Dreame L20 Ultra: Self-Emptying, Self-Refilling Robot Vacuum & Mop with AI Obstacle Avoidance

2024-05-26: i received today a second L20 in replacement of the one purchased back in october 2023 with damaged wheel. Am very happy as i need it now the most with the new born. I have exchanged multiple emails at the begining as i moved from US to Canada, but tge support team understood the situation and supported by sending a new one in 3 days. Very greatful for the support. I really recommand the L20 , and with customer service even we started on wrong foot, but it end up with great service.
*****
Initial comment:
To be fair the robot is great, but now i found that the wheel is damaged, so i contacted after sales, and now for 5 $ wheel, we have been exchange email for a month and we still didn't get to a resolution.

Love this new addition to our family. At first, I had an issue where it would not dock and the battery ended up dying after so many tries and it wouldn't charge but I checked underneath the base and saw one of the battery push-pins was stuck and had to wiggle it to get it to come out. After fixing that, it charged up and docked without issues.
I was wondering how to add additional rooms that I first had the doors closed to, but no need because it automatically mapped them out and cleaned it as I sent the robot to that zone to clean.
I noticed it missed two spots while cleaning but sure enough, it came back and still cleaned those spots after going through the whole room.
I wish it would ignore the curtains and push past them but it will only go around. Other than that, so far so good.

The L20 is one of the only two robots currently on the market that purport to be able to keep medium-pile carpets/rugs dry. The other is the Roomba J9+ Combo (also J7 variant by extension). I got both and pitted them head-to-head.

The other unique goal of the L20 is edge mopping. On that, it largely succeeds. The edge mopping has been very effective and reliable, just doesn't get corners as well as it could. It's second only to the Braava M6 in this regard.

However, my biggest issue with the L20 is that it can't lift its mop pads high enough to clear medium-pile rugs/carpet, which is why it also offers the ability to drop the pads off at the dock. The problem with the drop-off idea is that there are many cases where it needs to cross carpet or rugs to get to a place to mop. In order to reach those places, it lifts instead of leaves the mops to traverse the rug. So after mopping around the toilet, it drags that pad across the rug to get back to the station. If I put a no-mop zone around the rug, then the bathroom will be "unreachable". The other-related issue is that, even though it detects carpet well, instead of backing off it, it just spins 180 deg wiping its spinning pads on the edge of the carpet. Workaround is to manually create a carpet zone that is about 6" larger all around than the real carpet. This is overly difficult because, even though the main map shows the detected carpet, it disappears when you go to add a carpet zone. So it becomes a tedious back and forth process of trial and error to get the zone right.

Here are additional issues I have with the L20:
1. Carpet vacuuming performance is sub-par. In my embedded rice test, it picked up 42%, and 52% in intensive carpet mode (but took twice as long). Roomba J9+ picked up 64%. S9+ picked up 74%, as another reference point.
2. On hard-floor vacuuming, the side brush spins too fast flicking light-weight debris into areas it already covered, so doesn't get picked up. J9 does this too. S9+ excels here.
3. Mopping performance is sub-par. I did four separate mopping tests and L20 consistently took more passes to clean the mess than J9+ with Smart Scrub. M6 took even less than J9+.
4. The manual recommends only putting the base station on tile or marble. I only have hardwood or carpet.
5. The recommended/required maintenance defeats the purpose of the auto-mop washing, unless you really need to mop more than 500 sf at a time. You're supposed to empty the dirty water bin after every run. You need to refill the clean water 4x as often as the Roomba (determined by careful consumptions measurements after mopping the same floor). You're supposed to replace the pads after 1-3 months. The bottom of the base station where the pads are cleaned gets nasty, so that needs to be cleaned out regularly too.
6. If your floor can't tolerate cleaning solution, such as a Swedish Finish, then the pad washing won't be very effective without solution. It will just be a cold water rinse.
7. It won't go under bed skirts or drapes. To LiDAR these are impenetrable barriers. Also, glass doors make mess of the maps, so have to go in and edit those. Generally, the J9 mapping is much more accurate. See pics.
8. If you set a no-mop zone and send it to vac+mop, you would think it would just vacuum in the no-mop zone. It doesn't. Won't go in there at all, unless you set it to "mop after vac", which isn't an available mode for shortcuts.
9. In general, the app experience is not good. It seems like there are a lot of options, but there are a lot of restrictions, so it's complicated to figure out how to get it to do what you need. It takes way more inputs to do what you want than it should.
10. Voice control with Google Assistant is too limited. You can only tell it to clean rooms that are named with pre-selected names (not custom names), and there is a very limited selection of pre-selected names. Can't launch favorites or zones with voice.
11. There's a low hum that goes on for hours while it dries the mop pads.
12. It doesn't recognize cords when there is low contrast (dark card on dark floor or light cord on light floor). It hoisted itself on to the cord of a plugged-in canister vac to the point of its wheels being off the ground. To its credit it freed itself, but rather forcefully. If it was a table lamp, it might have been pulled off.
13. If you ever stand near it while it's working, it will map your legs, and even if you've moved quite some time (minutes) before it reaches that spot, it will clean around that spot as if you were still there, unnecessarily missing coverage.
14. Involved procedure to clean a room not reachable from base. You first have to tell it to clean everywhere from the base, then pause it, carry it to the target room, then resume it. It will then spend some time roaming around to figure out where it is, tell you it's failed to locate, then stat cleaning. When it's done cleaning, it will roam around for a while trying to find a path to the base station, then I have to fish it out from wherever it ended up… usually under the bed. Roomba, on the other hand, just pick it up, put it in the room, press the button. It will immediately clean the room and return to where it started when done.

