[REVIEW] The Dreame D9 robot vacuum cleaner is a direct competitor to the popular Viomi SE. We put it through our editorial test.

The newest robotic vacuum cleaner from Dreame has reached our editorial team, sold under the model name Dreame D9. It’s a high-end model from this brand, offering 3000 Pa suction power, up to 150 minutes of runtime, and a mopping function. We tested it thoroughly, and since we only recently reviewed the popular Viomi SE, you’ll also find a short comparison in the conclusion.

In short about the Dreame brand

We assume that the Dreame brand is well known to all of our readers. Founded in 2015 with a focus on vacuum cleaners and other electrical appliances for maintaining a clean home. In late 2017, the company joined the Chinese giant Xiaomi.

Since its founding, Dreame has introduced many innovations and has more than 150 patents in its field. In its portfolio, you’ll also find, besides a pair of robotic vacuum cleaners, several stick vacuum cleaners.

Where to buy Dreame D9

We purchased the Dreame D9 robotic vacuum cleaner for our review from our partner Geekbuying, where it was available in a European warehouse. Thanks to that, it was delivered to us within a few working days without any customs charges or VAT.

Basic parameters at a glance

The Dreame D9 robotic vacuum cleaner measures 350 x 350 x 96.8 mm and weighs 3.8 kg. It is sold only in white. Power is handled by a quality Japanese brushless motor from Nidec.

For navigation, the vacuum uses an advanced laser system LDS 3.0. This system can scan 2080 points per second, and its accuracy is around 10 mm. Route planning is handled by the SLAM system, which Dreame has patented. It’s a new, intelligent algorithm that, according to the manufacturer, can be compared to the human brain.

The built-in battery has 5200 mAh, and the runtime on a single charge is approximately 150 minutes. Thanks to its sensors, the vacuum can recognize a carpet and adapt its cleaning style. The dust container has a volume of 570 ml, while the intelligent water tank is 270 ml.

Available suction power is 3000 Pa, with 4 cleaning levels and 3 mopping levels. The HEPA filter captures particles as small as 0.3 microns, and mopping removes up to 99.9% of bacteria.

The vacuum also supports voice control via Amazon Alexa.

Package contents and build quality

The vacuum comes in a white box that’s placed inside an additional, standard outer box. If in our previous reviews we wrote about products that were packaged very carefully, Dreame D9 really knocks everyone else out of the park. Everything here is nicely placed in its own separate box and then wrapped in white packaging. At the same time, each box has its own spot so it creates the perfect space for placing the vacuum cleaner.

In the top part, you’ll find the user manual, and underneath it is the vacuum itself. In the small boxes under the vacuum, you’ll find the docking station, a power cable, a three-armed side brush, and a mop with a water tank. There are no extra spare parts or an additional filter included.

The vacuum is all white, except for the navigation system, which is inside the red section. On the top side you’ll find 3 buttons for: power on/off, return home, and zone cleaning. There’s also a removable cover under which a transparent dust container with a HEPA filter is hidden. Besides that, there’s a small brush with a bent end for cleaning the rotating roller and removing hair.

On the bottom side, an orange rotating brush dominates, with black bristles, along with large rubber wheels featuring a deep tread. The rotating-brush module isn’t fixed permanently, which lets the vacuum adjust the brush’s downward pressure to the surface being cleaned. Of course, you can remove the rotating brush and clean it, or rinse it under running water.

First power-on and adding it to the Xiaomi Home app

Since Dreame is part of Xiaomi, the Dreame D9 uses the Xiaomi Home app. The vacuum is turned on using the middle button on the top. Immediately after switching it on, you’ll hear a voice announcement asking you to connect to the app. The entire pairing process is accompanied by pleasant audio messages in English, but they’re very clear and easy to understand.

As you probably already know, once you open the Xiaomi Home app, you can add a new device at the top. The app can automatically detect new devices nearby, which is why it immediately offered to add the Dreame D9. If that doesn’t happen, you can also find the device in the list manually.

