Rating
Our editorial rating is based on product testing.
- elegant design
- high suction power
- a hinge for cleaning less accessible areas
- low noise level
- more demanding vacuuming on long-pile carpets
- occasional unwanted bending of the hinge while vacuuming hard floors
Dreame is a subsidiary brand of the Chinese giant Xioami and has several stick and robot vacuums in its lineup. We’ve already tested a few of them, and the Dreame T20 stick vacuum has been in use by us almost every day until now. But it also has a successor—Dreame T30.
In this review, you’ll learn what changes Dreame T30 brings compared to its predecessor and whether it really is a better vacuum. We’ll take a look at cleaning performance, battery life, and all of its features.
Where to buy Dreame T30?
The Dreame T30 stick vacuum is currently available from the official Dreame brand seller on Aliexpresse. It offers fast delivery thanks to stock in European warehouses.
At the moment, you can choose the Polish and French warehouse. Delivery takes only a few days, and thanks to the European warehouses you don’t pay any customs duties or VAT either after 1. July 2021.
Dreame T30 stick vacuum
EU warehouse
TIPExpress delivery from a European warehouse without customs duty and VAT.
This product will be delivered to you express from a local warehouse in Europe. Delivery from EU warehouses usually takes 2–10 days and is handled by a courier. When delivered, you don’t pay any extra fees—no customs duty or VAT.
Great packaging
We received the Dreame T30 in a black box with dimensions of 80 x 35 x 16 cm, which is protected by another, plain box into which it’s inserted. As we’ve come to expect from this brand—both from Dreame T20 and its robot vacuums—everything is packed very precisely.
Inside, the box is divided into two levels, with each component having its own compartment, and everything is also wrapped in film. On top, you’ll find a clear user manual, underneath which sits the main unit of the vacuum. Besides that, the package also includes a variety of accessories for vacuuming.
The main floor nozzle and the upholstery nozzle are both powered and each contains its own motor that drives the rotating brush. Both brushes have bristles shaped like a partial spiral, unlike some other vacuums that have bristles across the entire brush surface. This brush should be more effective than a soft brush.
The remaining attachments are the classic passive ones, without electrical power (except for the narrow one that lights up). This includes the narrow attachment for vacuuming less accessible spaces, a small brush, and a wider attachment with selectable bristle use.
All attachments can be connected directly to the main unit of the vacuum or to the three extension attachments. The first is a classic long tube, the second is a flexible hose, and the third is the joint. That kind of joint was missing from the Dreame T20 vacuum, so the manufacturer definitely pleased us by including it in the new version.
Of course, you also get the charging adapter, and we received a wall-mount stand with wall plugs and screws as well. However, we’d rather have a mounting system that doesn’t require fixing it to the wall—like, for example, the Jimmy H8 Pro has.
Design and build quality
Design is always a matter of personal taste, but in our view it’s a very successful product. The vacuum looks elegant and, thanks to its color scheme, fits any home—unlike the Jimmy brand, which often comes with a blue or purple main tube and also a colorful rotating brush.
Dreame opts for more conservative, neutral colors. We also like the textured finish on the main tube, which gets a grid pattern. All the parts are plastic, but the quality is at a very high level. Everything fits together nicely, except for a small amount of play between the main tube and the vacuum.
The main unit houses a high-quality brushless motor capable of delivering 150 000 revolutions per minute. Under the motor section, there are filters, a cyclonic separator, and a dust container with a capacity of 600 ml. The handle is where the main button is located, which turns the vacuum on.
Under the handle there’s a battery, and above it an LED display. It shows the basic information we’ll cover later, plus a pair of buttons – one for switching modes and the other for locking.
Controls and modes
As we mentioned in the previous chapter, the vacuum is powered on with a trigger-like button on the handle. The response to pressing it is very fast (the manufacturer states 0.5 s). The display activates immediately after you press this button and shows the current mode.
There are four modes available, which you switch between using the small button on the display. Specifically, these are the modes graded by suction power: eco, medium, turbo. When using one of the electric nozzles, a fourth mode is also available – auto.
In automatic mode, the vacuum can intelligently adjust suction power based on the surface being cleaned. The auto switching works very well and instantly — for example, when transitioning from a carpet to a hard floor, you can clearly hear and feel the change in performance.
The lock button on the display ensures you don’t have to keep holding the trigger on the handle throughout the entire vacuuming. Still, keeping it pressed feels kind of natural while you’re holding the vacuum, so we didn’t really need this feature.
The vacuum cleaner’s LED display shows several pieces of data. You’ll find information about the current mode, the remaining cleaning time, and the current dirt level in the form of a graph. This level changes depending on whether you’re cleaning more or less dirtied areas. Based on the level of dirt, the color around the display also changes – green, orange, and red.
From our experience, however, this indicator is rather inaccurate. Even when vacuuming a clean floor again and again, it still showed a medium to high dirt level.
Cleaning quality and our impressions from everyday vacuuming
We used the vacuum almost every day for several weeks. During that time, vacuuming felt really pleasant, and the cleaning quality is at a good level. Regular dust, as well as heavier debris, is removed very well. It’s a bit worse with solid particles such as small pebbles or, for example, rice.
