Dreame Aura TV S100 Review: A Robot-Vac Maker's First TV

Would you buy a television from the company that makes your robot vacuum? It is no longer an absurd question. Dreame, best known for its robot vacuum cleaners, has launched its first television — the Aura TV S100 — and stepped straight onto the fiercely contested TV market. Whether the newcomer pulls off a genuine sensation or still has homework to do is what this laboratory test set out to establish. This review is based on that test, not on a hands-on trial of our own.

Dreame's debut caused a stir at IFA, surprising visitors, the trade and rivals alike. The Mini-LED technology inside is nothing new — TCL and Hisense already enjoy great success with it, not least because it undercuts the OLED sets from LG and Samsung on price. Here Dreame breaks ranks: a four-figure starting price for the 65-inch Aura TV is anything but a bargain. So the secret weapon is not cheap display tech; it is something else, and it kicks up dust before the screen even lights up.

Haul the fairly heavy Aura out of its box and you soon spot a vast speaker opening on the back, roughly the size of a cake plate. Next comes the integrated soundbar along the bottom edge, promising plenty of punch. Just as hard to miss are the panel gaps between the housing sections: Dreame has gone all in on the audio hardware while cutting corners on the finish. That mixed impression continues at assembly. Instead of two wobbly legs or a fiddly kit of parts, there is a single-piece base plate — but in cheap cast plastic that does not suit the four-figure price, dressed up with a flashy metal "alibi" finish on the front. Fixing it on means four tiny screws sunk deep in the foot and awkward to reach, with no suitable tool supplied. Even done correctly, the stand does not sit quite flush with the set, though at least the result is not wobbly.

The connections are more reassuring. The Aura S100 takes all the important TV sources — cable, satellite and antenna — and offers three HDMI sockets for a Blu-ray player, games console and AV receiver. Rival sets often provide four, but Dreame has made every one of its HDMI ports the faster HDMI 2.1 standard, choosing quality over quantity, so demanding console gamers are well served. Cables seat firmly without being stiff, and the ports are noticeably better made than the surrounding casing — even if their labelling, a faint uncoloured stamping, is poor. Thanks to Google TV, none of these sockets is strictly essential: connect the power and the rest can run without a tangle of cables.

Dreame runs Google TV, which brings good news and bad in equal measure. The upside of the biggest smart-TV platform is that its supply of streaming apps looks secure for the long term. The downside is the awkward initial setup, especially for newcomers without a Google account, since there is no access to the app store without one. Once an account is linked, the interface is easy to live with and the home screen can be tailored, jumping straight to part-watched content or favourite channels. Reaching many of the picture and sound settings is less direct: the remote sits well in the hand and has every key you need, but Google TV's tangled menu structure — short on explanations and, in places, clumsily translated — means the learning curve drags on. Helpfully, some settings can be summoned during a programme without fully hiding the picture.

For its first screen Dreame uses the proven QD-Mini-LED combination: boosted backlighting behind a fairly conventional LCD panel, with an added colour-enhancing film. The result is a very bright picture whose colours do not wash out. The much smaller Mini-LEDs can be dimmed more precisely than ordinary LEDs, so visible contrast errors are rarer; TCL has pushed the same technology far enough to render surprisingly deep blacks, usually the preserve of pricey OLEDs. Dreame's debut delivers a similarly bright, HDR-capable display, though the wow factor is muted simply because 2026 is already awash with QD-Mini-LED televisions.

The real party piece is the audio. The Aura TV S100 carries a sensationally broad speaker layout that outstrips many a home-cinema system on paper: a 4.1.2 configuration, meaning four standard channels plus a dedicated bass speaker and two height channels for spatial sound. It reads impressively and genuinely does not sound bad — but it does not leave you speechless either. This is a very refined TV sound system rather than a giant-killer, and its output is nowhere near as mighty as the marketing suggests. The bare figures tell the story: 70 watts of output is only about ten per cent of what a moderately powerful home-cinema system with a subwoofer can muster. Anyone expecting real thump will be disappointed. For fine film sound without adding a separate soundbar it is excellent; if you want genuine pressure, the sound premium is hard to justify.

Dreame makes a solid first serve on the TV market with the Aura S100 — but no ace. The display quality is genuinely good and, thanks to Mini-LED, the picture is very bright; the trouble is that established Chinese makers offer much the same for considerably less. The Aura's biggest calling card is its unusually differentiated sound system, which has few rivals, yet falls short of a revelation on sheer volume. The build imperfections weigh all the more heavily because Dreame pitches the S100 at a high price. Get those wrinkles ironed out, and the robot-vacuum maker could soon be a serious contender in smart TVs too.