I've reviewed the Dreame L50s Pro Ultra, and it's a good robot vacuum option if you have mostly hard floors — but not so much for carpets

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I've reviewed the Dreame L50s Pro Ultra, and it's a good robot vacuum option if you have mostly har…

Ashley Thieme is a staff writer on the Reviews team at Tom’s Guide where she tests out the latest tech so you can know what’s going to be worth your time and money. She has a master’s degree in Magazine Journalism and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism, Media and Sociology from Cardiff University. She has bylines in titles including Women’s Health UK, sharing the latest health and wellness news stories, and Virgin Radio UK, providing the latest entertainment news and working on celebrity interviews. She has experience reporting on a variety of topics including music, literature, motorsport, entertainment and health. In previously published work, she has reviewed live music events, books, and wellness products. She values the importance of tech enhancing your life rather than taking over, and as a music fanatic, she is always looking for the best way to listen to new music releases. Discovering the top audio equipment that enhances sound quality and provides optimum comfort is what Ashley does best. In her spare time, Ashley enjoys hitting her reading goals on Goodreads by getting into the latest novels with a cup of tea as well as getting out in the Welsh mountains for a good hike on the weekend.

When trying to find the best robot vacuum for your home, it’s important to consider all of the variables. What kind of flooring do you have in your home? Are there any pets? Children? Each robot vacuum has its strengths and weaknesses.

The strengths of the Dreame L50s Pro Ultra include great cleaning on hard floors, with accurate mapping. The price point is also very attractive for the performance, and the base station is low-maintenance for busy households.

However, if you have a home with carpet, this robot vac should be a skip for you as it struggles here. It also leaves some residue behind after mopping too. To find out more and see if it could be the right fit for your home, keep reading this full Dreame L50 Pro Ultra review.

Price

£649

Robot dimensions

13.8 x 13.8 x 4.1 inches

Base station dimensions

23.2 x 18.0 x 13.4 inches

Suction power

30,000Pa

Mapping

Yes

App

Yes

Self-emptying

Yes

Mop function

Yes

Battery

5,200mAh

Runtime

171 minutes

The Dreame L50s Pro Ultra is available for £649 on Amazon U.K. in White or Black. This is a very reasonable price for the good performance you get from this robovac. This specific model isn’t available in the U.S. However, you can buy the Dreame L50 Ultra for $899 from Amazon , which has slightly lower suction power.

Around a similar price is the Roomba Max 775 Complete . This robovac costs £799, and while it’s pretty loud, it will leave crisp cleaning lines behind on your carpet.

However, I don’t love the roller mop on the Roomba. Instead, I'd recommend the Roborock Qrevo 2 Pro for £1,199. This is more expensive, but as I always say — when it comes to robovacs, you need to spend more to get good performance.

The Dreame L50s Pro Ultra looks almost identical to the flagship Dreame X50 Ultra. Design-wise, there isn’t much that separates these two models, but their specs are very different. The base station measures 23.2 x 18.0 x 13.4 inches, but has a sleek design so it’s not an eyesore in your home.

In the base station, there’s a self-emptying dustbin, along with clean and dirty water tanks. It can maintain itself for up to 100 days without taking up a lot of space.

The robot measures 23.2 x 18.0 x 13.4 inches, which, again, is the same size as the X50 Ultra Complete. The L50s Pro Ultra looks a little different, though, since it has a sensor that is permanently deployed, unlike the retractable sensor on the X50 Ultra Complete.

With the Dreame L50s Pro Ultra, you get circular mop pads that clean themselves in the docking station. I find this shape far more effective than roller mops you get with other robot vacuums such as the Roomba Max 775 Combo .

Another sleek design feature of the L50s Pro Ultra is the extending side brush. This sweeps all of the dust and debris that can get caught up at the sides of the room into the path of the vacuum for easy cleanup.

The bumper on the front of the robot is also very bouncy, and this helps prevent damage as it bumps into surroundings.

