Dreame H12 Pro Review: A powerful hard floor cleaner

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A powerful hard floor cleaner and vacuum

A quality hard floor cleaner and vacuum all-in-one, the Dreame H12 Pro can deal with tough stains well. Simple to use and with a clear LCD, this device makes cleaning simple. It has an automatic power mode, but I found that this wasn't very sensitive, so cleaning took a few more swipes than on some rivals. It's also relatively expensive, although the quality of the clean may justify this price to some.

The Dreame H12 Pro is the first wet and dry vacuum cleaner I’ve seen from the company.

Designed for cleaning hard floors, this cleaner has some smart features, including a dirt sensor that controls the automatic power mode, a self-cleaning and drying mode, and a large LCD that shows important information, such as battery life.

It's easy to use and cleans well, but it is quite expensive and I didn't find the automatic dirt sensor to be very sensitive.

It seems that there are only so many ways to make a hard floor cleaner, and the Dreame H12 Pro conforms to the usual standard. Designed like an upright vacuum cleaner, the Dreame H12 Pro has a single roller at the front, which is designed to agitate dirt before it's sucked up.

Although there is an automatic cleaning mode, Dreame provides a spare roller in the box, so you can give one roller a deeper clean and still have one ready to go.

Dirty water is sucked up into the 700ml water tank at the front. This has a float in it, triggering the H12 Pro to stop cleaning once the tank is full of water. At the top of this is a HEPA filter that prevents small particles from escaping back into the air.

Dreame also provides a spare HEPA filter in the box, so you can clean one while still having another ready for tackling a hard floor clean.

The top comes off the dirty tank, so that dirty water can be poured away. There's no filter inside for larger material, such as pet hair, so I recommend only pouring the waste water into a sink with a stop, such as a kitchen sink.

Cleaning is provided by the 900ml clean water tank, which should have detergent added to it. Dreame provides its own cleaning solution in the box, and suggests that you only use this to clean floors for the best performance.

Detergent and water have to be mixed in the same tank. With the Roborock Dyad Pro, there's a separate detergent tank, with the hard floor cleaner taking care of the mixing on the fly. I prefer this latter version, as it means less wastage and no need to try and get the correct mix.

Using the Dream H12 Pro is easy. Just pull it out of its charging stand and press the on button. It starts up in Auto mode, with the roller only starting to spin when the handle is pulled back.

There are also two other modes. The first is a dry only mode, which you can use for wet spills. The second is slightly more confusing.

Read the manual and the mode is called Ultra; select the option when using the Dream H12 Pro and a voice says ‘sanitiser mode’, before the screen shows the system preparing, counting up to 100%.

I couldn't detect any difference in roller spin speed, or device mode, so I’m none the wiser as to what Ultra/sanitiser mode really does.

There's a green LED ring that surrounds the Dream H12 Pro's screen. This should turn amber and then red as the dust sensor detects dirt and adjusts the motor speed and mixing speed on the fly.

That's the theory, and a similar mode to that of the Roborock Dyad. However, I found that the Dream H12 Pro wasn't very sensitive. Even cleaning a very muddy floor, the Dream H12 Pro rarely turned its light to red. Even when I did get a red light, this only ever turned on for a few seconds, with the motor speed picking up for the same amount of time.

Having battery life displayed as a percentage is a useful tool to have on this machine, as I could see roughly how much cleaning I had left to do.

I did find the Dream H12 Pro easy to push around. Its angled head makes it easy to get the cleaner around furniture, while the motorised brush helps propel the unit along the floor.

Once finished, the Dream H12 Pro can be dropped back into its dock for recharging. There's a button at the back that starts automatic cleaning (using detergent in the clean tank), followed by a drying session that prevents the rollers from smelling or bacteria from growing. Neatly, the LCD shows, as a percentage, how complete the drying process is.

I tested the Dreame H12 Pro on the hard kitchen floor in the Trusted Reviews home technology lab. As well as trampling mud in and allowing it to dry, this floor often has tough rubber marks on the floor from where I move around large appliances.

Starting off with the mud stains, I found that the Dreame H12 Pro cleaned them up well with a few passes. As the H12 Pro didn't increase motor speed or suction power, I did need a few more sweeps to get everything picked up than compared with Dyad Pro.

Tackling stains by the kitchen plinth, I found that the cleaner could get fairly close to the edge, but leaves a small gap. There was a small bit of flour left over from when I tested a robot vacuum cleaner that didn't get collected.

To be fair, the only cleaner that I’ve seen that can get right up to the edge of a room is the Shark Klik n’ Flip Automatic Steam Mop S6003UK, and that's only because it has a fold-over cloth.

Tackling the harder rubber stains, the H12 Pro needed a few swipes to really get the mess out of the floor, although it did manage to remove the mess. And, I didn't need to switch up to Ultra mode, either.

Larger particles can be picked up, as the H12 Pro can vacuum up as it cleans. That said, depending on what the mess is, it's often better to vacuum dry mess first. For example, with cat hair, vacuuming it up and disposing of it that way is more pleasant than having a soggy lump of hair in the kitchen sink that needs to be thrown away.

Battery life tops out at 35 minutes. That was enough to clean the ground floor of my house (hallway, kitchen, utility room, office and lounge), which has some rugs down. To clean the entire house, I needed between two and three charges, which takes three hours.

I measured the sound at 72.8dB, which is about average for a device like this: it's certainly loud enough to hear.

You want a simple hard floor cleaner: This one makes short work of stains and cleans well on all hard floor surfaces.

You’re on a tighter budget: This floor cleaner is quite expensive and there are cheaper models available if you don't need such powerful vacuum action.

Powerful and easy to use, the Dreame H12 Pro cleans well, scrubbing away at hard stains. I didn't find that its automatic mode worked very well, with the cleaner rarely jumping up to its more powerful top mode. My testing shows the Roborock Dyad Pro to be more able in this regard.

This is also quite an expensive cleaner. For the same kind of money, the Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max is available: it is a bit bigger, but just as powerful and can even tackle some stains on carpets. For cheaper alternatives, check out my guide to the best hard floor cleaners.

We test every hard floor cleaner we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.

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Used as our main hard floor cleaner for the review period

Tested with real-world dirt in real-world situations for fair comparisons with other steam cleaners

Yes, it has a self-clean mode and it also dries the roller when cleaning has completed.

This detects how dirty the floor is and adjusts motor power automatically, although I didn't find that this sensor was particularly sensitive.

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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.