Here's what I do like:
1. Relatively quiet, both bot and station.
2. Unlike the SW, HW seems high quality.
3. Like all LiDAR bots, it navigates well in the dark, including object avoidance.
4. Edge mopping works well and has been useful in real life.
5. The app comes with a nice Android widget, allowing quick access to shortcuts.
6. The app can run on Windows 11 via the Windows Subsystem for Android. This allows for a nice big screen to work with maps.
7. Wheels don't slip when mopping.
8. Has a spot-clean button, which is a lot more efficient then going into app and setting a zone.
9. Cleans up close to objects it recognizes, for example it gets all the debris tracked in from shoes left at the door, without sucking up shoelaces. If I had the risk of pet waste in the house, this would probably not be so good, but I appreciate the aggressiveness for my situation.
10. Good battery life, about 1000 sf for vac+mop. Same as J9.

Super easy to set up and start to clean! Now I arrive at home and do not need to vacuum and mop.
After seeing some reviews of similar premium products I decided to buy L20 Ultra and I am 100% happy with it!

I am a bit of a neat freak and with a dog that sheds I found myself vacuuming every other day. Needless to say…annoying. After reading and watching various reviews this vacuum kept coming up as the best available currently and it hasn’t disappointed.

A few notes: we have all hardwood floors, a one floor apartment, with one low pile carpet in the living room, so fairly easy surfaces to for the vacuum to clean.

The vacuum and docking station look and feel very high quality. Setup was easy following the instructions and it mapped the house pretty much flawlessly on the first try. I was amazed that it identifies things like a cord plugged into the wall as an obstacle and it’s also great that you can set “no-go” areas if you want it to stay away from certain spots. Once mapped it has navigated flawlessly, making its way around furniture and through various rooms without getting stuck. I’ve set it up to run every day, vacuuming the common areas on one day and the bedrooms and bathrooms on the next, the flexibility it great.

I found that it didn’t do a great job of picking up pet hair on the lowest suction setting, but does a great job on the highest, and the battery still lasts two hours on this mode. I was also able to buy the brush version of the roller for the L10 vacuum here on Amazon to better pick up pet hair (it swaps onto the L20 vacuum easily). The self-empty function works flawlessly, though the voice guidance doesn’t seem to warn you when the bag is getting full, which would have been a nice feature.

The mopping function works great on our floors and I appreciate that the app allows you to moderate the amount of water used since we have engineered floors and I don’t want puddles of water seeping into the cracks. The fact that you can have it vacuum then mop (rather than doing both at once) so it’s not simply smearing around dirt was a thoughtful addition. It will clean the mop pads on its own when they get too dirty, and if you set it up to, it will take off the pads before vacuuming your carpet to avoid water damage. Awesome!

