Do robots dream of a perfectly vacuumed floor? Probably not, but Dreame's X30 Ultra has me enjoying clean floors without lifting a finger. We first saw the hybrid robot vacuum mop at CES 2024, where it made an impression thanks to its self-removing mop pads and the flex arm for corners and edges. Since we're big robot vacuum fans around here, I put it to the test on my cat-hair-and-baby snack-littered floors.
After a few weeks of letting X30 Ultra take over vacuuming duty (and mopping my floors for the first time in … too long), I found it's a great all-around hybrid robot vacuum that doesn't let complicated table legs or high-pile rugs slow it down. The ability to ditch the damp mop pads is fantastic. It's on the pricey side, though, so you really have to need its standout features to make it worthy of the investment.
Mop It and Drop It
The exciting thing about the X30 Ultra is the fact that it can drop the mop pads. Combination vacuums and mops are great, but dragging the damn mop pads around can make your carpet damp, too. The X30 Ultra solves this by dropping the pads when it senses it's in a room with only carpet, and reinstalling them when it returns to the base.
It's not a default thing—you have to go into the settings and select the option to have mop pads removed if it senses carpet, or else it'll keep them on. Like many other robot vacuums, you can adjust the cleaning settings in the menu (like if you want it to mop first then vacuum or vice versa) and change the order of rooms the X30 Ultra will clean in your home, called the cleaning sequence.
But unlike many other robot vacuums, you can also see what order the robot vac will go based on the numbers it assigns each room on the map, and you can reorganize the sequence in the cleaning settings under the in-app map. I had the two linoleum areas of my home first, so the X30 Ultra started cleaning with mopping, then returned to the base to vacuum everywhere else.