Review: Dreame X30 Master Robot Vacuum (feat. X30 Ultra)

For homeowners planning for a renovation, you’d want to plan for your built-ins around the Dreame X30 Master if you are keen on what it offers. Long story short, the Dreame X30 Master is designed to be fully embedded into carpentry or existing furniture to achieve a super clean look. The X30 Master also adds new improvements over the existing L10s Pro Ultra and L20 Ultra robot vacuums. The Dreame X30 Master retails from S$2,169 (DIY installation) or up to S$2,419 (with onsite installation + 2-year installation guarantee).

Comparisons

There are many versions of Dreame’s robot vacuums, so if you need a quick refresher on the features of some of their flagship robot vacuum you can refer below: 

Design and build quality

The Dreame X30 Master looks unlike any of the robot vacuums we’ve reviewed because of its short stature. The reason why the Dreame X30 Master has such a low height is because there are no water tanks built inside the base station. To use its mopping features, you must install the provided water hookup kit.

The design of the Dreame X30 Master‘s base station is sleek and modern with its brushed dark grey finish. Whether you decide to house it your service yard or kitchen, it should well with most interior design themes and the appliances nearby. It would be nice to see a white based base station added as a variant so that it will blend it more with light colour palette interior design.

The Dreame X30 Master is a sibling product along side the new X30 Ultra. The only difference that X30 Master has over the X30 Ultra is from its base station capabilities. While the base station of the X30 Master is short, it is actually quite long in terms of its depth, measuring 485 * 426 * 280mm (D * L * H). So if there is no intention to place the X30 Master under a furniture, you might be better off with the X30 Ultra. The base station of the X30 Ultra measures 457 * 340 * 591 (D * L * H).

Given most kitchen countertops are typically 60cm in depth, the Dreame X30 Master should fit nicely with enough space at the back for room to breathe. The top component of the X30 Master, ie. Electric Hatch, opens via the touch capacitive button. The electric hatch houses the 4.2L dust bag as well as compartments to pour the detergent in.

In terms of build quality, the Dreame X30 Master robot vacuum as always, solid and top notch. Components feel high quality and the onboard buttons are tactile. The front of the vacuum features rubber gasket to cushion any potential collision impact with your furniture. The mop pads are attached to the vacuum magnetically.

The X30 Master uses a similar design language as the L10s Pro Ultra Heat, whereby its uses a flap to access the dustbox filter.

Cleaning effectiveness and user experience

If you take a look at the comparison table above, the X30 Master feels like a combination of two very capable robot vacuums – L20 Ultra and L10s Pro Ultra Heat, and with new upgrades to make the overall cleaning more automatic and maintenance free.

Like with all the previous Dreame robot vacuums, the X30 Master comes with a rubber brush. I have no complains with the current brush as it is effective, but long-term use tends to gather tangled hair on the brush. If this annoys you, Dreame has released a new TriCut brush which aims to reduce such occurrence as it long will get sliced up while being vacuumed in.

Dreame X30 Master uses LiDAR for navigation and AI + 3D structured light for obstacle avoidance. My experience with the X30 Master is consistent with all the other Dreame vacuums tested – the obstacle avoidance is very accurate. When I place a small obstacle to block its path, the X30 Master is smart enough to make a turn to go around it. There is zero collision with any of my furniture and walls as well. Wires however are trickier to handle, and the X30 Master can sometimes go over them. The X30 Master does keep a log of all the potential obstacles in the mapping so that it can plan the most efficient route for cleaning.

8,300 Pa suction power & Fill Light

X30 Master retains one of my favourite features of the L20 Ultra which is called ‘Fill Light’, where it will automatically turn on the LED lights at the front whenever it senses the area its cleaning to be dark.

Just when I thought 7,000Pa was strong, the X30 Master gets yet another upgrade to suction power to max out at 8,300Pa (+19% stronger). This extra suction strength is appreciated when vacuuming your carpets, especially those where dirt gets trapped easier in the layers. You can use the maximum setting by enabling Max+ in the cleaning settings. ‘Carpet Boost’ should also be enabled if you want stronger suction power to be applied when encountering carpets.

The 8,300 Pa suction power is strong enough to remove most of the debris trapped on my living room carpet at the expense of a loud noise. reminiscent of traditional vacuum cleaners. You can choose up to 4 different suction settings – (1) Quiet, (2) Standard, (3) Strong, and (4) Turbo. ‘Standard’ setting is usually enough to rid my house floor of any dirt.

Mopping smart features

X30 Master is a 2-in-1 machine as it able to do vacuuming and mopping. The Dreamehome app is well designed for customisations so you can enable settings such as “vacuum only” or “mopping only” or even “mop after vacuum” for flexible control and convenience. If the task is vacuuming, it will release the mop pads and keep it at the base station while the vacuum goes out to vacuum.

*NEW* Intelligent Edge Cleaning (MopExtend 3.0)

One of the key upgrades of the X30 Master is its MopExtend 3.0 technology. MopExtend is already a feature of older Dreame robot vacuums, where the mop pads is able to push out and clean wall edges. The upgraded MopExtend is able to reach further out to clean skirting edges especially in the narrow slits of my kitchen carpentry.

The X30 Master can accurately detect where edges and skirtings were to automatically extend its mop pads for deeper cleaning. You can take a look at the above video to get a better understanding of how it works.

