Install yourself in no time and avoid the hassle of unnecessary accessories

The Chinese company Dreame is best known for its robotic vacuum cleaners. They also produce stem vacuums and hair care products. Now they also climb to the top of our list of robotic lawnmowers. With innovative technology and stylish design, the Dreame A1 is immensely popular.

One of the biggest novelties of the Dreame A1 is its technology for navigation. It uses the OmniSense™ 3D Ultrasensor System based on LIDAR. This means that it does not need any other accessories such as a perimeter wire, RTK-atenna or poles placed in the garden. In Dreame's app, you can easily set the height of obstacles the robot will avoid, 10, 15 or 20cm. Since the robot does not have the same camera technology as Dreame's robot vacuum cleaner, the robot cannot see and recognize smaller items left behind on the lawn, so make sure to keep the lawn clean of objects that are in danger of being run over.

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Simple lawn - easy installation

Something you really don't want to do when buying new tech gadgets is to read long manuals and safety precautions. The installation of the Dreame A1 is as close to Plug n Play as one can get. If you already have a Dreame product, just scan the QR code on the inside of the lid with the app and follow the instructions.

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Does not require a perimeter wire

It really feels like the future is here. The classic perimeter wire will disappear more and more with LIDAR, and the short time it takes to install the robotic lawnmower means that we will never want to go back again, at least with the plot we are testing on. Is it perfect and flawless, no but it's absolutely right at the moment. Thanks to the robot's ability to position itself with very good precision, it makes it possible to cut very straight lines with U-shaped turns. It is possible to set the direction in which the robot should cut and even turn the direction 5° each time it cuts.

It would have been nice with a little more advanced settings, our lawn swings quite a lot and it is only possible to set the same mowing direction for all zones. Different directions per zone would have been nice. With Dreame's dedicated app, we hope that features like this will be added in the future. With the precision the robot has, the next best thing would be to have an app for your computer for more fine-tuned cutting and mapping.

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If you have a straight and flat lawn without a lot of obstacles and forbidden zones then the installation will go relatively quickly. You take the robot for a lap around the lawn and control it via your mobile, here you really notice that Dreame spent time making the control as user-friendly as possible. We find it very easy to learn how to control the robot. Personally, I would have preferred to control with the right thumb instead of the left and it would have been the top if the “joystick” was placed a little more centrally by the screen as sometimes you accidentally pull your finger off the screen and then the robot stops.

If you have a lawn that is a little more complex, it may take a little more time to get to a complete map. But if you compare the installation of robotic lawnmowers with limiting cable or RTK, it is much faster and smoother.

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Consider docking station placement

The docking station needs WiFi access, so place it as close to your router or access point as you can so you don't risk losing signal. The robot itself does not need to have access to WiFi during cutting, so only the docking station itself needs it. Should you need to place your docking station in a place without WiFi, there is an option to purchase one. GSM module. The module includes three years of free connection that is activated upon initial installation, then you can also see the robot's position on Google Maps.

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Simple and easy mapping

It's incredibly easy to create new work areas or edit your map in other ways. Finally a robotic lawnmower that doesn't feel so complicated!

When you map your lawn to create your first zone, you simply go behind the robot and control it with the app. Clockwise or counterclockwise, doesn't matter. Once you've completed the full lap, it's time to create a path to your docking station unless it's located inside the zone. After that, mark prohibited areas within your zone in exactly the same way.

If you create more zones, you also need to create a path between the zones so the robot knows how to get there. Currently, it is only possible to create two zones, unfortunately, but support for more zones will come with future updates to the app. The minimum width of a road can be quite narrow in comparison to how wide a working area can be. For example, we have a patch of grass that can be used as a path between two zones but since the robot does not mow on roads and the grass is too narrow to be a working area, that part cannot be mowed. A function to be able to turn on the mowing on the way between zones would have been great for us!

We have tested creating two zones with gravel walking between, when the gravel gets a little too deep the robot struggles to get hold of the wheels just like most robotic lawnmowers so think about where your robot will be able to go to get between the zones.

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LIDAR

LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) hasn't been around in the industry much before but we think it's here to stay. Technology offers so many advantages when it comes to positioning. It is no coincidence that most self-driving cars use similar technology to be able to position themselves in exactly the right place in relation to their surroundings. Unlike older robotic lawnmowers, the Dreame A1 knows exactly where it is and where it's been. In this way, it is possible to cut much more efficiently with e.g. U-shape cut pattern.

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Omni Sense™ has a range of 70m and can see in 360° × 59°. With this range, the robot brings all the treetops where we can basically see our entire plot. So privacy is a big issue for you so you should probably read the terms of use properly.

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Large areas to cut

The robotic lawnmower can mow up to 1,000 m² per day in its standard mode, the more efficient mode can handle 2,000 m² but at the same time has a reduced performance to avoid obstacles (however, in the app it says 120m²/h in standard mode and 200m²/h in efficiency mode). Unfortunately, we do not have a large lawn to test this and we have not had time to test long enough to be able to determine the difference in cut quality between the standard mode and the effective mode.

