The Dreame H16 Pro Steam does a fine job of wet/dry hard surface cleaning. Just don’t call it a lightweight…
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Does a very good job of cleaning | It is rather heavy |
| Steam and hot water cleaning modes | Steam and hot water takes quite a while to build up before it’s usable |
| Easy to empty dirty water tank | App remote control isn’t useful |
Score: 3.5/5
In this review
Dreame H16 Pro Steam Specifications
Dreame H16 Pro Steam Design
Dreame H16 Pro Steam Performance
Dreame H16 Pro Steam Battery
Dreame H16 Pro Steam Verdict
Ethical disclaimer: The Dreame H16 Pro Steam used in this review was sent to me by Dreame, and they’ve indicated that they don’t expect me to send it back.
I mention this upfront because this kind of disclosure is important, but also because, honestly (if you didn’t already know) I’m not for sale.
I don’t give any product a “free ride” because I get to keep it, or vice versa. I’ve put in over 28 years now of product reviewing time, and honesty is the best policy – as is being upfront about any influences, perceived or otherwise.
For more on ART’s Ethics position, see here.
Design
The Dreame H16 Pro Steam is a standing vacuum/mop style device which, as the name suggests, also has steam cleaning and mopping functions built in. The idea here is that you’d use it instead of, say, a robot vaccum cleaner or separate stick vacuum as your all-in one solution.
Out of the box there’s not a whole lot of setup to do. You could legitimately set it up without reading the manual – and I say this because that’s exactly what I did, though I have set up similar competing models before, so perhaps my frame of reference is a little different to most. Still, as long as you can handle putting. clean water tank on the front, a dirty water tank at the back and adding cleaner fluid to the base, you’re not going to struggle here… at least in this aspect.
This isn’t a small wet/dry vaccum cleaner, and at 6.8kg, it’s also not a light unit to pick up. Once you’ve got some water in its clean and dirty tanks, you’re likely tipping the scales at over 7kg to heft, which isn’t lightweight by the standards of these kinds of devices.
My own review has been slightly delayed due to a back injury, and during that recovery period I’ve had to take it slow and careful when using the Dreame H16 Pro Steam.
Admittedly, not everyone will have a bad back and might have rippling muscles that would make Hercules blush, but equally if you’re looking at a device like this because its powered status makes it more compelling to you from an ease-of-use point of view, bear its heft weight in mind.
That aside, its physical design is easy enough to understand at a glance; there’s buttons on the handle for powering on, switching between cleaning modes and also for engaging the self-cleaning mode as required when returning it to its base module.
You will need to give it a little vertical space, however, because it’s designed to sit on the floor, not be wall mounted as some stick vacuums provide.
Performance
While physical setup of the Dreame H16 Pro Steam is simple enough, there is another step to it that’s on the unusual side for a wet/dry vacuum cleaner designed primarily to be pushed around by a human being. That’s because it has a companion app.
That gave me pause for thought for a minute, because… why does a wet/dry vacuum need an app?
Setting up the Dreame H16 Pro Steam’s app does involve setting up a login, giving location permission and hooking into your home Wi-Fi; I’ll leave it up to you if you feel comfortable with that kind of data going out to a third party company.
Dreame has plenty of other app-controlled devices such as robot vacuum cleaners, and there an app makes sense. It’s the same all-in-one Android/iOS app, Dreamehome for the Dreame H16 Pro Steam, and the pitch here is around custom configuration and a remote control mode.
Yes, that’s right, you can control the Dreame H16 Pro Steam remotely if you’re so inclined… but you do need to massively temper your expectations in this respect. This is NOT a competitor to a robot vacuum cleaner in any real sense.
The remote control ability here is to run the Dreame H16 Pro Steam backwards or forwards when it’s in its lie-flat configuration. The idea here is that instead of having to crouch down if you have back issues, the Dreame H16 Pro Steam can instead be “driven” under low lying furniture.
Given I had a back pain issues during my review period, I was rather overqualified to test this… but I was also unimpressed.
The big issue here is that the Dreame H16 Pro Steam doesn’t have wheels that turn, so all you can do is line it up with one part of your low furniture and then set it going, before having to move it the width of the mop head to the side, repeating as many times as you need for your low-lying cleaning areas.
