Hey guys, welcome to Robotobzor! Today we got a new robot vacuum cleaner in, which can be truly considered one of the best in 2024 – Dreame Bot X40 Pro with an Ultra-thin station. It stands at 28 cm (11 In.), which lets you put it in the kitchen set. But this isn’t the only thing this model can boast. The robot has a retractable side brush that extends to the sides to better get dirt in the corners, a retractable wipe for mopping as well, and a bladed turbobrush, which you don’t need to clean. There’s also an illuminated object detection system, a powerful 12,000 Pa suction, an improved station wipe system and new features. Overall, a serious upgrade, which should increase the efficiency and autonomy of the robot. And you can get all of this for $1000-1250. Now, let’s test out Dreame Bot X40 Pro in detail, highlight the pros and cons, and then I’ll tell you my own opinion. Let’s get rolling!
Amazon (Global Version X40 Ultra): https://amzn.to/4aTq7jC
Regionality
The first and foremost thing you should know about Dreame Bot X40 Pro is that this model is designed specifically for the Chinese market. And so, you can’t just use it outside of China, as the app has region blockers.
At the time of this review, it can be bypassed on both iOS and Android smartphones. I won’t describe how, so the brand’s reps don’t patch it, but it’s easy to find online, and we did it with no problem. Everything is still possible!
Kit
The kit includes:
- The robot itself with its station.
- Two wipe holders.
- Tubes and other accessories to connect your station to the utilities.
- A bladed turbobrush, which you should replace from the regular bristled brush.
- A brush for cleaning the robot and station off.
- A bottle of the brand’s detergent.
- A manual in Chinese.
As always, we didn’t see any extras. Let’s keep moving!
Appearance
Let’s see how the vacuum is set up.The robot is black and round, standing at 104 mm (4.09 In.).
A wall sensor is mounted on the right side of the bumper. The center holds a system of cameras to carefully avoid and recognise objects, using AI Action, just like the last models.
Above the cameras is a backlight, which increases the robot’s visibility in total darkness. In addition to bypassing objects, the camera can broadcast the image to your phone to remotely look after your home.
The lidar handles the navigation. There’s three buttons next to it.
The dustbin is under the top cover, and you can remove the lid to shake out the dirt. It uses a HEPA filter, similar to Roborock, but the mesh filter has been removed. Not sure if this was the best move by Dreame.
The water tank is still hidden inside the robot. Water is pumped into the tank automatically at the station and delivered to the wipes while cleaning.
There are 4 anti-fall sensors and a carpet detector on the bottom of the robot. There;s one three beamed side brush secured by a screw.
So this side brush is equipped with a retractable mechanism, which lets the round robot get all of the corner dirt. This solved one of the key problems of robot vacuum cleaners. Plus, the side brush is raised while mopping, when returning to the station and when cleaning carpets.
The center brush unit is floating. It also has a mechanism that raises the brush when mopping and when returning to the station. “Out of the box,” the robot has a conventional bristle-blade turbo brush that disassembles on both sides. But the kit comes with a new bladed brush. That’s what we’re going to put in.
Behind the turbo brush are the familiar round cloth holders. The left wipe moves out to the right in order to clean the floor close to the baseboard. Theres even an algorithm which rolls out the back of the robot if it realizes that there is a small gap between the floor and the object. For example, under a door or under furniture. Pretty neat!
I should add that the wipe not only presses against the baseboard while cleaning, but also drives into the corner, which improves the quality of cleaning in corners.
The wipes are also automatically lifted when driving onto carpets, when vacuuming and when returning to the station. The lifting height of the wipes has been increased to 10.5 mm (.41 In.). By the way, the brushes are also raised to the same height.
As you can see, all parts of the cleaning module can now be lifted, which is a great improvement! This means there’s no chance of water getting into the suction system or dust container when mopping.
Regarding the station, as I mentioned earlier, my Ultra-Thin model has a 28-centimeter (11 In.) station designed for connecting to the utilities only.
However, Dreame Bot X40 Pro also comes in a version with a regular station that has built-in water tanks. It looks a lot like the Dreame Bot X30 Pro, from a previous review. I think this version is a lot more versatile since it can connect to the utilities or just use its built-in tanks.
