A wet and dry vacuum is a great choice if you're dealing with lots of mud or spillages on your hard floor and don't want to be mopping every other day. However, while they can be excellent for tackling tough stains, they often have fairly bulky designs, and can struggle to get close to the edges of rooms. So I was particularly interested to get some hands-on time with the Dreame H15 Pro, which has a clever solution to this issue.
This wet-floor cleaner has a chip in the front of the floorhead that can sense when it's approaching a wall. This triggers the mop roller to shift forward so that it's as close to the wall as possible, and at the same time a barrier along the front of the floorhead drops, so the mop isn't actually mopping your wall or baseboard or skirting. Dreame calls this 'triple edge coverage', and it's an idea I haven't seen before, even amongst the best wet and dry vacuums on the market.
In fact, it's closer to something we tend to see on hybrid mop-and-vacuum robovacs. Some of today's best robot vacuums have mop pads that can kick out when the bot is traversing along the edge of a room, so there isn't an un-mopped gap.
While it's still chunkier than, say, a stick vacuum, Dreame has made further design tweaks to make the H15 Pro as maneuverable as possible. The handle can drop down completely flat to the ground, enabling you to clean underneath furniture. On some wet-dry vacuums, suction will drop when the cleaner is laid down flat, to prevent water getting into the motor, but the H15 Pro is designed so there's no loss of suction. Speaking of which, it can achieve up to an ultra-powerful 21,000Pa.
Rub a dub dub
Another innovation that caught my eye on this cleaner is its self-cleaning process. Many higher-end wet-dry vacuums have some kind of self-cleaning cycle to make maintenance easier, but the H15 Pro is the first one I've seen that gives its mops a bath after use.
When the self-clean cycle is activated, a tray in the base fills with hot (212F / 100C) water that immerses the rollers, rather than just dampening them. The rollers then spin to clean off any dirt and grease. Once that's complete, the space is sealed and they're blasted with hot air for five minutes to dry them.
I got to check out the H15 Pro at the grand opening of Dreame's new flagship UK store in Birmingham, and I was impressed. The lie-flat design, in particular, works very well, and the cleaner is comfortable to use and easy to maneuver. The triple-edge cleaning seemed a little more temperamental during my hands-on time, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt until we're had a chance to try it out properly.
The Dreame H15 Pro is due to go on sale in the UK in March. We've enquired about pricing and launch information for the US and Australia, and we'll update this article when we get that.
You might also like...
