The Dreame L40 Ultra is a powerful, premium-grade robot vacuum that delivers exceptional performance at a more accessible price point. Packed with the latest cleaning innovations, it offers a compelling option for those seeking top-tier functionality without the hefty price tag.

It’s similar to the Dreame X40 Ultra, the brand’s flagship model. Both feature a robotic side brush and an extendable mop pad for deep cleaning, even in hard-to-reach spots. While impressive, its high cost made it slightly less appealing, especially against the Roborock Qrevo Master.

With the L40 Ultra, Dreame offers most of the same premium features but at a more affordable price, making it a standout in terms of both performance and value. Let’s explore how it measures up against the competition.

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Classy design

Dreame makes some of the best looking robovacs, and the L40 Ultra is no exception. It comes with a refined appearance, similar to most other Dreame models.

The base station features a vertical design. The water tanks are accessible from the top, but concealed under a flap. The front features a white surface with a golden or silver striped cover panel. The latter covers the dust bag and detergent tank.

Like the Dreame X40, the washboard features rotating scrapers, making station maintenance a little easier. However, the baseplate of the station isn’t removable, which makes it more challenging to wash in the sink.

The robot comes in a circular shape with a LiDAR dome on top and three control buttons. A top flap hides the dustbin and HEPA filter, making them easy to access.

The L40 Ultra also features a motorized brush and an extending mop pad, just like the Dreame X40 Ultra and Roborock Qrevo Master. These allow it to reach into corners and along baseboards for more effective cleaning. Additionally, the L40 Ultra comes with a camera and a multispectral sensor to automatically detect dirt levels while cleaning.

It ships with a pre-installed bristleless brush, but also comes with an additional TriCut brush in the box. The latter is designed to minimize hair tangling by cutting it, while also coming with bristles to optimize dust collection.

Lastly, the overall build quality is good. The plastics seem robust enough and the robot isn’t easily prone to scratches, making it a durable option.

Intuitive and feature-rich app

The Dreamehome app is one of the most intuitive and user-friendly. It also comes with plenty of customization options, allowing you to extensively customize the cleaning settings.

While mapping your home, the robot detects furniture and automatically segments different rooms. It can store up to four maps, which is handy for multi-story homes. Once the map is created, you can rename, split, or merge rooms, set virtual barriers, and apply specific cleaning settings per room.

The L40 Ultra comes with the Clean Genius AI feature. It can automatically adjust the cleaning settings according to floor’s dirtiness, such as the suction power and mop dampness. If needed, it can also trigger an extra pass in dirty rooms or deep-clean the mop pads. You can also manually adjust these settings, including suction power, mop humidity, and mop cleaning frequency. It’s also possible to create a custom cleaning sequence or ask the robot to vacuum before mopping.

The app offers many settings, sometimes to an overwhelming degree. For carpets, it allows you to configure how the robot handles them. It can lift the mop when crossing carpets, ignore them, or even leave the mop pads in the dock for deep carpet cleaning. You can customize the mop extension settings and side brush settings, as well as automatic detergent addition, and even the mop washing temperature.

With the built-in camera, you can monitor your home remotely and send the robot to check specific rooms. The L40 Ultra can also snap photos of obstacles and add them to the map, helping you understand why certain areas weren’t cleaned.

The Dreame L40 Ultra comes with a built-in voice assistant, allowing hands-free control without smart speakers. It’s also compatible with Google Assistant and Alexa for added convenience.

Great vacuuming efficiency

The Dreame L40 Ultra boasts a strong 11,000Pa suction power, which is just 1,000Pa less than the Dreame X40 Ultra, and among the strongest ones on the market.

This strong suction delivers impressive performance on hard floors and carpets. It effectively picks up dirt and cleans corners, aided by its extendable side brush. Even in minimal suction mode, the L40 Ultra manages to pick up and list dirt from hard floors. When the robot senses a large amount of dirt, the Clean Genius mode intelligently increases power for better cleaning results.

When cleaning carpets, the L40 Ultra automatically boosts suction to deep-clean fibers and extract dust and dirt. It can also drop its mop pads at the station when vacuuming rugs to avoid wetting them.