Setting up the Wi-Fi isn’t all that hard. Keeping it talking to the Wi-Fi? That can be tricky…
This is still effort, and it’s not helped by the app being on the clunky side, often losing connectivity when trying this feature out. It only supports 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks, a depressingly common play for robot vacuum cleaners, but not something I’d expect on a $1,499 wet/dry vacuum cleaner.
The one useful part of the app experience is that it does allow you to set the cleaning style of its custom mode; I set mine to be purely a vacuum cleaner to make it just a little more carpet-friendly, though realistically this is a hard floor cleaner first and foremost.
As far as I can tell, there’s no way to manually set that kind of feature without the app… but it’s also the only reason I’d bother with the app at all.
Everything else can be done without the app installed, and I know this because my first week of testing was done without the app installed, just to see what was possible.
The motor on the Dreame H16 Pro Steam is quite powerful, and this does give it a lot of cleaning oomph, as well as something of a “pull” when you first switch it on.
By default it will power on in its automatic sensing mode, where the light at the front changes depending on what it figures it’s actually cleaning; dirtier areas get a colour change, though lighter cleaning leaves it entirely blue.
The Dreame H16 Pro Steam also has modes for hot water cleaning at 90°C and steam cleaning at 200°C. These do work nicely, with the one caveat here being that you have to wait for more than a minute for the hot water tank to heat up the water for these kinds of uses.
That doesn’t sound like a lot until you’re waiting to clean up some cat-provided mess (you can guess what I mean…) for a minute before the steam kicks in. You can’t miss the steam, however, because the front blue light gives it a distinct “Witch’s Cauldron” kind of effect once it starts working.
The dirty water tank is nice and easy to remove, and with an included handle it’s also a little easier to open up for cleaning as and when required. One small catch here is that if you use the Dreame H16 Pro Steam in its lie flat mode, you “lose” 200ml of dirty water tank capacity.
It’s not that the tank transforms into a smaller tank per se, but a reality of the way its cap and sensors sit that when it’s perpendicular, it only allows for 400ml of fluids within it, compared to 600ml when standing up. More than once when I went to do some lie-flat cleaning I had it instantly complain that the dirty water tank was full, simply because it sloshed sideways over the sensor.
The Dreame H16 Pro Steam also has a scrubbing mode that uses its inbuilt motors to scrub back and forth over dirtier areas.
This is extremely effective, though it’s also something of a bucking bull to actively control in your hand if you have a larger area to clean. For the most part, I’ve cleaned in auto mode, which – outside of not declaring cat pee to be a “dirtier” area, presumably because it’s just liquid – did a good job of cleaning hard floor areas in my home.
It is a slightly more challenging story if you’re also after stair cleaning, partly due to that 6.8kg weight, and partly because the strong driving motor can make maneuvering around smaller steps a little tricky. Not an insurmountable problem… but certainly an issue.
Battery
The Dreame H16 Pro Steam is rated for up to 60 minutes in quiet mode, 20 minutes in hot water mode and 18 minutes in steam mode.
The quiet mode figure might be accurate; to be transparently honest I don’t have 60 minutes worth of floors to clean because that would be a rather large mansion, but I’ve hit no real issues keeping around 30 square metres of hard wood floors and stairs clean with it on auto mode.
The hot water and steam mode settings are, however a slightly different matter; here I feel the 20/18 minute marks are a tad optimistic. I’ve hit around 10-12 minutes of steam and only a minute or two more of hot water cleaning before the battery started to get alarmingly low.
If you need sustained steam cleaning over a longer period of time and a wider area, this might not be enough for you, though that would point to a more commercial/industrial cleaning need rather than a home one where this device is pitched.
Dreame H16 Pro Steam: Alex’s Verdict
At $1,499 the Dreame H16 Pro Steam is a premium priced device, and for that kind of money you’d want to see very good results.
The Dreame H16 Pro Steam can deliver them if you’ve got a need for a lot of hard floor cleaning with some intensity some of the time. The power of its suction and cleaning heads is very good and tested well against a wide range of simulated spills, as well as doing some general cleaning in a house of five people and three cats, which as you can imagine isn’t always easy.
That being said, the app experience isn’t great, and the remote control functionality is much more of a cute party trick – for those who hold weird cleaning parties, but I suppose I shouldn’t judge – than a truly useful feature.
The Dreame H16 Pro Steam is also quite heavy, and if you’re after a powered mop to deal with any kind of infirmity issue, this could be problematic for you.
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Dreame H16 Pro Steam: Pricing and availability
The Dreame H16 Pro Steam retails in Australia for $1,499.
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