Despite the higher suction power, up to 190 AW or 27 000 Pa, these fine particles sometimes don’t end up in the dust container. Instead, they keep rotating around the brush in the floor nozzle and fall out after you switch the vacuum off. However, this issue affects most stick vacuums.
But we found other weaker points as well. Similar to Dreame T20, the new model is also difficult to use on fine carpets with long pile—especially in automatic mode.
When approaching a carpet, it automatically increases power, which makes the vacuum cling to the carpet so tightly that it’s hard to maneuver. If we stopped on such a carpet, the floor nozzle would immediately fully stick to the carpet, the brush would stop, and the vacuum would detect it as a blockage.
The upside is the joint that lets you reach under the bed or sofa. Having a separate joint is an advantage over placing the joint in the middle of the main stick, because this way you get a longer section from the joint to the floor nozzle — so you can vacuum even those farther areas, for example under the sofa.
The downside is that the joint doesn’t hold very firmly. Several times, while vacuuming the floor, the joint slid loose. So vacuuming with it takes some getting used to.
Short comparison with Dreame T20
Since we’ve been using the Dreame T20 stick vacuum since we tested it in the editorial office, we can compare it directly with its successor. At first glance, the main units of the vacuums look almost identical. But on closer inspection, you’ll notice a small design difference in the battery and how it’s attached.
The main stick has also changed in design — its color and surface finish have been updated. The attachment for cleaning narrow spaces has also been extended, and it now includes LED lighting right at the tip, plus a transparent material.
The vacuum cleaner’s display has also been changed so that it shows information differently. We now have an additional mode when using electric nozzles – Medium. Dreame T20, after all, has 4 modes, but the Medium one is available only for passive attachments. With electric nozzles, an automatic mode is used instead of Medium. Dreame T30 offers a Medium mode for all attachments, including the electric ones.
The display also shows the level of contamination of the floor being vacuumed throughout the entire usage time, and the percentage of remaining battery capacity has been replaced by the remaining vacuuming time. It’s an interesting change, but we’d also like to see the percentage of remaining battery capacity.
We were pleased with the extra joint, which isn’t included in the Dreame T20 package. In terms of cleaning quality, the higher performance is felt a bit, but it isn’t a huge difference. We expected the manufacturer to solve the challenging cleaning of long-pile carpets, but that hasn’t happened. However, the noise level has been reduced, so Dreame T30 is slightly better at muffling sound.
Filters and how to clean them
In the middle of the dust container, there’s a plastic element with 12 cyclones and a filter that captures 99.67% of particles. It also includes the well-known HEPA filter and other components that ensure dirt doesn’t return into the air. Overall, there are 5 layers of filtration here.
The dust container empties easily by pressing a single button on the container itself. But if you don’t empty it often, dirt starts to build up around the cyclone element in the middle of the container too, which slightly complicates simply dumping it out.
The aforementioned cyclone unit, however, is also removable, as are the remaining filters. All of these internal components are washable. Just make sure to dry them thoroughly before using the vacuum again.
Battery, charging, and endurance
The battery consists of eight cells with 2900 mAh each. The battery is removable and detachable. It’s easy to disassemble by pressing a small button on the side of the battery.
The manufacturer specifies run time as 90 minutes per charge in ECO mode, 35 minutes in standard mode, and 7.5 minutes in turbo mode. Charging should take about 4 hours, which is quite long considering the run time per charge. During our test, however, we checked the actual charging duration—it was significantly shorter than the manufacturer claims. The battery charged from 17 % to 100 % in under 2.5 hours.
Of course, we also tested the real runtime. During this runtime test, we vacuumed using only the electric nozzles, since overall we used the vacuum cleaner primarily for floor vacuuming. We achieved the following results:
- ECO mode: 45 minutes
- Standard mode: 28 minutes
- Turbo mode: 10 minutes
In automatic mode we didn’t measure the time, because this mode is very individual and the runtime depends on the surface being cleaned. The maximum runtime 90 minutes stated by the manufacturer, however, is nowhere near achievable with a floor nozzle. On the other hand, in turbo mode we achieved a higher runtime than the manufacturer claims.
The display shows the battery capacity in percent only during charging. While vacuuming, the display shows only the remaining vacuuming time, and if the battery is depleted, the message Low battery appears. At this moment, the remaining capacity is around 20 %. The time shown isn’t perfectly precise, but it’s good enough for a rough orientation.
Dreame T30: Final evaluation
The Dreame T30 is an excellent stick vacuum cleaner with high suction power. It offers an elegant design, a clear display, four performance modes, and plenty of accessories included in the box. The automatic mode is especially great—where the vacuum cleaner adjusts its suction power automatically based on the surface being cleaned.
An interesting feature is the contamination report during vacuuming, but in reality this information doesn’t bring any real added value. We were also pleased with the joint included in the package, which helps you reach less accessible places such as under a sofa or a bed.
On the other hand, we were disappointed by the brush getting jammed while vacuuming delicate carpets with long pile, and by the lack of a percentage battery status while vacuuming. If you own a Dreame T20, upgrading to a newer model doesn’t bring enough improvements to make the purchase worthwhile.
But if we didn’t already own the Dreame T20 and wanted to buy a stick vacuum cleaner, the Dreame T30 would be one of the hottest favorites.
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