Dreame X60 Pro Ultra Complete Review: Climbs Steps, Misses Edges

The X60 Pro Ultra Complete is Dreame's most ambitious cleaning robot so far, and its headline idea is mechanical rather than digital. Both the side brush and the mop hardware sit on retractable arms — a mechanism Dreame markets as UltraExtend — so the machine can push its cleaning tools out beyond its own footprint and, in principle, reach corners and edges a fixed chassis simply cannot touch. Extending an arm, though, is only half the problem: the robot still has to know where the edge is and drive close enough to make use of the extra reach.

The second structural trick is a pair of retractable feet branded ProLeap, which allow the chassis to lift itself over two-stage obstacles up to 10 cm high — small steps, in practice, rather than ordinary thresholds. Navigation combines LiDAR with two AI cameras and a dedicated illumination lamp, and the specification sheet quotes recognition of 320 object types along with a 0.1-second reaction time to an unexpected obstacle.

The cleaning figures are equally assertive on paper. Suction is rated at 42,000 Pa for larger debris, the twin mop pads rotate at 280 rpm to work at the floor, and Dreame states that a single charge is enough to cover 1,000 m². Those are manufacturer claims rather than measured results, and the gap between them and the machine's actual behaviour is the most interesting part of this robot.

Robot vacuums still have no settled visual language, so design teams have plenty of latitude. Where some rivals chase novelty, Dreame has aimed at something that reads as expensive. The robot itself is restrained and finished entirely in matt black, while the dock is fairly imposing, squared off right to the edges of its covers, and given a bright, highly reflective finish.

Getting it running causes no real difficulty. The small side brush arrives already fitted, the mop pads clip on underneath using a magnetic mount, and the plastic ramp piece that attaches to the base to ease the robot's return clips into place in one movement. Pairing the handset with the robot is usually the awkward step on machines of this type, but it is handled cleanly here: with the Wi-Fi password to hand, the process should take no more than a few minutes.

A robot vacuum is of little use without its companion software, and the Dreamehome app for iOS and Android is not especially original but is well put together. Pairing is simple, which is not always the case, and finding this particular machine within the manufacturer's very large product catalogue is easy.

Mapping the working area comes next and proves relatively quick. A larger or more convoluted home will take longer, but the process should not exceed around 20 minutes. The resulting map is notably precise, and the generated floor plan is an accurate, immediately recognisable representation of the space it has driven through.

The map can then be annotated by hand — useful in the unlikely event that the robot has missed an obstacle, or when a new object is introduced into the working area. No-go zones can be drawn, floor types assigned, and rooms renamed. The basic functions are quickly accessible: starting a first clean takes only a few taps, and the options are spelled out in plain language on screen, whether that is a full clean, a single room or zone, vacuum only, vacuum then mop, or mop alone. A little more effort is required to programme a recurring cleaning routine, but nothing about it is genuinely difficult with a moment's concentration.

Beyond the essentials the app carries a deep set of secondary options, including cleaning monitoring and the ability to switch on the camera to look around the home. Some of those extras will strike most owners as superfluous, and only advanced users are likely to find a purpose for them.

As is now usual in this class, most maintenance is automated. The mop pads are washed at the dock, and the robot's 310 ml onboard bin is emptied into the base efficiently, with debris properly evacuated.

Some tasks still need hands-on attention. The HEPA filter clogs quickly in the absence of a more substantial filtration stage ahead of it, although no fine dust was observed being expelled back into the room. Hair and threads also wrap around the vacuum's rollers on a regular basis, despite the anti-tangle system Dreame advertises; the saving grace is that the twin-brush assembly is easy to remove and refit.

The base needs periodic attention too, with the clean water tank to fill and the dirty water tank to empty. Neither is complicated, and access to both reservoirs is from the top of the dock. That layout is a genuine convenience: the tanks lift out and drop back in easily, helped by well-judged handles.

Less welcome is the choice of a disposable dust bag. It is simple to swap, but it cannot be recycled because it is assembled from several bonded materials. A smooth, properly sealed bin that could be tipped straight into the household waste would have been preferable.

Given how precise the mapping stage is, obstacle navigation is a disappointment. General coverage of the working area is logical and efficient, and the route planning holds up well. The problems begin when objects appear in the robot's path. It does avoid them, but by an unnecessarily wide margin: a shoe, a mains cable or a crumpled tea towel is never approached within about 20 cm, so there is no risk of a collision and no chance of the dirt beside them being collected either.

Given the manufacturer's claims for the extending arm, the treatment of skirting boards and corners should have been considerably better. Plenty of robot vacuums handle wall edges more convincingly. The area beneath a chair is not covered at all, and nor is the floor under furniture.

There are clear successes. Transitions between rugs and hard floors are managed well, curtains cause no confusion, and the obstacle-crossing system is formidably effective — the robot climbed the raised test board without any difficulty, something no model has managed for a considerable time.

Pick-up is very good overall, with one significant weakness. On long-pile carpet the recorded efficiency was 44% in normal mode and 45% in maximum mode, so deep pile remains hard work.

On thin carpet the robot recovered 91% of the scattered debris in normal mode, and switching to maximum mode left only 5% of the spilled rice on the floor. On hard flooring the two modes were very close together, measured at 98% in normal mode and 99% in maximum mode.

The headline suction figure does not translate into strength everywhere. Fine dust lodged in a test groove proved very difficult for the machine to extract, at just 3% in normal mode and 6% in maximum mode. Older boarded floors with pronounced gaps are not this robot's natural territory.

The X60 Pro Ultra Complete is not only a competent vacuum; it also removes marks effectively. An oil stain was no longer visible at all, and the same was true of a soda spill. Slightly dried ketchup remained faintly detectable, as did ink, though neither result was poor. Grease pencil, as almost always in this category, was left untouched.

The same weakness seen with vacuuming reappears here. Cleaning close to skirting boards is not remotely satisfactory, to the point where it is reasonable to wonder whether the robot passed along that stretch at all. Corners are handled better, but given the extending arm the outcome still falls short of expectations.

Endurance is not a strong point. Running time was 120 minutes in normal mode and 105 minutes in maximum mode, which places the X60 towards the lower end of the category. These figures will inevitably shift in a different environment, and because this kind of machine works without supervision, an interrupted job that resumes after a recharge is less irritating than it would be on a manually operated cleaner. Even so, the reserve is modest for a robot pitched at whole-home coverage.