I’ve had the vacuum 2.5 weeks now and haven’t had to vacuum once, it’s saving me so much time and is actually doing a great job. SO WORTH IT!

Update: they pushed an app update which fixed alot of the sporadic path finding. All other issues remain but the path finding is significantly better and now finishes the house in 1 pass .

Original:
So let me start off with saying I have been a long time user of the Neato brand. Unfortunately with neato shutting down the robot vacuum line, I had to look for alternatives. It seemed at the end of 2023. Every reviewer out there was obsessed with this robot. Either I have stricter expectations, or The current robot vacuums just do not hold the same efficiency of the Neato brand did.

Pro-

Opstical navigation- The robot is very efficient at detecting anything on the floor. I could be an obstacle.

Mopping- it's definitely the strongest feature of this robot. The ability to drop the mop pads and not get the carpet wet is huge, it's detailed on its mopping, it auto mixes the cleaning solution. The mopping is a 10/10

Easy setup
Detailed app
Mostly automated maintenance
Washable filters
Intelligently designed dock
Low profile build on the robot
Built-In lights on the robot for night time cleaning
Carpet sensors

The extending mop arm- This is fantastic, it gets the bottom of the baseboards, and it's every nook and cranny when mopping.

Long sidearm brush- does a great job at pulling in debris on the corners

Works well if you have a one-story house only- The cleaning and mopping system works well as long as you have a one-story house. I'll explain more below.

Cons

Very poor battery life- My previous robot vacuums could do a thousand square feet with more suction on a single charge. This robot takes two full charges.

Inefficient navigation- The vacuum likes to do rooms Rather than follow a single path. So for instance, if you have a corridor in the middle, it tries to finish that last. I assume it does this because it has to keep crossing it, so it assumes it's going to get dirty. The problem Is, that it creates an inefficient cleaning path, and just drains the battery. I also find that the robot randomly breaks from its pad cleaning pattern, to try to go off rescan then come back.

Horrible suction- it's not a great vacuum. For having one of the strongest suctions, it doesn't pick up anything. The Neato vacuums would leave deep defining lines and carpet. They would get so much hair and dirt out of the carpet, you would be amazed. The dreame I feel like it's an iRobot, where they only scratch the surface. The lines are very light, it doesn't seem to pick up a ton of stuff, it leaves little particles like bird seed. It's more like a duster than a deep cleaning vacuum that I'm used to with the Neato brand.

It's not made for multi-story homes- It has to have the worst multi-floor system. So they don't sell additional docks, so you have to carry the device upstairs . You place it down, and let it go. The problem is that when it needs to charge , it asks to go back to the dock. You bring it back downstairs, you tell it to go to the dock and either the system crashes, or it tries to start a whole new cleaning cycle. With how often this has to charge, it's proving to be a huge headache. They need to redesign this in their app, or make it significantly easier.

Extremely long cleaning cycles- due to some of the issues I mentioned with the navigation, my cleaning cycles are taking longer than previous robots. I do not have complicated house, it's basically a box with not a lot of furniture, but the robots weird cleaning paths tend to make it more inefficient. Where my run times with neato More efficient, they only took about 30 to 40 minutes downstairs. The dreame. takes anywhere from 80 minutes to 120 minutes.

Thoughts on fixes- I think they can fix a lot of my issues, if they would just provide a second docking station that you could place upstairs. Then I could run the unit with extra runs, and not have to worry about carrying it up and down stairs and fighting with the cleaning and resuming functions.

Would I buy again:
At the current state no. If I was looking for a mop, absolutely. My goal was to have a primary vacuum, with mopping features. That's what drew me to this vacuum. The fact that the vacuuming is very weak, is where my issues lie. I did not plan on returning the unit, but I can't say I would recommend it unless you have primarily all hardwood and a one-story home.