Good mopping performance

The mop mode is generally effective at removing stains. Since the L40 Ultra uses detergent and 65°C hot water, it’s ready to tackle tough stains. The overall results are good, but the robot struggles to remove tough and dry stains. When observing its work, it leaves an uneven trail, as it potentially doesn’t apply enough pressure to tackle complex dirt.

The MopExtend function allows the right mop pad to extend to clean along edges and baseboards. The robot automatically adjusts this extension based on needs, though you can set the pads to extend on every pass. In mop mode, the main brush and side brush can be lifted to prevent unnecessary friction.

The Dreame L40 Ultra can also detect dirty areas automatically and trigger a second pass if needed. If you prefer, it can generates a map showing where it wants to clean again. However, Dreame robots perform a second pass by fully cleaning the dirty room, instead of focusing on the dirty spots. In most cases, this ends up being very time-consuming and water-intensive, without much added value. The relevance of this mode is also questionable, as the robot thought my bedroom was dirtier than the kitchen, which clearly wasn’t the case.

Reliable navigation and obstacle avoidance

The Dreame L40 Ultra navigates well, moving seamlessly from one room to another and returning to its charging station without issues.

Obstacle detection has improved compared to previous models. The Dreame L40 Ultra approaches them more closely and now continues to check for obstacles while cleaning. This means it can now sense those that appear during cleaning, allowing it to avoid them. Overall, it does a good job at avoiding them, but can sometimes bump into ones. Thankfully, the obstacle detection settings are customizable, allowing you to adjust them if needed.

Noise and battery life

The robot is relatively quiet, though slightly louder than the Roborock Qrevo Master. While it may not interfere with watching TV or working, its maximum power mode does produce more noise, though this level is only necessary for deep carpet cleaning.

Finally, the battery lasts around 200 minutes, sufficient for cleaning an area of 125 to 150 square meters. When the battery runs low, the robot returns to its station to recharge and resumes cleaning where it left off.

Maintenance and care

The Dreame L40 Ultra is relatively easy to care for. Its large water tanks mean you don’t have to refill and empty the tanks too often. An optional water connection kit is also available for fully automated refills. What’s more, the detergent tank means you don’t have to manually add product with every water refill, making daily maintenance almost unnecessary.

Maintenance is also simplified thanks to the rubber or TriCut brushes, which limit hair tangling. However, the TriCut brush isn’t significantly more useful than the standard one to prevent hair tangles. It’s also slightly less effective than the bristleless one, so it’s better to stick with that one.

As for the mops, the dock cleans the mop pads with 65ºC water before, during, and after the cleaning cycle. It also air dries them with hot air. This process minimizes mildew and reduces bacteria and odors.

Cleaning the dock is a bit of a hassle, though. Indeed, the baseplate tends to become particularly dirty, and the scrapers don’t do much to keep it clean. Thankfully, there’s a feature that allows the robot to fill it with water while you scrub it. It then pumps the water out, helping it stay clean. However, a removable base plate like on the Ecovacs Deebot X5 Omni would have been better for deep cleaning.

Is the Dreame L40 Ultra the right robovac for you?

The Dreame L40 Ultra is a strong contender, excelling in both vacuuming and mopping that can keep your floors clean with minimal intervention. Its intuitive app offers AI-powered cleaning and a wide range of customization options, allowing you to tailor the cleaning experience to your specific needs.

The maintenance of the dock can be a little more time-consuming than on some other models, despite its auto-cleaning feature. The smart dirt detection is also annoying on a daily basis, often initiating a second clean of large areas unnecessarily, which may not always be ideal.

Overall, the Dreame L40 Ultra is packed with innovations and performs exceptionally well, but it faces stiff competition from the Roborock Qrevo Master. If you’re looking for handy features like a built-in detergent tank and the TriCut brush for managing pet hair, the L40 Ultra may be the better choice. On the other hand, if ease of maintenance and cleaning efficiency are top priorities, the Qrevo Master might suit you better.

Pros	Cons
Cleaning performance	Dock maintenance
Reliable navigation	Unreliable dirt sensing
Edge cleaning	Re-mops an entire room when it’s dirty
Customizable cleaning

Q&A