Review: Dreame X50 Ultra Complete

Observant people will have noticed cats’ ability to strut around on a windowsill without knocking over a single knick-knack. Dreame’s new, advanced robot vacuum cleaner, the X50 Ultra Complete, achieves the same agility.

The robot has not become physically larger, but heavier. Compared to Dreame’s latest top model, the L40 Ultra, it has gained 530 grams.

The increased weight can be heard when the X50, like a tank, rises over a doorstep and thumps down on the floor on the other side of the step. Conversely – and now we come to the cat – the robot moves around on a flat floor with an elegance I have rarely seen. The Dreame X50 Ultra Complete glides, stops or reverses just a few millimetres close to and around obstacles.

Furthermore, the X50 can climb doorsteps up to six centimetres high with its special built-in lifting legs and can be voice-controlled without the need for third parties such as Google or Apple.

This makes it all the more disappointing that Dreame’s previously praised features, including the flexible side brush and mop, do not perform better. Most annoying is that precise cleaning of carpets fails due to either a poor sensor or inaccurate mapping.

App and setup

The Dreamehome app is downloaded (as always) by scanning the QR code under the robot’s cover. Then simply connect the Dreame X50 to your wireless network.

Click on the user icon (a smiley face) to access language and voice control. Dreame X50 supports many languages in the app. Voice control of Dreame’s own built-in control function requires a switch to English (or one of the other major languages).

Each task must begin with ‘OK Dreame’ + the relevant command. For example, cleaning the kitchen. All spoken tasks were performed without complaint. The Dreame X50 is an obedient robot.

Behind the base cover is a pre-installed vacuum cleaner bag. It is the same size as the one in the L40 Ultra, but can now hold 100 days’ worth of dirt. In the L40 Ultra, it was 75 days. The X50 Ultra compresses the collected dirt in the robot’s dust container (which, incidentally, is now 100 ml larger) before it is sucked up and into the base’s bag.

Extra bags are included in the cardboard box in which the robot is delivered. The price for several new bags is around £24 for a pack of six.

Next to the bag is the container for the cleaning solution. If a bottle is included in your box (we received a test sample with a one-litre bottle), fill the container with the solution. From here, it is automatically dispensed into the clean water bucket at the top of the base.

If you run out of cleaning solution, you can buy a litre of Dreame cleaning solution for around £24 plus shipping.

The base’s two buckets (or tanks) hold the same amount of water as the L40 Ultra, among others. Their shape does not differ from Dreame’s previous designs. The dark bucket is for dirty water, the light one for clean water. The buckets are sturdy and well-designed. For example, they fit into each other so that you cannot place them incorrectly. Why change a winning concept?

ProLeap System and Retractable Legs

The X50 Ultra Complete marks the debut of Dreame’s ProLeap System. The system works like its competitor Roborock’s AdaptLift, but the X50 can overcome even higher obstacles.

My home has seven wooden doorsteps. Some steps are wide, others are narrow. Some have a sloping incline. Others consist of several pieces of wood at different heights. In short, a nightmare for a robot vacuum cleaner.

Until now, only Roborock Qrevo Curv, thanks to AdaptLift, has been able to get around without giving up. With Roborock, the function adjusts the robot’s three wheels on the underside so that they raise the chassis over obstacles such as doorsteps.

With the X50 Ultra Complete, the lift literally gets an extra boost. The sensor detects and reads obstacles, such as doorsteps, and raises itself on its wheels. In this way, the robot can overcome doorsteps of up to 4.42 centimetres.

 

If the doorstep is higher or has multiple levels, the X50 activates its retractable legs. Two small legs on wheels extend from the underside of the robot and lift/push the chassis further forward and upward. In practice, the X50 resembles an insect standing on its hind legs.

For the most part, this provides a smooth and elegant way of negotiating doorsteps. However, if there is a large difference in height (up to one centimetre) or a difference in slope from one side of the doorstep to the other, the X50 is unable to read the height difference correctly.

The robot rises completely on its ‘hind legs’ from one side and thumps loudly down on the other side of the doorstep. In the long run, this landing cannot be healthy for the robot’s chassis and internal components.

I only experienced the somewhat hard landing in connection with doorsteps that were steep on one side and somewhat lower on the other. More uniform doorsteps were negotiated easily and without hard bangs against the floor.

Measurement and mapping

The mapping is effective. My two living rooms (approximately 60 m2) were mapped in less than two minutes. The special lifting system makes the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete virtually autonomous. The robot needs no help to get around. Well, sort of.

Until now, I had refrained from mapping my secondary bathroom to spare the test robots. The height difference between the wooden floor in my hallway and the terrazzo floor in the bathroom is over 12 centimetres. Quite a deep chasm for a robot vacuum cleaner.

This time, I left the bathroom door open. The X50’s 3D camera detected the extra room. Near the threshold to the bathroom, I paused the robot and moved it onto the terrazzo floor.

The X50 cheerfully continued both cleaning and mapping. I used the same method with the Dreame L40 Ultra. When the X50 returned to its base, the bathroom was automatically added to the app’s updated map.

The bathroom was only partially mapped, and all new attempts ended with the robot losing its bearings in the middle of the terrazzo floor. In the app, I set my home to be multi-storey and placed the robot back in the bathroom. The room was now mapped as a secondary floor. The X50 Ultra Complete can automatically switch between maps of multiple floors.

It wasn’t that easy all the way. I have realised that my home contains a Bermuda Triangle for robot vacuum cleaners.

Between my dining room and my office is a small hallway. The room and its carpet have confused several robot vacuum cleaners I have tested. This applies to the Roborock Qrevo Curv and now also the Dreame X50.

A rug should not be too close to the doorstep, as this prevents the robot vacuum cleaner’s sensor from correctly measuring the height difference between the step and the flat floor. With the Roborock Curv, AdaptLift was not triggered. Instead, the robot ploughed straight ahead and got tangled up in the rug’s fringes.

To get into my office (and out again), a robot vacuum cleaner has to turn 45 degrees in the small hallway. For the X50, the rug and the angle were such an obstacle that the robot loudly declared that access to the office was ‘inaccessible’.

I removed the rug and tried again. The X50 navigated the two steps, mapped and cleaned my office, and then returned to its base without any detours. I put the rug back in place and sent the X50 off again. The robot wasn’t very keen on it, but it did activate its ProLeap System. A lot of fuss for very little, but it worked.

The X50 is the first robot vacuum cleaner that has managed to map my entire home (except for two large, enclosed storage rooms).

Zone cleaning and flexible brush

The sky’s the limit. The Dreame X50 has difficulty reading surfaces. Among other things, tiles are not registered as tiles, but as a carpet. Carpets are also not placed correctly on the app’s map.

Unlike the L40 Ultra, the X50 cleans carpets as an automatically specified zone. Since the mapping is not accurate, the X50 also cleans in areas outside and around the carpet, which is a waste of time and energy.

Today’s robots in a certain price range would be ashamed if they were not equipped with a flexible mop and a similarly flexible brush. The Dreame X50 has both.

Among others, the Dreame L40 has used its flexible parts to clean into corners, along edges and under low-hanging cabinets. With the X50, success is limited. It works, but it is not nearly as consistent and thorough.

After the annual visit from the chimney sweep, the tiles in front of the fireplace were ready for the X50. Despite two attempts, the tiles remained dusty along the edge of the fireplace. The tiles in my main bathroom also failed the ‘paper test’. A few strokes of toilet paper across the tiles showed that the X50 was far from having picked up all the dirt.