Dreame Roboticmower A1 review: Innovations and shortcomings

At a glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Cons

Our Verdict

This easy-to-use robot mower navigates and cuts well, but its relatively high price tag and inability to detect and avoid low-profile objects on the ground is much less impressive.

Price When Reviewed

$2,499.99

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Retailer Price

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Dreametech’s advertisements for its Dreame Roboticmower A1 left me with high expectations. And this robot lawnmower does look good, if a bit plasticky.

Installation and setup went very smoothly, quickly connecting to my 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network and downloading the latest version of the software. Which, by the way, is suspiciously similar to that of RoboUp’s line of robot mowers.

The mower doesn’t depend on a boundary wire or an external antenna, so the only other thing you need to set up is the mower’s charging station, which needs 1 meter (3.3 feet) of free space on each side and in front.

Easy installation and advanced mapping system

Dreame’s mobile app quickly guides you how to control the machine around your property line, coming within 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) of its edge. You steer the mower with just a thumb on the screen, which is not optimal, but it works. I was happy to return to the starting point, a few meters in front of the charging station, at which point I was asked to create a path to the charging pad. That’s a bit strange, but it works.

Mikael Lindkvist

The Roboticmower A1 maps your yard with what Dreametech calls its “OmniSense 3D Ultra-Sensing System,” and you can view this map in the app. The map becomes more detailed over time, and it impressively identifies even the surroundings all around the lawn.

Mikael Lindkvist

You can set the Roboticmower A1’s cutting height to between 30- and 70mm (1.2 to 2.8 inches), and there are a lot of other settings to explore. The mower cuts methodically in straight lines by default, much like a robot vacuum cleaner, but you can customize this. There’s both rain and frost protection, and a PIN code for theft protection. If you want a geofence-based alarm, you’ll need to buy a “link module” for about $279. I think that’s a bit stingy, but the robot will send an alert to the app and sound alarm if it’s picked up.

Dreame’s app has more settings than most similar machines; for example, a “Find my robot” function will help you locate the mower. And like many robotic vacuum cleaners, the Roboticmower A1 is happy to talk to you and tell you (in any language) what it’s doing. Fortunately, you can switch off the sound.

Poor obstacle detection

Observing the fat LiDAR sensor on top of the mower and reading the manufacturer’s claims of the mower’s obstacle-avoidance prowess raised my expectations on that front. The company’s website claims: “By leveraging environmental point cloud data acquisition and cutting-edge AI algorithms, A1 intelligently identifies and circumvents common garden obstacles.” You can adjust the mower’s “Avoidance Height” setting in the app, depending on how sensitive you want the mower to be, so I immediately maxed it out so that it would avoid anything I put in front of it.

Mikael Lindkvist

Larger obstacles like flower pots and footballs were no problem; but when I challenged the machine with slightly more realistic and difficult obstacles, it failed, running over two different Gardena hose nozzles and a water hose so smoothly that it rattled the blades. Several competitors have done a much better job avoiding these same obstacles. The app has a “Labs” tab where you can enable features that are still in beta, and one of those settings says it enables the mower to detect obstacles even lower than 10cm (less than 4 inches), but even then it did not pass the test.

The Roboticmower A1 cuts fine

Mikael Lindkvist

This mower cut very precisely, delivering what its manufacturer promised, and it moved perfectly along the edges I marked up. It had no problem covering the parts of the lawn that are not within line of sight the base station. It’s also easy to create no-go areas around parts of the garden you want to screen off, and you can set up multiple zones, with passages in between. And, of course, you can schedule the mowing according to your wishes.

The mower is supposed to be able to handle up to a 45-percent slope, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test that. It does get around well and has had no problems with rougher and more challenging terrain.

Mikael Lindkvist

I’m not completely sold on this mower, mainly because it can’t handle low-profile obstacles in the lawn. But also because the copious amounts of plastic in its construction don’t inspire confidence, especially in light of its price tag. That said, it certainly has other advantages, such as high precision and (so far) high reliability. It’s not a bad buy if you keep your lawn clear of small items.

The test will be updated later in the season.

Looking for a less-expensive boundary wire-free robot mower? Check out our Segway Navimow i110N review. Segway’s smaller mower covers a smaller mowing area–1/4 acre to Dreame’s 1/2 acre–but it also costs $1,200 less.

Specifications