So back to the station I have. It’s used by the robot for self-cleaning the dirt bag, washing and drying the wipes. They increased the water temp to 70 degrees Celsius (158 F.) when washing wipes. This is a plus! The wipes are dried with warm air. An additional UV lamp is installed inside the station to sanitize the wipes. I can’t verify its effectiveness, but it’s worth mentioning.
The robot’s drive-in platform has magnetized pins that let the vacuum unhook the wipe holders at the station if needed. This way, the robot can leave the station for vacuuming without the wipes, keeping wet wipes from touching carpets. It’s a unique and smart solution by Dreame.
The robot’s driveway and the wipe washing tray are fully removable, which is great! It makes the station much easier to clean. Inside the wipe washing area, there are scrapers at the bottom that clean the station every time the wipes are washed. This helps make it less maintenance.
The station has a button to start/stop cleaning.
You manually pull out the water and trash tank compartment, and inside you’ll find a 3.2-liter (.84 G.) bag for collecting dirt from the robot’s container. The bag has been updated with a black activated charcoal inner layer for antibacterial protection. There’s also a compartment for detergent, which is automatically mixed with clean water when washing wipes. Plus, there’s a separate tank for dirty water, to maintain the waste byproduct.
At the back, there are two outlets for connecting the pipes, so you don’t need any extra modules-everything fits inside the station. Just connect the pipes to the sewer and water supply. It hooks up to the water through a byway, included in your kit. Super easy to install.
Dreame engineers did a great job with this new model. They’ve added a lot of cool new features. We’ll test it out to see how everything works!
Technical features
Dreame Bot X40 Pro’s main features are up on the screen:
Vacuum:
- Battery Li-Ion 6400 mA*h.
- suction power up to 12000 Pa.
- Work time up to 260 mins.
- Dirt container 350 ml (11.8 Oz.).
- Water tank 80 ml (2.7 Oz.).
- Bag in station: 3,2 L (.84 G.).
- Obstacle size up to 22 mm (0.86 In.).
- Robot’s size: 350*104 mm (13.8×4 In.).
- Station’s size (WDH): 280*426*485 mm (11×16.7×19 In.).
Out of the features, the suction power and off road ability were increased greatly, which I’ll have to test. The station isn’t really that compact though. Yeah it’s low, which is great, but it’s still big and takes up a lot of space, so getting it in your kitchen cabinets is gonna be a squeeze.
For those interested, the clean water tank in the regular station is 4.5 liters (1.18 G.), and the dirty water tank is 4 liters (1 G.).
Functions
As for features, Dreame Bot X40 Pro is controlled through the Dreamehome app. I talked about regionality at the beginning. Here I’ll only note that the app itself is in several languages, the interface is convenient and intuitive. But the robot speaks only in Chinese, which is important to consider.
Dreame Bot X40 Pro’s features are up on the screen, with the new ones highlighted and bolded:
- Cloth washing with hot water (70°C/158°F).
- The turbobrush, side brush, and mops lift.
- The side brush goes up to corners.
- Ability to hide zones on the map.
- You can display crevices on the map.
- Cleans behind curtains (in beta).
- Self-cleaning.
- Dries the wipes with warm air.
- Automatically adds detergent.
- Cleans the floor under furniture.
- Object detection on the floor.
- The camera is illuminated at night.
- Remote home monitoring through the camera.
- Saves multiple maps in memory
- 3D-map of the area.
- Automatically zones the area into rooms.
- Choose zones and rooms to clean.
- Virtual walls and no-go zones (as well as for mopping).
- Regulate suction power.
- Set up how often the wipes are cleaned (By area, by zone, by time).
- User mode.
- CleanGenius mode.
- Cleaning log.
- Set up a cleaning schedule.
- Automatic power increase on carpets.
- Carpet avoidance while mopping.
- Automatic wipe detachment at the station.
- The brand’s voice assistant «OK, Dreame».
What’s interesting is that you can hide unnecessary zones on the map, for example fake rooms made by your mirror.
You can also set if you want the robot to go over thresholds/ramps or not. They, by the way, sell these ramps on their Chinese sites.
But what is more interesting, their ads and promos show that you can clean behind curtains and drapes. Kinda similar to Hobot, you can set zones with curtains on the map where the robot should clean. But I haven’t found this feature in the app. Most likely it will be released in the near future. The groundwork is there. If you set a ramp in the area with curtains, the robot will push through the curtain and pass through it. But so far it goes into error after passing, so the ramp isn’t enough to solve this problem.
