I tested the Dreame Matrix 10 Ultra robot vacuum cleaner with triple mops – it’s smart, but I want smarter

The Dreame Matrix 10 Ultra is the world’s first robot vacuum cleaner with multi-mop change. The door to its large base station is home to three different pairs of mop pads and it can automatically select from them.

As with any good robot helper, it does the hard work and you call the shots. So the machine trundles around for a quick bit of mapping first, which it does optically. Then you see the map on the app screen, divide and name the rooms, and select the mops for each.

One pair of mop pads is general, one’s designed for greasy areas like kitchen and dining room, and one’s designed for bathrooms. Other brands of robo vac come with spare pads but this is the only one that comes with a selection of different pads that it can choose from.

Even though the Dreame cleans its pads at 100°C after use, the idea of keeping one pair strictly for bathrooms sounds great in terms of hygiene.

The dock – which has clean lines and looks like a mini fridge – is also home to three different tanks of cleaning liquid, a large reservoir of clean water and a dirty water collection tank. And of course a bag for the vacuum cleaner to empty itself into.

It was only when emptying the dirty water tank that I could see what a good job the Dreame had done.

The Dreame’s other big selling point is that it can “clear obstacles of up to 8cm in height”. But sadly this didn’t always work out on test.

I set it first to map the ground floor, which it did well, then to vacuum and later to mop. Cleaning was methodical, quiet and reasonably fast. It was so-so at navigating the forest of dining chair legs but at least it didn’t get phased.

The dog found it quiet enough and didn’t see Dreame as an intruder. Because it wasn’t… it got stuck at the threshold trying to climb in to his crate. The vac had lifted itself up and then got stuck. Blissfully it stopped trying and asked me for help after a short time.

Cleverly this was automatically marked on the map as a no-go zone. But when I took the Dreame upstairs to map the first and second floors, it found that the steps up into the bathrooms were passable and marked them as such.

Vacuuming and mapping were impressive. I liked the app and found it intuitive. And the Dreame has built-in voice control. You can say “OK Dreame…” and then various natural voice commands for most things.

Mopping seemed good at first, with the robot returning to base to clean its pads after each room even if they didn’t need swapping. But then I covered my kitchen floor with baby powder to give the Dreame a proper test.

“Mum, your job’s lit,” said my son, which is the teenage equivalent of a five-star review. I took it.

When I commanded the Dreame to clean the freshly powdered kitchen, I realised that its mopping had limitations. Vacuuming went well and I could see the patterns of where it had been in the powder, which was being methodically lifted.

But the floor was still a bit powdery, so the Dreame’s variable mopping performance was visible. The pads start out wet and then gradually dry out. In my kitchen’s case, the edges were well mopped, with a pair of shiny wide lines showing where the pads had been, but they must have dried out by the time it got to the middle of the kitchen floor. The pads still scrubbed but they were dry. A savvy user could cheat by dividing the room up into zones, so the mop was refreshed each time, but you shouldn’t need to.

And trying to mop upstairs drove me potty because of course you lose the advantage of the Dreame being able to go back to base and swap mops. That said, I loved that I could use it on other floors thanks to multiple maps.

You can pick a style of mop and instruct it to vacuum and mop upstairs at the same time. But you can’t take it upstairs and then expect it to be able to change between general mop pads for the bedrooms and the special bathroom ones.

Mapping is quick and visual. And the Dreame marks obstacles and impassable thresholds, so it doesn’t make the same mistake twice basically.

But I found that mapping different floors got tiresome. I would hand-carry the vac upstairs, set it down and it would map within 5 minutes. But then, rather than remembering it was on a different floor from its dock, it would wander aimlessly looking for it. How can something so smart be so dumb at times?!

I ended up making four maps for a three storey house, so I could clean a room that it often closed. But then any time I wanted to clean an upstairs floor, I’d use the app and the Dreame would promptly clean the ground floor again. It should have collected the right mop pads and then told me to give it a lift.

If I wanted to clean upstairs, I had to manually find the mop pads and then move the Dreame. Either that or risk multiple journeys.

To its credit, the Dreame repeatedly did not fall down the stairs. And it could climb up the 20mm threshold into the first-floor bathroom. When it encounters a small step like this, it backs up, uses a pair of arms to lift the front up, then rolls forward to mount the step. This worked great on the bathroom – but got it stuck when it tried to climb into the dog crate.

I also made use of the natural voice commands. You can say: “OK Dreame, clean over here”, which was handy when the cat threw up (she’s a veteran gadget tester too). It left its dock and looked for me. I couldn’t see me, so I had to stand nearer to call it over. Then move and call it over again. It worked fine but was much more laborious than cleaning up said cat vom. Thankfully it was bile and grass, not a pile of cat food. The Dreame vacuumed and mopped about a square metre and cleaned up the hard floor fine.

If the Dreame Matrix 10 Ultra did everything it set out to do then I’d love it. It looks great and it’s unapologetically high end. Mopping with a selection of clean pads is a great idea, as is coping with room thresholds. But sadly both features fell a bit short.

If you’re spending around a grand on a robot vacuum, you have high expectations and you probably have a decent-sized home. If it’s all on one level then this robot lives up to its brand name. But carrying a vacuum up and down stairs to get mop pads isn’t the robot-enabled lifestyle I’m looking for.

Maybe you’re on one level, or you only want to mop downstairs. But I found it a drag. Other Dreame models like the Aqua10 family, which use a single roller mop that isn’t swapped but is always kept wet, could be a good shout. You don’t get interchangeable mop heads but they should at least stay wet.

Caramel Quin Contributor

About

Caramel is an award-winning journalist, engineering graduate and professional nerd who tests a wide range of consumer technology. She was on the team that launched Stuff in 1996. She also worked on the magazine’s 1999 US launch. Caramel has been freelance ever since. She prides herself on real-world testing and understanding geek speak, translating it into plain English. Her pet hates are jargon, pointless products and over-complicated instruction manuals.