Customised carpet cleaning

The mop pads of the Dreame X30 Master can be deposited at the base station, so if you are using high pile carpets you can choose to completely remove them to keep your carpets dry. There are five settings which you can toggle when dealing with carpets:

1. Mops removal: Removes the mop pads entirely
2. Mops raising: Lift mop pads up to 10.5mm (suitable for low-pile carpets)
3. Carpet avoidance: Robot will avoid the carpet during cleaning
4. Carpet boost: Robot will increase suction to vacuum once
5. Intensive carpet cleaning: Robot will vacuum twice at reduced speed

Maintenance

With the Dreame X30 Master, most of the manual tasks are made redundant. These features are not new, as we have seen them either on the L20 Ultra or L10s Pro Ultra Heat. They are as follows:

1. Automatic dust collection
2. Automatic mop pad cleaning with hot water
3. Automatic mop pad drying with warm air
4. Automatic water refilling
5. Automatic water draining
6. Automatic cleaning solution refilling

*NEW* Auto Washboard cleaning

The next upgrade that the X30 Master received is the self-cleaning base station. With the L20 Ultra and L10s Pro Ultra Heat, most maintenance tasks are automated but you’d have to clean the washboard from time to time as gunk and dirt can build up. The washboard of the X30 Master comes with dual wiper blades to clean the surface. The cleaning of the washboard starts concurrently with the mop-cleaning process of using 60ºC hot water to reduce stain residue. The mop pads are also blown with warm air for 2 hours to dry them in order to prevent odour.

I really appreciate this new feature as I have one less thing to maintain. When using the L20 Ultra, I have to remember to clean the washboard every month. With the X30 Master I no have to clean the washboard separately. If you still prefer to manually clean the washboard, it is still removable.

Water hookup kit – Auto refilling and drainage

With the X30 Master, the water hookup kit comes bundled by default in the box and you have to install it in order to access the mopping features. You can refer to the below picture to plan accordingly with your interior designer or contractor to cater for water points and electrical points.

For more detailed guide on how to install the water hookup kit, you can refer to the below image which I’ve extracted from the user guide:

Once the water hookup kit is setup, you can test the connection in the app as shown below:

Mopping will become fully automated experience as you no longer have to empty out the dirty water tank after mopping. You don’t have to ensure that there is enough water in the clean water tank as well.

Dreamehome app features

You will need to download the Dreamehome app to setup the X30 Master. Once the app is download, simply scan the QR code under the faceplate of the vacuum and you should be directed to connect the robot vacuum to Wi-Fi.

Room management

The first thing you’d need to do is to map out your house, which should take 5 to 10 minutes. Once the mapping is complete, Dreame automatically sections the map into different rooms. You can edit the map by dividing and merging different areas, rename or give it a room name. There is also a 3D map which offers a nice visualisation when you start adding furniture choices from the app – there needs to be more choices such as a study desk

During the mapping, the X30 Master is also able to identify obstacles and will place it on the mapping of the house. For areas that you do not require the Dreame L20 Ultra to perform cleaning such as toilet, you can set virtual walls or no-go zones so that it will prevent from entering the area.

This would be especially helpful for large houses with more than one storey to prevent the X30 Master from falling down a staircase. You can setup multi-floor maps as well.

Camera monitoring mode

An interesting feature is the camera monitoring mode on the X30 Master. In this mode, you can remotely control the movement of the X30 Master and see in real time where it is heading.

You also instruct the robot vacuum to go to a specific point in your house by tapping a marked point on the map. When this mode is activated, X30 Master will have a voice prompt to announce that the camera monitoring is active for privacy protection.

Cleaning presets, customisation, and scheduling

A typical cleaning routine will clean the whole house with its CleanGenius AI, where it will identify room types and recommends the most suitable cleaning strategy depending on the room. If you simply want to clean a particular part of your house, you can opt for Zone cleaning by drawing a zone on the map. After which the X30 Master will navigate to the zone and start cleaning. Alternatively, you can also order the X30 Master to clean specific rooms as well.

Whether or not you are deciding to clean the whole house or selected zones/rooms, you can setup customised cleaning settings so that X30 Master does exactly what you want it to do. You can choose from four different cleaning modes.

• Vacuum only
• Mop only
• Vacuum & mop at the same time
• Mop after vacuuming

There is also an option to setup customised cleaning type for each room but it doesn’t seem to have the mop after vacuuming preset available in the options. I hope this is some Dreame will add in software updates in the future.

Lastly, you can convert all these customised settings into a schedule. You can use either a customised cleaning format which you’d setup or rely on CleanGenius.

Conclusion

Dreame’s X30 Master or X30 Ultra is their best robot vacuum yet. Combining the best from both the L20 Ultra or L10s Pro Ultra Heat, you have a robot vacuum that cleans effectively and smartly, as well as making maintenance as fuss free as possible. The improved MopExtend 3.0 and Auto washboard washing features are all very much appreciated. For those who are in the process of renovation, you should evaluate the opportunity to plan your carpentry around the X30 Master if you appreciate having your robot vacuum forming part of your interior design. The X30 Master commands a larger price tag than before staring from S$2,169 (DIY installation) – but you are getting the best there is out there.