The L20 is my first Dreame robot and compared to my Roomba i8+, I think it does a good job. The L20 does a lot of things well but it is not a flawless vacuum. The overall vacuum performance is good. It isn't great on rugs but it seems that this is something true of all robot vacuums. For hardwood floors, it does a good job on dog hair, dirt, etc. The mopping function is pretty good. It drops its mops when it doesn't need them for the carpet, which is a nice feature. The mop cleaning and drying is convenient as well. The L20 is much quieter than the Roomba I also own. You can watch TV while it runs in the background and maybe just turn the volume up a little. The battery life seems excellent so far. After running for 70 minutes and vacuuming/mopping 550 square feet, it is at 68%. This is far superior to the Roomba. The navigation is generally good. There are a few times where it is has gotten lost and needed help but overall it is reliable. The initial mapping was impressively quick compared to the Roomba but dividing the map into rooms is more difficult than with a Roomba. My biggest complaint is that moving the base from one corner of a room to another corner caused the L20 to think it needed to make a whole new map, which is something that didn't confuse the Roomba. The other issue is that with the added mop features, the L20 housing is much larger than the Roomba i8+. Overall it is a nice robot vacuum with some good features but I feel that it is overpriced.

This thing has been on one run so far but it takes forever to do it's job. It literally charged twice to finish one cleaning run. The navigation is aimless and keeps going over the same spots over and over and over again. I can't articulate the utter disappointment I feel. You definitely don't get what you pay for with this POS. I wanted so badly for this to be the solution to cleaning behind our dogs, but five hours later it's still vacuuming and my patience is gone.
Update 4/22/24:
So the updates have done wonders for the machine. Someone in March it started completing it's scheduled tasks more quickly, and the app navigation has improved tremendously. The app is still too complicated, but I no longer feel ripped off. Does a fantastic job actually cleaning the floors, just wish it was less noisy. When cleaning hard floors, this is on the loud end of the robot vacuum spectrum.

Let me start by saying this vacuum cleaner has a lot going for it. It has more features than most in its price range, build quality is top notch, vacuuming and mopping are excellent, and the AI recognition is mostly good. My only complaints are the following: (1) short bars on the brush cause excess hair to tear up the vacuum brush, Roborock does this much better; (2) the app is much less intuitive than Roborock or iRobot, but many more options (if you can find them); and (3) the AI recognition is good but not great, and is limited to 55 items. Overall, I chose it over Roborock S8 Max ultra and iRobot Roomba J9+ and am happy with my purchase (so far), but time will tell. I hope this helps others.

Pros:
-Auto mop drying
-Large clean and dirty water containers
-Mop edge cleaning
-Strong suctioning
-Effective mopping
-Doesn’t blow do hair when vacuuming tile
-Offline mode
-Long battery life with rapid charging
-Optional water and dirty water connections for full automation
-Customer service is great

Cons:
-Less intuitive app, some text is still in Chinese (no dark mode!!!)
-Brush is easily degraded with hairs
-Large base unit
-Expensive $$$

The Dreame L20 Ultra Robot Vacuum/Mop effortlessly transforms cleaning routines with its exceptional performance on our dark wood floors. Its advanced sensors navigate seamlessly across the surface, leaving no dust or debris behind. Not only does it excel in efficiency, but the L20 Ultra also boasts an impressive quiet operation, ensuring a peaceful cleaning experience without disrupting your daily activities. For now, we can happily say goodbye to the hassle of manual cleaning and hello to a pristine home, effortlessly achieved with the Dreame L20 Ultra Robot Vacuum/Mop combo. Thanks Dreame!

It is an expensive robot vacuum cleaner... If you have money tho..its definitely an investment. Vacuuming and mopping is at least an hour or two job. This will safe you that time to spend more time with family. I moved into a new apartment and the hardwood floor was pretty dirty. I set vacuum up in the corner and started with mapping. Then I set the vacuum only option to run it a few times then mopping only option to just mop. After maybe 2 mopping, floor was pretty squeaky clean. App provide you a lot of options on how you want your place to be cleaned. You can schedule cleanings and how it should be done. App automatically figure out what kind of room they are cleaning and also gives you the option to customize cleaning option per room. Vacuum and mopping ability was up to expectation. Tho... it had hard time identifying the low clearance carpets or quick dry stone bath step thing. Vacuum doesnt eat them but the portion of them gets dragged a little. Had no issue with cords and it cleans under the furnitures. Check out some youtube videos, but I 100% recommend this. I just wish that they had white version of this.

I thought it was going to be a pain to set up but it was very easy. Good instructions, easy app. I dump the dirty water out myself and refill clean water and that's been very easy. Overall I'm very happy with the product after 3 weeks of use. it's a bit pricey though.