Right after adding the robot vacuum to the app, we were offered a firmware update. It took an endless 40 minutes, which really surprised us in an unpleasant way. It’s unlikely that any other device has ever updated for so long like this. However, the update completed successfully.

First cleaning, room mapping, and obstacles

With the first cleaning, the room discovery happens automatically and a map is created. The Dreame D9 is among the robot vacuums that detect obstacles by bumping into them. Half of the vacuum’s perimeter is made of a kind of bumper, which gets pushed in when it contacts an obstacle—based on that, the vacuum knows that it has hit something.

The vacuum went through the first room along its perimeter, and then cleaned it using the well-known method—so-called “S-patterns.” In this way, it went through the entire apartment, except the bathroom and the WC, where we have thresholds higher than 2 cm (specifically 2.3 cm). The maximum obstacle height it can still overcome is 2 cm.

Each room is shown in the app gradually, as the vacuum discovers it. However, even so, the first cleaning doesn’t take longer than a normal cleaning session.

Cleaning levels and cleaning quality

The Dreame D9 offers 4 cleaning levels, which are divided by power. Specifically, you’ll find these modes: quiet, standard, strong, and turbo. The difference in cleaning quality between them isn’t very noticeable, and the noise level hardly changes. Regular dust is picked up by the vacuum even in quiet mode, but let’s take a look at how it handles something tougher.

In the kitchen, we spilled rice and lentils on the floor. We had the vacuum clean only this area in standard mode. As you can see from the photos, there was still quite a bit of dirt left on the floor. It removed most of it on the second try, but it still wasn’t completely perfect. A few grains of rice remained on the floor, and a couple of them were actually blasted into the next room by the three-armed bristle brush.

In general, robot vacuums collect dirt differently from traditional vacuums—mainly using the bristles of the rotating brush. That’s why they usually have trouble with solid debris made of thicker grains.

As for carpets with longer pile, Dreame D9 surprisingly struggles with those. More than once, the vacuum got stuck on such a carpet, and the app told us to clean the brush. The carpet, however, doesn’t have that long a pile to get tangled in the rotating brush. In the app, there’s an option where the vacuum automatically increases power when it’s on a carpet. That’s why we didn’t expect it to have a problem with the carpet.

Mopping

Dreame D9 has a removable mop with an antibacterial cloth that simply slides into the mop and is secured with Velcro. In this case, water is poured into a plastic tank located in the removable plastic mop, not into the dust container. It’s transparent, so you can clearly see the tubes that deliver the water to the cloth.

When mopping, you can choose from 3 levels: low, medium, and high. These levels are graded based on the amount of water the vacuum cleaner uses during mopping.

We didn’t expect too high-quality mopping, but on the highest setting the floor is genuinely wet with no skipped areas. This time, on the tile we spilled water mixed with cocoa, water with toothpaste, and in one spot we spread the toothpaste itself. We left everything to dry overnight, then in the morning we turned on mopping on the highest power.

As we expected, since the vacuum cleaner passes over each spot only once, it can’t remove dried dirt from the floor in one go. But can it handle it with repeated mopping? Not quite. Even after the third mopping, stains were still left on the floor. So the Dreame D9 also can’t mop well enough, similarly to other robotic vacuum cleaners.

Map and its customization

After our first vacuuming, a map of the apartment showed up in the app. Unfortunately, it didn’t automatically split into separate rooms. We had to do that manually in the map settings. Besides splitting the map into rooms, you can also delete the map, merge rooms, or rename them. However, renaming doesn’t work by letting you choose any name of your own. You have to pick from room names available in English. Then only the room logo will appear on the map—without the name.

Rooms are color-coded, but it’s likely only 4 colors are available, since some rooms ended up with the same color. While splitting the map into smaller rooms, we ran into an issue where the app reported that the area being divided is smaller than 1 m², which isn’t true.

A minor downside is the long map loading time. Almost every time we opened the Mi Home app and tapped the vacuum cleaner, it took quite a while for the map to load. While that’s happening, various tips for using the vacuum are shown in place of the map. During frequent use while testing, the long loading started to annoy us because it sometimes took up to a minute.

