Xiaomi Dreame Bot L10 Pro test - finally an innovative robotic vacuum cleaner
The Xiaomi Dreame Bot L10 Pro is packed with innovations that can make a big difference.
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Also watch our few minute tutorial video!
Introductory
Dreame, Roborock, Roidmi, Viomi, Mijia. Do you know what these companies have in common? Surely many of you have figured out two things. One is that they all fall under Xiaomi one way or another, the other is that they all make robotic vacuum cleaners, just like Xiaomi.
I thought a lot about what made sense of it, and then I thought I found a solution. There is an item in the trade that is worth covering the market multiple times because it is placed in front of the buyer, say out of 50 machines so not 5 but 25 will belong to the company, i.e. we are more likely to buy from them.
I also tried to discover some rationality between the knowledge of the manufacturers and the machines. You see, like on phones where Redmi is cheaper, Xiaomi and more expensive handsets, but I haven't found one, in fact!
I noticed that the peak is given by Roborock (not Xiaomi). Cheap is provided by Mijia, Viomi has the best value for money, and so on. So where is the rationality here?
In recent years, I have been offering Viomi machines to everyone. They were the ones who brought in the handling of multiple maps, the separate, high-capacity water tank, and a lot of things at an affordable price. Lately, however, they have stopped a bit. After the Viomi SE, we got the S9 from them, which is a great machine (there will be a test about it soon), just a little expensive.
However, now here’s a new sub-brand, Dreame, whose latest machine, the Bot L10 Pro in this article, has gone through something quite sensational, at least in terms of paper form. They have made innovations in the machine that are worthy of a market leader without exception.
Among the novelties are expensive technology, but also a penny item, regardless of which each will be worth mentioning, I will also report on them in the article. And there’s one more thing, and that is the price. The Dreame Bot L10 Pro has got a cheeky low price that will completely upset the market. I don't even understand which manufacturer will be able to kick the ball next to him. Maybe none!
Packaging and accessories
The Dreame Bot L10 Pro box is just like what you would expect from an expensive high-end machine. The pictures are beautiful, the black color is elegant, the box is informative too, really, you don't have to be better!
Opening the lid we see the usual things. A chunky handling description, a water tank that can be attached to the belly of the machine, under which is the vacuum cleaner. Next to the machine you will find the dock with the EU-connected shaving cable and a round brush underneath.
Well, the number of accessories is nowhere near high-end, in fact, we get surprisingly few things. Nowadays, the minimum is usually the spare round brush, but many times a second MOP is added, plus a HEPA filter next to the machines. Dreame also seems to be trying to keep the price low by reducing the number of accessories. Let’s say they did it too, though I’m not sure it’s precisely because of the spare HEPA filter.
External
Externally, the Dreame Bot L10 Pro is very similar to the Viomi S3 I used, which was Viomi’s top machine for a long time. That’s probably why you got the cool piano lacquer polish that looks good until you start using it.
If you use it, on the other hand, every fingerprint, every speck of dust will be visible on it. Okay, this isn’t a crazy big problem, since by default you don’t mind when you save I don’t go after it and see how dusty the lid is.
So, the Bot L10 Pro is also a nice black, so to speak, it has been given an “polish” that creates an exclusive effect. Really flashy, this has to be acknowledged!
The first half of the top of the machine can be opened as usual, during which you will find the large dust container. You don't have to share this water tank, so it's really convenient size, for me it's quite approx. empty every two cleanings.
Under the lid we find the small brush with the blade, with which we can remove the curled hairs from the round brush. You may not need this for this vacuum cleaner, but I’ll write about that later! Surprisingly, there is a reset button and a indicator LED for wifi under the cover.
At the top of the machine, as usual, we find the laser gun turret, and behind it are three pushbuttons.
Bottom again, just the usual stuff. A round brush, a cylindrical brush, large rubber wheels in the middle, small rubber roller in front. Around it is the location of the fall protection sensors and at the back the MOP integrated with the water tank. We also find two contacts here, which I will return to later!
