Dreame X50 Ultra Complete Review

Introduction

After impressing with the powerful and flexible Dreame L40 Ultra, the company is back with an even more powerful robot vacuum cleaner and mop, the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete.

Not only does it clean brilliantly, but this robot also has the highest suction rating of any model I’ve reviewed, and the clever ProLeap system lets it climb thresholds of up to 6cm high.

Design and features

• Self-clean, self-empty station
• VersaLift lets the navigation sensor retract
• ProLeap allows the robot to climb thresholds of up to 6cm

The Dreame X50 Ultra Complete ships with a self-clean, self-empty base station that’s similar to the one used for the older Dreame L40 Ultra.

As is typical with this type of base station, there are two tanks: one 4.5-litre tank for clean water and one 4-litre tank for dirty water. That’s a slight mismatch in size but, given that some water will remain on the floor after mopping, it roughly works out that the dirty water tank needs emptying when the clean water tank needs refilling.

Clean water is used to fill the robot’s water tank, and it’s used to wash the mop pads. A combination of hot water (80°C maximum, set in the app) and detergent (a 250ml bottle is provided, and replacements cost £12.99 for 1 litre), help clean the mop pads well and aid with mopping performance.

A built-in scale inhibitor prevents limescale from building up, which is good news for anyone who lives in a hard water area.

Mop pads are scrubbed against the cleaning deck, with dirty water sucked up into the tank. Hot air drying prevents mould from building up and reduces odours.

A large 3.2-litre disposable bin bag is installed, which provides up to 100 days of hands-free emptying. That’s around three months of actual use. Replacements cost £14.99 for a pack of three, which will last most of a year.

The robot itself has a 395ml dust box, which you can lift out of the robot’s top. It’s worth doing this monthly, so you can clean out any stuck dirt and also wash the filter.

Dreame has poured all of its recent tech into the X50 Ultra Complete. The robot has a VersaLift DToF sensor on top, rather than LiDAR, with a full 360-degree field of view. This sensor has a trick: it’s on a motor that lifts it up and down.

In the down position, the sensor sits flush with the robot’s body, allowing the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete to slide under low bits of furniture, such as sofas or sideboards. With the VersaLift sensor retracted, the robot is just 89mm tall.

That means that the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete is a similar height to the Roborock QRevo Slim, only its pop-up sensor means it has a better 360-degree view for everyday use.

At the front of the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete is an AI-powered camera, which is used to spot and avoid 200 common obstacles, including cables, shoes and pet messes.

Flip the robot over, and you can see where a lot of the additional work has gone.

Here, two microfibre mopping pads are used to mop. These can lift up to 10.5mm off the ground when carpet is detected, but can also be set to be dropped off and left at the dock, so that the robot can vacuum-only deep pile carpet.

One mop is a Mop Extend version, which means it can swing out from the robot’s body to better clean edges, and also top mop under obstacles, such as fridge freezers.

A Dual Flex side brush is also available, which swings out when the robot detects an edge or corner, teasing dirt out that might otherwise be left behind.

In the robot’s middle are dual brushes that contra-rotate to prevent hair from getting tangled. One brush is a bristled rubber model designed for hard floors, and the other is a TPU brush for cleaning carpets.

All brushes can be lifted: the edge brush up to 10mm and the main brushes up to 5mm. That lets the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete Dreame mop without wetting the brushes, preventing odours.

When cleaning, the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete decides when to put the side brush down, and I noticed the robot often lifting this.

ProLeap is the significant new addition. Using unique arms on the side, the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete can lift its front up and climb a single threshold of up to 4.2cm, and a multi-step threshold (such as a step and then a sliding door track) of up to 8cm.

Once again, control of the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete is via the Dreamehome app. Once connected to your Wi-Fi, the first task is to send the robot on its mapping run, generating a map with suggested room placement. I found this pretty accurate, but merging or splitting rooms as required is trivial.

There are also options to set no-go and no-mop zones, should you need to stop the robot going somewhere manually or you want to protect a delicate floor.

After completing a mapping run, the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete can suggest the type of flooring to add to the map. As with previous Dreame models, I did find that the automatic option selected the entire lab as carpet, ignoring the hard floor area in front of the sink. I kept the default settings, letting the robot use its sensors to detect floor type automatically.

