Verdict: Dreame T20
Our editorial rating based on product testing.
- high suction power
- automatic suction power adjustment mode
- quality build
- design
- a lot of attachments included
- slow charging
- can’t rotate at the joint on the floor nozzle by 360°
Dreame, Xiaomi’s partner company, has launched a new cordless vacuum cleaner, Dreame T20, which we had the chance to test. It delivers great performance, up to 70 minutes of runtime, and comes with a color display. But can it effectively pick up all kinds of dirt?
Where to buy the Dreame T20
We purchased the Dreame T20 stick vacuum directly from the official Aliexpress store of the manufacturer Dreame. It was delivered by courier with no extra charges such as customs duty or VAT.
The vacuum is currently available from a European warehouse in France, with delivery in 1 week.
Dreame T20 stick vacuum
EU warehouse
TIPFast delivery from the Spanish warehouse with no customs duty and VAT.
This product will be delivered to you quickly from a local Spanish warehouse. Shipping from Spain usually takes 7-10 days and is handled by a courier. When it arrives, you don’t pay any extra fees—no customs duty, no VAT.
Rich contents in the box
The Dreame T20 arrives in a black, fairly small box. We have to admit we haven’t unboxed a so precisely packed product in a long time. Everything has its place in the box, and the individual components are neatly arranged so you can store everything in the box in sensible dimensions.
On the top you’ll find a very clear multi-language manual and the main vacuum stick in a nice, matte red color. Under the top cardboard, the other parts are placed in separate compartments. Besides the main unit of the vacuum, where the motor and dirt bin are located, the basic package also includes a number of attachments.
Two of the attachments are powered by electricity, because they include a rotating roller that picks up dirt. These are the main floor nozzle and the attachment for vacuuming mattresses, sofas, and similar surfaces.
Both of them have a rotating roller with fine bristles. Unlike some other similar models, the entire rotating roller here isn’t covered with bristles. Instead, the bristles are arranged along a thin spiral line, which should pick up dirt more efficiently.
You can tell these two nozzles are powered by the pins on them. They fit perfectly into the connectors on the main vacuum unit.
In addition to the floor and mattress nozzle mentioned above, the package also includes several passive attachments similar to the classic attachments from regular vacuum cleaners. There’s a narrow attachment for cleaning hard-to-reach crevices and a brush attachment.
You can connect these passive attachments directly to the main vacuum unit, or you can also use the included flexible extension piece to help you reach less accessible areas.
The box also includes a wall mount, along with wall plugs and screws. You can additionally buy a mop with a water tank.
Build quality and first impression
The Dreame T20 stick vacuum feels premium. Even during unboxing, it was clear this is a well-made product. Most parts are made of plastic, but they are high-quality parts that fit together perfectly.
All the attachments that connect to each other fit perfectly. Thanks to the click-in system, none of the attachments or the main vacuum stick will come off during use. With regular vacuums, the main stick sometimes disconnects on us, so we rate this system very positively.
Overall, the build quality is at a high level. One weak point, though, could be the dust bin opening system. It opens by pulling a small plastic latch. The question is how durable that latch will be if you empty the bin often. We’d imagine a better latch system to secure the bin.
Controls and modes
A big advantage is that the vacuum is cordless. Nothing gets in the way while you’re cleaning, which is a huge plus. It’s also very easy to operate. The vacuum is turned on with a pistol-style button, which doesn’t need to be held pressed the whole time. However, it’s positioned in such a way that holding this button down feels fairly natural, and we wouldn’t mind keeping it pressed throughout the entire cleaning.
The vacuum has a color display that looks very subtle and also feels premium. The main element on the display is the selection of cleaning modes. There are 4 modes available: eco, automatic, medium, and turbo. However, the automatic mode is only available with electric attachments. For non-electric (passive) attachments, the medium mode is used instead of automatic.
Eco mode is the weakest, and it’s especially suitable for cleaning hard floors, but it still picks up dirt from tougher carpets. Turbo mode delivers full power and works perfectly. The downside to that power is lower runtime, which we’ll cover below. Automatic is an intelligent mode that can independently determine the suction power based on the surface. The medium mode speaks for itself.
Many people wonder whether such a stick vacuum is heavy, since you hold it in your hand while cleaning. The Dreame T20 weighs 1.7 kg, and when cleaning floors you hardly notice the weight at all. It’s a bit worse when using other attachments, because then you’re holding the entire vacuum weight in one hand. For us, though, it wasn’t at all difficult, and we had no problem cleaning the whole apartment without any issues.
But the fairer half may have some reservations about the weight when vacuuming higher areas, where the vacuum has to be held in an unnatural position. In that case, a classic corded vacuum has the advantage.
Maneuverability with the vacuum and its limits
As for maneuverability, handling the vacuum is very smooth. A minor issue could be cleaning less accessible spots along the wall or floor, where we sometimes hit its limits.
Those limits come from the physical dimensions of the vacuum’s main unit, which sometimes doesn’t allow you to get any closer to the wall or the floor. For example, if you wanted to vacuum under the couch where there isn’t much space, you may not be able to reach it because the vacuum pole can’t be fully flattened against the floor.
So it can happen occasionally that the main unit gets in the way, so you can’t reach every spot. In some cases, a flexible extension part can solve this, but it isn’t electrified, so you can’t use it with the main floor nozzle. However, this is a problem that almost all stick vacuums have.
At least partially, it could be solved by angling to the side at the joint near the floor nozzle. But that’s very limited, and the joint allows rotation only by a few degrees to both directions. This is probably because of the electrical power supply to the nozzle.