There are common things around the edge of the vacuum cleaner and there is something interesting as well. The back of the exhaust air grille, 2-2 infrared sensors on both sides and front to avoid obstacles, and a window on the front that we haven't seen on a vacuum cleaner so far. I will write about this in the next chapter!
Abilities, novelties
If you’re not angry, I’ll skip the usual robotic vacuum cleaner stuff because there are some novelties to focus on, and that won’t be enough either!
Let’s start with the suction power, which is 4000 Pa for this vacuum cleaner. I don’t think it says much to many people, so you have to put this data into context to be understandable.
So, the suction power of robotic vacuum cleaners is the same as that of a normal crumb vacuum cleaner, which is not much. Still, the thing works, thanks to a lot of tricks. The operation of the round brush and cylinder brush at the bottom of the vacuum cleaner, the design of the air duct and dust container, and a lot more.
Manufacturers are trying to improve on the low suction power, of course. From the initial 400 Pa we first got to 1000, then came the 2000 machines, and the current peak machines are approaching 3000 Pa.
The Viomi S3, which is a very good vacuum cleaner is 2600 Pa, and the newer, more expensive Viomi S9 is 2700 Pa.
And then here’s the Dreame that kicked the door on the vacuum cleaner manufacturers, and not that it jumped to 3000 Pa, but immediately opened with 4000 Pa suction. This is then double the performance of an average mid-range machine.
This is the first point that will make the price interesting at the end of the article!
Next up is the second point, the second innovation we find at the cylinder brush! I mentioned above the blade used to cut long, curled hairs or dog hair from the brush. Well, you may not really need that!
The manufacturer has figured out that he puts small plastic teeth on the part under the brush, which cut and remove hair and hair from the brush during rotation, thus improving the efficiency of the machine. It’s a tiny, penny trick, but if it comes in, a lot of people will bless the designer’s brain and ingenuity!
Well, these two points can already make the machine desirable for a target group. No, I am not thinking of the group of long-haired people, but of those who e.g. they keep a dog.
I am often asked which robot I recommend for a canine household. So far, I’ve just hummed and said, well, the strongest thing is to suck the hair off the carpet, too. Well, from now on I can safely say that the Dreame Bot L10 Pro will be a good choice!
The next innovation is even more interesting, but to understand why, I need to tell you a little bit first.
Orienteering is very important for robots. Initially, manufacturers solved this with infrared sensors and collision sensors. The vacuum cleaners didn’t have a “brain” at the time, they didn’t plan a route, they went until they met a wall or a chair leg.
Manufacturers have tried to improve sensing capabilities. The cameras came, then LIDAR. I don’t pinch the former for my part, and when asked why, I jokingly answer that because they see under my skirt.
I'm funny, but it's not a joke at all. Specifically, the skirt does, I don’t wear it as a man, I’m not Scottish either, so…
Well, that's not the point. Many times I get a question about whether the little Chinese aren’t spying and I don’t feel problematic that the floor plan of my apartment might be stored on a Chinese server. Well, in short, my answer is no! Who cares? Which one from China is interested in the floor plan of my apartment?
However, there is a limit to the private sector that no manufacturer will allow me to cross. I will not let a camera into the apartment. Nothing! Don’t have a camera on your TV, and don’t have a camera on my vacuum cleaner, even if it’s not called a camera but an opto sensor, an optical sensor, or whatever.
These are cameras, machines that see them, and by default they are used to recognize objects, but if a person is looking at a picture of a vacuum cleaner, they certainly won’t look to see what funny slippers the figure has, but a thousand other things.
Today, robotic vacuum cleaners, at least some of the better ones, are equipped with a laser sensor. It rotates on top of the machines. A laser goes out, the reflected light is received by a single sensor, and the vacuum cleaner already “sees”. Detects objects, table legs, walls. It calculates the distance from the object and the wall, and uses it to plan a route in real time. Kingdom, but there is a small bump!
