot uses its camera to detect marks on the floor, where the robot will intensively mop any marks that it has spotted. This is well worth turning on.

Performance

• Excellent mopping
• Missed some edge dust on the first pass
• Excellent carpet performance

I started the Dreame L40 Ultra with my standard carpet test, adding a teaspoon of flour to my test carpet. Using the vacuum-only setting to start, with two passes, I found that the robot managed to clean practically everything. Only on a very close inspection could I see a couple of trace amounts of dust left behind. Clearly, the robot’s 11,000pa suction power works well.

Hard floor vacuuming was perfect, with the Dreame L40 Ultra able to pick up all of my flour spills with just a single pass.

With vacuuming mode, the initial edge clean run wasn’t so impressive. I found that the flour was thrown away from the edges, but it wasn’t collected, leaving a lot behind. It seems as though on this pass, the robot couldn’t quite work out how to run down the edge of the kitchen cupboards.

Repeating the job with the vac and mop turned on, the results were brilliant, with the robot using its extendable mop pads and arm to get all of the dirt.

Cleaning almost to the edge, the Dreame L40 Ultra only left behind a trace amount of flour.

I put the Dreame L40 Ultra into mop-only mode for my mopping tests. The initial test was for dried-on coffee stains, which the Dreame L40 Ultra handled brilliantly.

Similarly, it managed to clean up the red wine stains on its first pass.

Then came the tricky ketchup test, which was handled with ease by the robot in just two passes. The detergent and hot water washing come into great effect for this tough test, as was the camera, which can spot stains and help the robot deal with them.

My mud test proved a bit trickier. While the stain was greatly reduced, there was still an outline of mud left on the floor after two passes. I had to send the Dreame L40 Ultra out again for another two passes to remove this ground-in mess.

Testing with human hair, I found that the Dreame L40 Ultra collected it all without getting any tangled around its brush. Some strands of hair were loose around the brush bar, but they got sucked up after future runs.

Battery life is rated at up to 194 minutes, although this is running the vacuum on its lowest power settings. Once again, I’d say that even on higher power settings and multiple passes, battery life is not an issue. There’s enough juice in a charge to tackle the entire Trusted Reviews Home Tech Lab, and have enough power left for various spot jobs.

I measured the Dreame L40 Ultra at 71.3dB, which makes it one of the louder robots that I’ve tested; however, that’s worth it for the cleaning performance on offer.

Navigation is excellent, using a combination of LiDAR and the camera on the front, I found that the Dreame L40 Ultra got close to furniture, but avoided common obstacles, including cables, shoes and (fake) pet mess. Obstacles are marked on the map, so I could go and move them for future cleans.

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