After a few vacuuming sessions, an area that didn’t exist appeared on the map. It was probably caused by the chrome floor lamp with the larger glossy base, because glossy objects that create different reflections can sometimes cause problems for robotic vacuum cleaners. However, that area couldn’t be deleted from the map, so we had to reset it. After the reset, the vacuum loaded a map that was rotated differently, which is why you can see different maps in the screenshots in the article.

Cleaning options

As we mentioned above, the Dreame D9 offers vacuuming and mopping on multiple levels. If you attach a mop to the vacuum, it will automatically start mopping at the next power-on. During mopping, the Dreame D9 probably vacuums as well. This information isn’t stated anywhere, but we judge based on the noise level.

On the home screen, there are three cleaning options. The robotic vacuum can clean the whole apartment, selected rooms (one or more), or only a specific zone that you mark on the map. From the main screen, you can also mark no-go areas on the map, as well as virtual walls that the vacuum will avoid.

More settings in the app

The Dreame D9 supports several different settings. We’ll mention at least the more interesting ones. You can adjust the volume of the vacuum’s audio notifications and choose a language. However, neither Slovak nor Czech is available here. You can also turn on or off the enhanced power function when vacuuming carpets, continuation of cleaning after charging, and what happens if the vacuum runs out of battery during cleaning, plus the DND mode.

In the settings, you can also choose the vacuuming and mopping levels. We’d rather see this option on the home screen. From the settings, you can schedule vacuuming or mopping for a specific time, and it can even be set to repeat.

You can also check the current wear of the main brush, side brush, and filter here. These values are calculated only based on the number of vacuuming sessions and their duration. After replacing these components, their wear is reset manually, so don’t expect any sensors here that can tell you the real condition of these consumable parts.

You’ll also find a history of all activities here, including statistical information on how many square meters you’ve already cleaned, how many times the vacuum was turned on, and how many minutes it has run.

If you have any smart home devices or sensors that you could use to automate your home with the robot vacuum, you’ll also find this option in the settings. The remaining settings don’t offer anything extra worth mentioning. You’ll find device sharing here, but you can also do that directly in the Mi Home app, rename the vacuum, check the current firmware version, and so on.

Runtime and charging

The area of the apartment that Dreame D9 covered while vacuuming our apartment was 36 m², and it took 33 minutes. Until it was fully discharged, the robot vacuum could run in turbo mode for 110 minutes. If the battery capacity is too low, the vacuum returns to the charging station and, after recharging to a sufficient level, continues vacuuming where it left off.

Charging to 100% takes approximately 4 hours. The app does not display battery status as a percentage.

Conclusion and a brief comparison with Viomi SE

Viomi SE offers very similar specs in the same price range. Dreame D9 has larger tank capacity for dust and water, slightly higher suction power, but it doesn’t offer the ability to save multiple maps or the so-called Y-shaped mopping. Which is better? For us, it was the Viomi SE. It had no problem with a long-pile carpet and had a better mopping style.

Dreame D9 vacuums faster, but its paths do not overlap at all, unlike the Viomi SE, whose paths slightly overlapped during vacuuming, so with the Dreame D9 there is a greater chance that it will miss some dirt. You can see this on the maps after vacuuming with the individual vacuums. In the screenshots, you can see that the Viomi SE has these paths denser, even though they go in the opposite direction.

In addition, the Viomi SE had no problem with long map loading or discovering non-existent rooms and offers more settings, including saving different maps (max 5).

We’re not saying that the Dreame D9 robot vacuum is bad, but it has its flaws. As we mentioned, it loads the map very slowly, gets stuck on long-pile carpet, and does not pass through rooms quite thoroughly.

Considering the purchase price, though, it’s a decent vacuum, and if you decide for any reason to go with the Dreame D9, you’ll definitely be satisfied. It vacuums up common dirt well, offers an elegant design, low noise, large dust and water tanks, and above all good battery life.