And this bump is that our apartment is not a museum, not a static something where all the objects are always in the same place. Sometimes staying there under the bed or even in the middle of the room is a child’s play. We're not putting on our slippers. We push the chair further. We forget to roll up the extension cord, we forget to put away the spreader and I could list more.
Smooth laser-sensing vacuum cleaners can do two things. Either they ignore the obstacle and go through it, or if it is so high that they hit it, they get out. In the latter case, there is nothing wrong, but in the former there is more.
If the machine crosses the obstacle, a lot can happen. For example, he winds up the extension cord, hangs on the spreader tube foot, sucks up the child’s toy, disassembles the dog shit in the apartment. And what have manufacturers done to avoid this? Well, exactly what I didn’t desire was a camera mounted on the front of their latest vacuum cleaners.
And after a lot of text, we just got to what we found at the beginning of the Dreame Bot L10 Pro! Well, not a camera, but something much better, a second laser sensor, but not just any, but something like what we find on iPhones, for example.
This laser illuminates and scans the objects in two directions, and “sees” a 3D image of them, and not only sees, but better recognizes what has been in front of it. So you will not identify the book left on the carpet as a threshold, and you will certainly have a good chance of seeing and recognizing the heaped end product made by our dog.
This very special extra, i.e. the 3D laser scanner was the second thing that will be especially interesting at the end of the article for the price!
There is another novelty that is not really a novelty, we can only meet them for the first time in a cheaper robot. I mention them together because their operation is partly related. So it’s all about the carpet detection and the pump in the mop tank!
The former is good for two things. One is that it detects if you get stuck on a carpet, in which case it automatically increases the suction power (if you haven’t used the machine at maximum) to suck the dirt out of the carpet fibers as well. The other is to turn off the mop when the carpet is detected.
The latter requires a pump!
So, most vacuum cleaners transfer water to the MOP using gravity. That is, if there is water in the tank, it will flow out if you have parquet, if you follow, and even if you carpet vacuuming just the machine. Now, we can see that it doesn't make much sense to wash the carpet. For this, it is often suggested to drag a virtual wall on the map to where the carpet is.
There are two problems with the virtual wall. One is that beef is hard to draw exactly where the carpet is, the other is that the carpets are usually not nailed down, so sometimes they are sometimes moved away and the drawn wall is already worth nothing.
If, on the other hand, you have a pump and the machine detects the carpet, you can also do so by turning off the pump so you don’t wash the carpet. Or just a little bit, because there's water left on the MOP, we don't know what to do with it.
Experiences
Okay, we’re beyond paper form, I think everyone is sitting on needles waiting to find out what we perceive in reality from the many promises, the many innovations!
Well, my experience is mixed, but before I go into that, we need to get acquainted with the software as well!
Most importantly, since the vacuum cleaner belongs to Xiaomi, it fits into the Xiaomi smart home system. Unfortunately, you don’t know any other smart home ecosystem, but that may change later.
We love the Xiaomi Mi Home app, easy to use, user friendly. The installation of the vacuum cleaner is also simple, basically we just need to turn it on, start the program, it will detect and set it up. We give you what your name should be, we physically determine which room you are in, and then you can start working.
If the software does not recognize it, you need the + sign in the upper right corner, by clicking on it and then selecting it you can add the vacuum cleaners to the system.
Now that we’ve been able to start, let’s see that it’s done!
Well, the suction power can be adjusted in four steps, the strongest is not much louder than the maximum for my Viomi V3, even though it is only 2600 Pa, that's 4000. I'd be happy to say that 4000 Pa is enough for everything, but unfortunately not. Even with such a force, some dirt remains in the carpet, at least if it has a longer strand than ours.
It would be difficult to measure whether this residue is more than in the case of Viomi, but probably not, as it is better at heart.
I couldn’t try long hair and vacuuming dog hair. My couple has long hair, but for some reason it only falls in the bathroom. We don’t have a dog, so I couldn’t do either the fur or the dog poop test, the soul didn’t get me to bring in a pile from the square. But everything has a limit…
At the same time, I tried object recognition with three things. With a pile of books, a phone charger and an extension cord, and the foot of our expander. The latter, which I especially hate, so far all of our vacuum cleaners have tried to go through it, and they’ve all come up.