The Dreame L50s Pro Ultra uses the Dreame app. I’ve used this app before when testing other home appliances from Dreame, and its user-friendly interface is one of my favorites to use in my home.

All of the controls are easily mapped out, and when you initially set up the app with your device, it gives you a walkthrough of controls.

I like that I can adjust the operations of the vacuum each time it’s used, as I don’t need to robovac on full suction power for every single clean, so I can save some power.

Mapping the ground floor of my home with the Dreame L50s Pro Ultra took around 10 minutes. This is what I’ve come to expect when initially mapping my home with a new robot vacuum. It uses a laser distance sensor (LDS) to build a map and identify any obstacles.

The map also denotes where there’s carpet or hard floors, so the robovac knows when it needs to lift the mops up from the floor. It shows the room boundaries accurately, and you’re able to name them in the app.

I was generally impressed with the cleaning capabilities of the Dreame L50s Pro Ultra. It did a great job of picking up most of the debris on hard floors, and left my kitchen sparkling after a mopping session. With that said, if your home is mostly upholstered with carpet, then you should try the Dreame X60 Pro Ultra Complete, as this has a much higher suction power for better results.

To test the vacuuming performance of the Dreame L50s Pro Ultra, I conducted my usual lab testing criteria first on hard flooring, and then on carpet. Operation is a little quieter than the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete that I recently tested, but that’s because of the lower suction power.

Hardwood floor:

I think the performance on hard floors is very good. Seeing as this robovac only costs £649, it did a good job of picking up most of the debris. The side-sweeping arm did a good job of gathering any debris that moved to the side of the room.

Dustbin weight before

Dustbin weight after

Percentage of debris picked up

Hair (5g)

25g

29g

80%

Rice Krispies (20g)

25g

40.5g

76%

Chia seeds (20g)

25g

39.2g

71%

It’s worth noting that on hard floors in particular, the robot pushed around a lot of the debris with the airflow it was producing. This wasn't a great deal — certainly not as bad as the Mova V70 Ultra Complete — but it was enough to impact cleaning.

Carpet:

Carpet performance is a different story entirely. The extendable side-sweeping arm worked well to gather debris at the edges of the room. But the wheels then seemed to crush and push debris into the carpet. This quickly proved frustrating when, after cleaning was complete, I was looking at a sea of crushed Rice Krispies.

Dustbin weight before

Dustbin weight after

Percentage of debris picked up

Hair (5g)

25g

26.2g

24%

Rice Krispies (20g)

25g

36.4g

57%

Chia seeds (20g)

25g

27.5g

12%

It also had a hard time picking up chia seeds, which are small and naturally fall through the pile of the carpet.

To evaluate the mopping capabilities of the Dreame L50s Pro Ultra, I put ketchup, soy sauce and mayonnaise on my kitchen floor. I then created a spot-cleaning routine for the robovac, so it would only focus on the area.

The floor was completely clean afterwards, although there was a slight residue left behind after the clean was completed. The Dreame X60 Max Ultra Complete does a much better job of ensuring all residue was gone.

Maintenance with the Dreame L50s Pro Ultra couldn’t be easier because it essentially looks after itself for 100 days. With the clean and dirty water tanks along with the base station’s dustbin, the robovac can empty itself and refill its own water. The cleaning solution that comes with the robovac also auto-refills, so the mopping always smells fresh.

It can also clean the mop pads with 100ºC water, so you don’t have to touch the grime after it’s cleaned your floors. The base station also dries the mops with hot air, so they’re always good to go for your next round of cleaning.

The Dreame L50s Pro Ultra is an affordable robot vacuum for the performance you’re getting. The base station also makes the experience incredibly low maintenance, which is useful if you have a particularly busy household. It excels on hard floors, and the mapping is simple yet accurate.

However, performance on carpets is quite poor, with a lot of debris left behind and embedded in the carpet. There is some residue left over after mopping is completed.

It’s impressed me in some ways and totally let me down in others, but for excellent robovac performance, you need to spend on a flagship.

Источник: Latest from Tom's Guide