As with its older series, CleanGenius mode has been introduced, in which the robot automatically determines the cleaning mode depending on how dirty your floor is,, activating repeated cleaning or independently changing the power, as well as the wipe wetness degree. This is a really smart solution that improves the cleaning efficiency and increasingly integrates AI into the robot’s algorithms.
It’s worth highlighting that the voice assistant understands commands only in Chinese, unfortunately. I’ll also show you how to use the remote home monitoring feature on your phone.
After entering your password, the camera turns on and streams live high quality video to your phone. You can manually control the robot or direct it to a specific spot on the map. You can also take photos, which are saved in a separate folder, and send voice messages through the robot’s speaker.
Another cool feature is “guard mode,” where you can send the robot to a spot, and it will rotate and take photos of the room from all sides. It’s really convenient. The only downside is that the video stream can be a bit laggy since the robot uses Chinese servers. It’s not a huge deal, but you might notice a difference compared to global models.
Testing
Video review of Dreame Bot X40 Pro:
Navigation
Finally, let’s get testing! First of all, let’s check the Dreame Bot X40 Pro’s navigation in a room with obstacles. The robot first cleans around the perimeter of the room, then cleans the entire available area in a snake-like pattern. It identified the dryer legs and neatly made its way around them. It separately swept around the box and chair legs, then returned to the station. Test passed with flying colors!
Speaking of navigating within the house, the robot vacuum cleaned room by room around the perimeter, then in a snaking pattern. After every 20 square meters of cleaning, as I found, it returns to the station and wipes, then starts cleaning from where it had previously finished. There are no untidy areas left, navigation is good on this model!
Object detection
As for the object detection system, in good lighting it is very accurate. The robot successfully recognized 6 out of the 6 objects, displaying them with corresponding icons on the map. Awesome to see! The toy was recognized as a pet because of its shape.
The robot did worse at recognizing objects in total darkness. 3 out of 6 objects were hit, and some of the objects were correctly recognized and marked with the corresponding icons on the map. It’s likely that with a firmware update the robot will be more accurate, because the model is new. But I also have a suspicion that the robot has issues recognizing objects in the dark because of the design change of the backlight. Before it was two lights on the sides of the camera, and now it’s just one. Could be a lack of light, who knows.
So, side by side with other robots it’s the most accurate. But it still has a way to go. In any case, the robot moves around objects very carefully and hardly touches furniture, but Dreame’s engineers still have some work to do!
Suction power
The suction power is great. The robot managed to clean debris from a 10 mm (0.39 in.) deep crack, so it’s definitely powerful. However, it doesn’t seem noticeably better than the X30, which has 8300 Pa. So, yeah, it’s powerful, but not one and a half times more powerful in person.
Vacuuming and testing the Turbobrush
The floor cleaning quality is impressive. The robot cleaned the entire area, including the corners.
Both the center and side brushes stayed clean, and all the dirt ended up in the bag. It did a perfect job sweeping the corners and self-cleaning the brush from hair and fur. Awesome job, Dreame!
With everyday use, I checked the brush several times after a full cleaning cycle, and it was always completely clean. So, if you’re looking for a vacuum to pick up hair, definitely consider this one. Or at least check out the turbo brush, which you can use with older Dreame models!
Carpet cleaning
I scattered the same dirt on a low-pile carpet, and the Dreame Bot X40 Pro cleaned it thoroughly.
It can handle medium carpets too. A few particles got stuck in the carpeting, but it’s not a big deal. In a regular household everyday setting, it does a great job on carpets.
Self-cleaning
Right after the messy tests, I wanted to see how well the robot could clean itself. The container was full of garbage before it went back to the station. But after the self-cleaning, the container was totally empty. So, the feature works really well in this robot, with excellent results!
Mopping
The scrubbing quality is superb. The cloth really gets into the floor and soaks up all of the dirt.
When it comes to tackling tough stains, it’s amazing. It managed to scrub out even stubborn dried coffee and sauce stains. Sure not the first time, the eighth to be exact, but it still got the job done. A lot of similar models couldn’t even pull off that kind of result.
Mopping with carpets
When it comes to mopping around carpets, there are three ways these robots handle it. Let me break them down. First up, it automatically lifts the wipes when it senses its on carpets. This lets it vacuum and wipe the floor simultaneously, leaving your carpets dry and clean.