So, the result is mixed. Definitely better than any machine I’ve ever had, but there’s still something to learn.
He always avoided the thicker cord of the extension cord, there were none of the 5 times he went through it. The phone charger cable remained intact four times out of the 5 tests. At the last one, however, the roller brush was wound up, not because it was not “seen” by the machine, but because it did not come out in a large enough arc, and the round brush got stuck in the end of the cable, pulled it under the machine.
The pile of books (2-3 thinner) didn't catch on either. The question here for me was whether he sees books stacked at a threshold as an obstacle to be overcome or avoided. The threshold should be seen as a threshold, you have to go through it, but for books this may not be a good idea, especially if the MOP is also in use.
So, the book test is also ticked.
So object recognition works visibly. Of course, I can’t tell if the objects were recognized correctly by the machine, but I’m sure it precisely avoided what had to be avoided.
What was even more surprising was how well the Bot L10 Pro handled when the environment changed during cleaning.
With the vacuum cleaners I have had so far, I observed that the apartment was treated as a static, unchanging area. If the blind was pulled in during mapping, it was viewed as a wall, and even though I pulled it out for the next cleaning, no attempt was made to clean up the location of the “wall” because of the previous map.
I did the same way last year when we moved. There were boxes in random places in the apartment. Sometimes only for 1-2 days, sometimes longer. Sometimes the box was included in the mapped apartment, and then it was no longer there for the next cleaning, the vacuum cleaner was neatly removed, as if nothing had changed.
Well, that’s not how it works with the Dreame Bot L10 Pro. If I put a pile of books in the middle of the room during the cleaning, it got out nicely, but it didn’t leave a definitive mark on the map.
If I took the pile again and the vacuum cleaner cleaned its place nicely afterwards. Of course, this probably also requires you to “notice” the books are no longer there, but the point is not. The point is that it treats the environment as visibly dynamic, which can certainly change, even during cleaning.
Summary
I didn’t cover a lot of things in the article. For things like wiping, how to vacuum, whether to fall down the stairs, and such. I didn’t cover them because these basic things are essentially perfect, there’s not much to look at them.
The suction force of 4000 Pa is good, object recognition is also good (more or less), the pumped water tank is also to be welcomed, although there are so many negatives in this connection that tap water should be avoided as much as possible so that the tiny pump does not calcify.
Overall, the Dreame Bot L10 Pro has become a really good machine. It is strong, beautiful and cleans well. There is only one thing that can ruin the beautiful picture so far, the price, but as you can guess from what has been described so far, it won't be bad either!
The introductory campaign of the vacuum cleaner will start on May 8 at 19 pm in the manufacturer's official Aliexpress shop. It will also be available for purchase from an EU warehouse, and the price will be only $ 379,49, or roughly HUF 113, due to the introductory campaign. It would be more accurate if I hadn’t even received a special coupon code for the article. With the DREAMEL10PR0 code, the price can be reduced to HUF 104. And for those who wouldn't have enough, I'll tell you that the first 210 customers will also receive an Oclean X Pro electric toothbrush as a gift, which would otherwise cost HUF 15.
So, if we also deduct this from the price of the vacuum cleaner, we get a total of 90 thousand forints, which is not only good, but really sensational, as it is many tens of thousands of forints cheaper than any other robot we find in the upper-middle category.
One more important information: Since we buy the machine in the manufacturer's official webshop, we get a two-year warranty instead of the usual one!
If you like it, you can buy it by clicking on the link below. Don't forget to use coupon code DREAMEL10PR0! If ordered from an EU warehouse, there will be no duty or VAT, but delivery will be much faster than with a Chinese order.
Buy here:
Dreame Bot L10 Pro robotic vacuum cleaner - Coupon code: DREAMEL10PR0