Cleaning options are extensive. The simplest option to use is CleanGenius, where the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete will use its sensors and cameras to work out how best to clean your home automatically.

You can also take complete control, with options to vacuum only, mop only, vacuum and mop together, or mop after vacuuming.

There are options for the vacuuming power (Quiet, Standard, Turbo and Max), and thirty levels of mop wetness to select from. The mop setting seems standard across Dreame’s robots and fewer options would be easier to understand.

There’s a choice of routes to take (Quick and Standard), with the mop-only option giving the additional options of Intensive and Deep for when you need to clean a very dirty area.

It’s in the Advanced section that the robot’s real power really is on show. Here, there’s an option to turn on Stain Recognition and Large Particles Boost. Both use the robot’s camera to spot dirty areas, giving them extra focus.

In Clean Genius mode, the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete can be set to Auto-recleaning, where the robot will detect particularly dirty areas and then retackle them at the end of a clean.

Equally as clever is the Dynamic obstacle area cleaning option, which lets the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete go back to areas it couldn’t reach due to avoiding people or pets in the middle of the clean.

I’d like some of these features to be turned on by default; make sure you go through all of these settings to get the best clean possible.

Performance

• CleanGenius is impressive for day-to-day cleaning
• Very powerful suction
• Able to mop deep stains

I was hugely impressed with the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete and its cleaning ability. First, I set the robot to CleanGenius to see what it could do. With this mode turned on, along with the stain and dirt detection, I noticed that the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete would go over some areas more than others, carefully targeting some stains I had put down.

For day-to-day cleaning, this mode worked well. On my carpet test, I found that the robot managed to suck up most of the dust in CleanGenius mode, but it left a little bit behind.

While this result is better than many robot vacuum cleaners can manage, I repeated the test but put the robot on its maximum mode, making the most of the incredible 20,000Pa suction. After another pass, the carpet was spotless.

On my hard floor test, I found that CleanGenius was all that was required to clean the floor, with the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete managing to suck up all the flour that I’d spilt. The robot correctly identified large dirt particles, giving the flour-covered area extra attention.

Clean Genius also did brilliantly on my edge test, ensuring that all the flour I sprinkled on the floor up to the plinth was removed.

With my mopping tests, CleanGenius wasn’t so good for the deeper stains. I found that with my dried-on coffee stain, this mainly was removed.

My red wine stain wasn’t recognised and couldn’t be removed easily in this mode.

I found the same issue with the tough ketchup stain: some mess was removed, but the mess largely remained behind.

The loose particles were removed with my mud stain, but a lot of the dried-on and ground-in mud remained.

To tackle these stains, I switched to manual settings, put the mop wetness on level 27, and set the robot to two passes using the deep cleaning route. This mode showed the true power of the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete and its hot water and detergent.

Now, my coffee stain was completely removed.

The red wine stain was banished, too, leaving behind a nice clean floor.

My mud stain was removed entirely, too, leaving no trace behind.

It was only the ketchup stain where a small semblance of dirt was left behind. This was in the thickest, stickiest part of the stain. Another double pass finished the job, showing that the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete can handle any mess.

I then added human hair to the carpet and let the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete go and pick it up. I’m pleased to say that at the end of vacuuming, the robot didn’t have a strand of hair wrapped around it.

I was impressed with the navigation. Thanks to the VersaLift sensor, the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete could clean under my awkward corner sofa: an obstacle that many robots avoid completely and where others have managed to wedge themselves stuck.

Placing a threshold between two rooms, the ProLeap system kicked into action. It’s hardly dainty making its way over such thresholds, but the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete easily climbed over this obstacle.

With cables, shoes and fake pet mess around, the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete quickly moved around them and didn’t get stuck once.

I measured the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete at 57.7dB, which is relatively quiet for a robot vacuum cleaner, particularly one with this much suction power.

Battery life is complicated to measure in minutes, as the power setting and level of dirt affect this. Dreame quotes 220 minutes of battery life in Quiet mode. I set the robot to clean the Trusted Reviews Home Technology Lab in CleanGenius mode and then tackled the front section in maximum power and the hard floor area in mop-only mode, and I still had power left.

Should you buy it?