Then there’s the option to activate automatic carpet avoidance while mopping. And here’s the unique one: after mopping and vacuuming, the robot heads back to base, drops the wipes, and goes back to vacuuming carpets without them. This is handy for high or medium carpets, so the wipes don’t touch them at all if you don’t want them to.
That idea is really neat. And it’s not just about keeping wet wipes off the carpets-it’s also a more reliable solution than constantly lifting them on and off. Those hinges can wear out faster if they’re always going up and down.
Cloth cleaning quality
Right away I’d like to test the efficiency of the station itself. Let’s start with the wipe washing quality. After washing the floor from dirt and stains, the wipes are beat. But after washing they are really clean. Increasing the heating temperature to 70 degrees and auto-mixing the detergent really helped.
With everyday use, the cloths are even better washed at the station after the floor has been cleaned. No dirt is washed out of them under the pressure of warm water. That’s a plus.
Station maintenance
The station itself is very easy to clean from dirt. Remove the drain and rinse it in the sink, then put it back in.
Obstacles
The robot is great off road, going over 2 cm ( 0.79 In.) high thresholds!
Dark spaces
Dark spaces give the vacuum no troubles at all, going freely over the black carpet.
Volume
Well, as for the volume, it is in the range of 57-72 dB depending on the selected mode. The volume is average, which is quite normal considering the high real power.
Opinion
Dreame Bot X40 Pro robot vacuum cleaner has been reviewed and tested in detail. Our evaluation system scored it first at 220 points, out of more than 150 robot vacuums. Moreover, I even removed 10 points for the regional blocking that needs to be bypassed. With the global version of the X40 Ultra already announced, this unit will soar.
Overall ranking: https://robotobzor.com/ratings/general-rating-of-robot-vacuum-cleaners.html
I liked te following, ranked by priority:
- You’ve got two station options to pick from: a super-slim one that fits right into your kitchen set, and a regular one with water tanks. What’s cool is that both stations can work with a utility module, which most competitors don’t offer.
- The station’s got everything: self-cleaning the dirt bag, washing the wipes with hot water, drying them with warm air, and even mixing detergent while sanitizing the wipes with UV light. And it’s not just flashy – it’s really good at what it does, whether it’s self-cleaning or washing and drying. Plus, you can hook it up to the sewer and water supply.
- No more corner dirt with the retractable side brush that say goodbye to the D shaped robots.
- The mopping is amazing. With its retractable wipe, the robot gets into every space and crevice in your baseboards and furniture. And thanks to some fancy new algorithms, it does an even better job scrubbing away dirt than the X30 and earlier models. Maybe it’s because the wipes are hotter after washing, who knows.
- The turbo brush is self-cleaning with built-in blades that don’t tangle hair and fur.
- Quality mopping and vacuuming on all surfaces.
- Very high suction power, both in numbers and in real tests.
- Having a object detection system. The robot actually cleans more neatly and is less likely to snag a wire, sock, or some other household item.
- Automatically removes wipes at the station.
- Automatically lifts wipes, turbo brush and side brush.
- Lots of functions in the app. You can very flexibly customize the cleaning settings to suit your own conditions. There is also CleanGenius smart cleaning mode offering new options. And we understand that there will be a curtain update sometime in the future.
- You can install creative voice packs.
- Quality assembly and high brand credibility.
- Remote home monitoring when connected to the robot’s camera through your phone.
- Easy maintenance of the robot and station.
- Good off-road.
- The robot vacuum cleaner is not afraid of black coverings.
As for what could be improved, here’s all the serious ones:
- Robot is designed for the Chinese market, with regional blocking, which has to be bypassed.
- There is no full service and warranty support from the manufacturers. Again, due to the fact that the version is for the Chinese market.
- The firm’s built-in voice assistant takes phrases only in Chinese.
- Image broadcasting is delayed due to the Chinese servers.
- The object recognition system is blind in the dark and needs a little tweaking.
Of course, in terms of feature set, cleaning quality and design, it’s the best robot vacuum cleaner on the market as of early June 2024. We can see that of the 5 remarks, the first four will self-correct when the global Ultra-series is released. True, it’s not clear how long it will take, or how much it will cost, but the robot vacuum cleaner itself is OBJECTIVELY close to perfection. The cleaning module does its job perfectly.
Amazon (Global Version X40 Ultra): https://amzn.to/4aTq7jC
On this note, I’d like to end the video. If you still have questions, make sure to ask them down below. Have fun shopping, bye!