Cleaning performance and suction power
The Dreame T20 comes with a technologically advanced, powerful motor that can reach up to 125 000 RPM and provides suction power of 25 000 Pa. Turbo mode is the strongest setting, where full suction power of 150 AW is available.
The difference compared to conventional vacuum cleaners is significant. A conventional vacuum, after all, mainly uses suction power in the form of the sucked-in air. The stick vacuum like the Dreame T20 generally has weaker suction, but it’s complemented by a rotating brush roller.
It can pick up dirt effectively and really makes up for the weaker suction. When vacuuming carpets, it’s even a big advantage. At first we were a bit worried that such a roller might scratch the floor, but the bristles are genuinely soft, and it didn’t scratch anything.
From a hard floor, we were able to remove dirt without any trouble, even in the weakest eco mode, where the vacuum is relatively quiet. But for vacuuming carpets, mattresses, or sofas, it may not be quite enough. Especially if you vacuum carpets with longer pile, you’ll need stronger suction power.
In the strongest turbo mode, the difference is, of course, immediately noticeable—both felt and heard. In this mode, the vacuum offers high performance comparable to traditional vacuum cleaners. We had no problem vacuuming carpets, mattresses, and sofas with it (with a few smaller exceptions we cover in the next chapter). In turbo mode, thinner carpets literally cling to the floor nozzle.
The automatic mode adjusts suction power according to the surface. Of course, it only works when using electric nozzles. You can clearly see how this mode works when vacuuming the floor and then moving onto a carpet—or the other way around. When we switched from the floor to the carpet, the suction power automatically increased after a short moment.
During our testing, we liked the automatic mode the most—it works really well. We didn’t have to worry about manually switching the suction power.
When it comes to manual adjusting the suction power, we’d be able to imagine setting it in several steps. This way, only two are available – eco and turbo. According to our opinion, having a multi-level scale would be better.
And what problems did we run into while vacuuming?
Vacuuming is mostly problem-free, but we did find a few minor downsides. The first one is already mentioned above—the availability for some narrow spots, where you simply can’t reach with the floor nozzle.
With the Dreame T20 vacuum, we couldn’t fully vacuum all the places we previously managed with a regular vacuum without any problems. But that’s a disadvantage of all stick vacuums—whether their motor and dust bin are located in the upper or lower part.
Another problem is vacuuming thin carpets. More than once, the corner of such a carpet got tangled in the rotating roller of the floor nozzle. It happened even in the weakest eco mode.
The same issue can occur when vacuuming carpets with an overly long pile. We found that when vacuuming such a carpet in automatic or turbo mode, the rotating brush stopped and the vacuum signaled that the brush needed cleaning.
The last issue we’d like to mention is the weight when vacuuming with different attachments—where you’re holding the entire weight of the vacuum in your hand. For some people, that weight can be bothersome after a longer time vacuuming. We have to admit that after some time, you can feel the strain in your hand when vacuuming radiators, floor skirting boards, the sofa, or even the ceiling.
However, since most of these problems are related to the physical construction of the stick vacuum, they will be present in almost all vacuums of this type.
Filters
The Dreame T20 has five levels of filtration, thanks to which up to 99.97 % of dirt is captured, so almost no dirt gets back into the air.
After removing the dust bin, you can detach the round thin filter. Under it, you’ll find the cyclonic unit. In the upper part, there is a HEPA filter.
All the listed, removable parts can be washed under running water.
Endurance and charging
The Dreame T20 stick vacuum comes with a removable battery with a capacity of 2700 mAh. The manufacturer states a runtime of 70 minutes per charge in eco mode, 30 minutes in medium, and 8 minutes in turbo mode.
During our test, in automatic mode we reached a runtime of 27 minutes. We mainly vacuumed floor surfaces, where roughly 30 % were carpets—on which suction power increases automatically.
We were mildly surprised that the vacuum displays a low-battery warning only when the capacity drops to 5 %. We’d expect such a warning at least at 20 %. However, there’s no sound alert for a low battery. During vacuuming, the display is often out of your line of sight, so it’s easy to miss when the battery has run out.
In turbo mode, the battery capacity drops really, very fast. We managed to drain the battery after 10.5 minutes. When vacuuming in ECO mode, our vacuum lasted about an hour, and this mode was completely enough for normal cleaning of an apartment with a laminate floor and minimal carpet.
As for charging, we were slightly disappointed here. The battery goes from 5 % to full capacity in about 3.5 hours, which is really a lot compared to the runtime on a single charge. We’d have appreciated a faster charger that could do it in 2 hours.
Dreame T20: Final verdict
The Dreame T20 impressed us with its very high-quality build and strong suction power. Despite a few shortcomings, we found it vacuumed better than a traditional corded vacuum we’re all familiar with.
The lack of a cable and a vacuum cleaner you have to drag behind you is a huge advantage. With a wall-mount stand, storage is also much easier. The automatic mode is excellent too—it can adjust suction power based on the surface being cleaned.
The runtime on a single charge is more than sufficient even for vacuuming in a large family house with automatic mode. In a typical apartment, the battery lasted for several cleaning sessions as well. Dreame T20 is ideal for quick everyday vacuuming, especially if you have a pet or a small child.
Dreame T20 stick vacuum
EU warehouseTIPFast delivery from the Spanish warehouse with no customs duty and VAT.
This product will be delivered to you quickly from a local Spanish warehouse. Shipping from Spain usually takes 7-10 days and is handled by a courier. When it arrives, you don’t pay any extra fees—no customs duty, no VAT.
Some minor downsides include slow charging and not being able to reach certain spots due to the vacuum’s dimensions. However, in our case the advantages outweighed the negatives, so we can recommend the Dreame T20 to everyone looking for a high-quality, powerful stick vacuum.
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