Dreame T16 Pro Heat Review: Hot Water, Heavy Hardware

As its name suggests, Dreame's latest floor washer wants to turn up the temperature. The T16 Pro Heat uses hot water not only to maintain its roller, but also to wash the floor itself.

Among the crowd of floor cleaner manufacturers, Dreame is far from the least prolific. The H13 Pro, the H15 Mix, the H14 Pro and plenty of others have already come off the production lines, so a new arrival is hardly a surprise, even if the letter H gives way to a T here.

Like the H15 Pro Heat before it, the T16 Pro Heat uses hot water to clean floors. It is a connected machine, fitted with an extra-large 0.9 l clean water tank and a 500 ml dirty water collector, and it carries a few in-house innovations. Chief among them is ThermoRinse, which uses water at 90 °C to shift stubborn grease more easily than cold water manages, along with the WhaleSweep system, which lowers a rubber squeegee when the user pulls the cleaner back towards them. More prosaically, the specification sheet quotes 60 min of battery life.

Rather than the white finish some manufacturers use to underline the hygienic side of floor washers, Dreame prefers a more designed grey and black scheme. The T16 Pro Heat makes a good impression straight out of the box thanks to its quality materials. The whole thing looks seriously built, and across the recorded test there was never any trouble with a part failing to do its job, clips that would not seat or came apart at the wrong moment, or seized mechanisms.

The second thing to note is the weight of the machine. On the scales it reaches 6.3 kg, which makes the T16 Pro Heat the heaviest floor cleaner in the comparison group; the water heating system is presumably responsible, since the H15 Pro Heat weighs 6.20 kg. To that must be added the 900 ml of water the tanks can hold, taking the total beyond 7 kg. The self-propulsion system, which works both forwards and backwards, functions perfectly well, but it does not stop the T16 Pro Heat weighing on the arm even after a short cleaning session. The clean water tank also sits on the head rather than lower down the body.

Getting to grips with the machine should pose no problem. As on every appliance of this type, there is a button to launch self-cleaning once the cleaner is docked on its base. For cleaning itself, a first button starts the machine while a second selects the operating mode: intelligent, hot water, turbo, vacuum only or custom. LEDs illuminate icons, which are not especially self-explanatory, to show which mode is selected. The electronic display uses the same method to flag a problem, such as a blocked duct, an empty clean water tank or a tangled brush. It all takes a few seconds to master.

The remaining-battery indicator, on the other hand, is very rudimentary: the battery icon shifts from green to red by way of yellow and orange. That lacks precision, and a percentage display of the sort the Tineco Floor One S7 Fold offers would have been preferable.

Those who want to go further can pair the floor washer with a smartphone. The operation is not complicated, and once it is done the Dreamehome app allows various settings to be changed, such as automatic washing of the machine as soon as it is returned to its base, automatic drying of the roller, or the language the cleaner speaks, since this one is talkative too. As in every app of this kind there is a usage log and some maintenance advice. More importantly, a custom mode allows a personal cleaning cycle to be configured and saved by choosing the suction power and the water flow rate. The idea is a good one and setting it up is very simple.

Like any decent floor cleaner, the T16 Pro Heat comes with a charging and cleaning base. As with the machine itself, it is seriously built and should not show signs of weakness for a long time. It is limited to the bare minimum, though, unlike the base of the Hoover HW4 Clean Power, whose roller cleaning area could be removed easily for deeper maintenance.

Even without using hot water, the T16 Pro Heat proves very effective. Note that the various types of dirt are left to dry before testing, to make the job rather harder.

In intelligent mode, the oil stain and the drops of wine disappear in a single pass, and three passes are needed to shift soda that has stuck to the floor. Ink is no longer visible after only six back-and-forth passes, a thoroughly remarkable performance. Ketchup clings on rather harder, taking 11 passes to remove completely. Finally, this is not the machine that will erase grease pencil from the floor, since it was still just as visible after 20 passes.

On solid debris, the T16 Pro Heat swallows a bowl of soaked cereal in a single pass, and two passes are needed to pick up the test egg. Pressing on a little further, at five passes, even the shell is collected.

Owners of the Dreame T16 Pro Heat will not have an easy life exactly, but maintenance will certainly be a less unpleasant business than it is for owners of the Dyson PencilWash.

Inevitably, the automatic roller cleaning system greatly simplifies upkeep. When the need arises, because of tangled hair or a particularly dirty roller, it can be removed from its housing very simply and without tools. What is more, and this is rare enough to be worth pointing out, the roller can be separated from the metal part that holds it in place so that it can go through the washing machine.

The dirty water collector at the rear also comes out simply. As is often the case, a large plastic piece housing the filtration system serves as a lid, and a mechanism allows it to be removed without effort. That gives access to the strainer, which is well designed and effectively holds larger solid particles out of the soiled liquid so that they can be thrown away separately.

The Dreame T16 Pro Heat can run for 46 min. Be aware, though, that in intelligent mode it will stop after 27 min because the dirty water collector is saturated. Curiously, it will not stop operating if the clean water tank is empty.

The T16 Pro Heat does not deafen anyone, but it makes itself heard. The sound meter recorded 60 dB (A) in intelligent mode; without being especially discreet, there are far more trying machines out there. During maintenance operations on the charging base, the noise level sits at around 62 dB (A) at its loudest moments.

It is not so easy to find a floor cleaner as effective as the Dreame T16 Pro Heat. The Mova M10 comes close to it, and the Rowenta X-Clean 10 and the Tineco Floor One S9 Scientist are also worth mentioning, but none of those machines can wash the floor with hot water.