The cutting height can be set between 3 and 7cm and the height of obstacles that the robot will avoid can be set at 10, 15 or 20cm (5cm with beta function).

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Enjoyable app experience

Dreame has been doing this for a while and it shows. Stylish and user-friendly app. It would have been nice with a little more features though, here there is a lot of development potential for Dreame. For example, to be able to select different cutting patterns, cutting direction, cutting heights and activating the efficiency mode for different zones. For example, we have more zones where the cutting direction would have to be different because the zones are quite narrow and the robot therefore needs to turn unnecessarily many times which takes time and creates ugly cutting patterns. A little more similar to how the settings look for their robot vacuum cleaner. As usual with apps that are not developed in Sweden, we find some typos and the like.

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Smart Home Connections

In Dreame's app, you get access to control your robots using Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa.

Scheduling

By default, you get a spring and summer schedule as well as a fall and winter schedule. The difference is that the robot mows a little more often in summer and that you can switch between two different schedules. There is much more to be desired here and it feels like some updates will be required. For example, we cannot find a way to schedule the different zones individually (this problem is now solved with an update of the app). It is also not possible to set different height of the cut in the different zones.

For each day you have the option to set two different schedules, you choose whether you want to cut the entire area or just a specific zone as well as between what times. We would have liked to have the option to set the end time to be when the robot has finished the task instead of a fixed time, in this way you would ensure that the robot has time to finish cutting.

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Tremendous precision

According to Dreame, the A1 has a precision of as little as 1 cm, which is comparable to the other popular technology RTK (Real-time kinematic positioning) which is about the same. Since a lawn is somewhat uneven, it is not easy to determine how wide this is true, but it has good precision anyway. Corners and nooks are not always so easy for the robot to access, both in the mapping of the map and at the cutting itself. You always have to count on trimming some edges.

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Maintenance

You can easily clean the robot yourself, because the robot is IP rated to IPX6, you can easily flush the chassis with the water hose. The extra knife blades that come in the package can also be easily changed by yourself.

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User-friendly control panel

Under the hood hides a stylish and user-friendly control panel that unfortunately feels a bit plastic. Here you will access many settings that you can also adjust in the app. After we have done our installation, we have almost never used the panel except when we need to enter our PIN after we lift the robot.

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Security

If the robot is lifted, a voice will begin urging you to put the robot back down on the ground and enter your PIN. After a while, an alarm will start to sound. It's not that loud so don't expect the neighbor to hear this.

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Classic Docking Station with Fast Charge

With Fast Charging, the mower recharges itself in 65 min and can then resume any mowing. An adapter with an associated power cord is added to the docking station. You can easily screw the station into the lawn with eight hex screws. Make sure you have enough space around the station, at least one meter on each side according to the manufacturer. However, we have made it on less than that without a hitch.

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Rain and frost protection

The Dreame A1 also has a rain sensor that allows the robot to finish the task in progress to make its way back to the docking station and recharge. When it stops raining, the robot will go back to the point where it left off and resume mowing. If there is frost outside, even the robot will refrain from going out and mowing. A setting that we miss here is to be able to turn on a function that will make it start to cut when the frost has disappeared.

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Competitive Pricing

Dreame and many other emerging brands are really challenging the market with new technologies at lower price. The body and build quality are clearly simpler and not as robust as some others but at the same time the price is considerably cheaper. There is no doubt that there is a lot going on in the industry and it will be interesting to follow developments.

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Should you buy a robotic lawnmower without or with a loop?

If you have a straight, simple, small and flat lawn, it may still be worth considering a robotic lawnmower with a loop. It goes that way come down in price and still choose from a larger range. It is important that you evaluate all aspects of your plot before choosing robotic lawnmowers.

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Learn our guide: Best robotic lawnmowers without a perimeter wire

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Update:

With the latest update to the app, Dreame has added a section in the settings that they call “Labs”. Here it is now possible to test the following functions:

• Let the robot swerve for obstacles as low as 5cm. Can be good for you with e.g. apple trees. During our test of this, the robot moved quite strangely and reacted to many parts of the lawn as obstacles. It is something that Dreame also warns of if you activate this function. Therefore, you probably need a very flat lawn with a low mowing height.
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• Add more zones than two. Finally, there is now the possibility of adding more zones than just two. We've been texting and it's worked really well for us. We hope and assume that this feature will quickly become a standard feature.

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Summary

Dreame A1 is exactly what the market needs now, a new addition to the market that will surely give rise to the competition. We are super happy with Dreame A1, some updates in the app will make the product even better. We are a little worried about how long the Dreame A1 will last in the harsh Swedish weather. Of course, the price is attractive, but if the build quality would not last over time, it is necessary to get good help with service and repair.

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Thanks to Dreame who kindly lent us his robotic lawnmower. Dreame has not been able to influence the content of this article nor has it been possible to read this before you.