As great as vacuum cleaners are, they usually cannot completely replace a normal cordless vacuum cleaner. A vacuum cleaner is always an “additional product”. But does it always have to be this way? With its S5 Combo, Tineco tried to build a hybrid between a vacuum cleaner and a vacuum cleaner. Also a great thing for smaller apartments.
However, the Tineco S5 Combo was a little weaker than a normal wax vacuum or cordless vacuum.
Dreame now wants to make this better with the H12 Dual! This should offer the performance of a fully-fledged high-end vacuum cleaner as well as a good vacuum cleaner.
The H12 Dual is also in the absolute high-end class when it comes to equipment, with an automatic drying function, etc.
It sounds good at first, but what does it look like in practice? Does the Dreame H12 Dual offer full performance? Let’s find out in the test!
At this point, many thanks to Dreame for providing the H12 Dual for this test.
Dreame H12 Dual in Test
Basically, the H12 Dual uses the typical structure of a wax vacuum cleaner. This is also a stick vacuum cleaner. This means that all electronics, the batteries, the tanks, etc. are housed in the handle of the vacuum cleaner.
This handle sits on a large floor brush with a rotating roller. This roller is sprayed with water from above.
This water comes from a 900 ml fresh water tank. The dirty water is then sucked off and ends up in a separate 700 ml dirty water tank.
The special feature of the Dual is the “motor”, which can be removed! This can then be placed either on the “suction part” or the “wax suction part”.
We have a similar principle here as with the Tineco S5 Combo. However, the H12 Dual is significantly larger than the S5 Combo! The S5 Combo offered slightly reduced performance compared to normal vacuum cleaners. The H12 Dual appears to have no limitations in performance due to its modular design.
We also see this with the battery. Dreame advertises a full 35 minutes of running time when the vacuum cleaner is in operation, which isn’t bad! There should be 6x 4000 mAh battery cells installed, so we have approx. 88.8Wh battery capacity.
The vacuum cleaner is controlled as usual using three buttons on the handle. We also have a large LC display on the top of the motor part, which shows you the current mode, battery level and performance.
Suction mode
The Dreame H12 Dual is a 2-in-1 device. You can remove the “motor” from the vacuum cleaner module and attach it to a separate “vacuum cleaner attachment”.
This is a completely separate set of accessories. This is also a small point of criticism, because the Dreame H12 Dual effectively takes the place of two models.
We have a base station in which you will find the handle, dirt collection container and various attachments.
To switch from the vacuum cleaner to the vacuum cleaner, you have to remove the motor on the vacuum cleaner and place it on the dirt collection container. This works quite well and is also quite quick.
Then you can choose from three attachments: electric floor brush, electric upholstery brush and corner/crumbs attachment.
The most important thing is the floor brush. This uses a “soft roller” brush. In theory, this is optimal for smooth floors and “OK” for carpets.
How does a vacuum cleaner work?
But what is a vacuum cleaner and how does it work? A “real” wax vacuum cleaner has two tanks and is able to pick up solid dirt as well as liquids and moist dirt at the same time.
For this purpose, they usually have a large, fluffy roller in the front, which rotates quickly. This roller is automatically sprayed with fresh water. This allows the roller to bind dirt and “polish” your floor. Excess water, as well as dirt and other liquids, are removed by the rotation and the suction motor and transported into a separate channel and container.
Cleaning right into the corner
The Dreame H12 Dual has a special suspension for its floor roller. This suspension allows cleaning on both sides right up to the wall or furniture.
Suction power (vacuum cleaner)
The Dreame H12 Dual can clearly be classified in the “high-end” class of vacuum cleaners. This offers a very high cleaning and washing performance.
The great thing about vacuum cleaners is their universal use. You can use this to vacuum up normal dust, hair and other everyday dirt, as well as “damp” objects and liquids.
Likewise, damp cleaning simply ensures brighter floors than dry vacuuming. Footprints and streaks disappear this way.
And yes, the Dreame H12 Dual basically cleans streak-free even on white tiles. I basically say this because it obviously depends somewhat on the cleaning agent used and the age of the roller.
You drop a loaf of jam during breakfast or tip over a bottle that isn’t completely closed. This is no longer a drama with the Dreame H12 Dual!
As a rule, with such fresh dirt, a single pass over it is enough to clean it 100%.
Especially with sticky liquids, you might think that they are just being spread around. But no! The Dreame H12 Dual does a fantastic job of completely absorbing them when passing over them for the first time and also rinsing the roller so that no sticky liquid remains.
The H12 Dual usually copes well with the following:
Normal house dust Hair Spilled liquids, including sugary ones such as cola etc. Jam, Nutella etc. Footprints Mud Mixed substances (pasta with sauce etc.)
Normal dust is simply picked up by the rotating roller and transported away bound in the water.
This may also make a vacuum cleaner interesting for people with pollen allergies. Pollen would also be bound in the water and transported away.
Hair can be a bit of a double-edged sword. Light amounts of hair are not a problem, but handfuls of hair can simply get stuck in the vacuum and collection container.
In the marketing materials, Dreame had a picture of someone vacuuming up an entire plate of pasta and sauce that had fallen off. This is a bit exaggerated! On a small scale, however, it is certainly possible to soak up a noodle with sauce or something similar.
But what can the H12 Dual not do or not do well?
Extremely large particles (shopping lists, for example)
“Pure fat”
Heavily dried stains
Certainly the worst case for any vacuum cleaner is pure grease. Slightly greasy sauce is ok, but if you drop a bottle of oil or mayonnaise, it becomes problematic. Large amounts of grease simply stick together on the roller and cannot be rinsed out so easily. Therefore, some caution is required here.
Otherwise, dried stains are also a problem. Sometimes it works if you leave the vacuum cleaner on the stain for a while and this soaks it a little, but this depends heavily on the stain.
It’s best to remove stains when they’re still fresh.
Wash carpet?
In principle, you can also drive on carpets with the Dreame H12 Dual. However, we only have a very superficial cleaning here. You can use a vacuum cleaner to “extinguish” recently spilled liquids and sometimes remove them easily (for flat carpets), but of course it is not a deep cleaning.
Absorb liquids?
Yes, you can vacuum up spilled liquids with the Dreame H12 Dual. Of course, it is not designed to dry the apartment in the event of a flood, but a half-empty bottle or if an animal has tipped over the water bowl is no problem.
Suction power (vacuum cleaner)
The Dreame H12 Dual moves a lot of air in the vacuum cleaner or in vacuum cleaner mode! Accordingly, the corner/crumb attachment works very well!
The floor brush also does a great job on smooth floors! Here the Dreame H12 Dual has no problems with hair, crumbs or normal dust. Even larger objects such as smaller leaves are reliably vacuumed up. The floor brush is very beautiful, flexible and smooth-running.
On smooth floors I would give full marks; no one can vacuum much better here.
Unfortunately, things look a little different on carpets. The large “fluffy” roller, which is also used in vacuum mode, is very good for smooth floors and hair. However, on carpets, this cannot really grip into the fibers. In addition, the Dreame H12 Dual does not create an excessively strong vacuum because the floor brush is quite open.
Of course, you can still vacuum a few flat carpets or rugs. But if you have a lot of carpets and perhaps pets with sticky hair, then I don’t think the Dreame H12 Dual is ideal.
This may be ok for a carpet, but it is optimized (apart from the upholstery brush) for smooth floors, where it can also be completely convincing!
Extensive self-cleaning
The self-cleaning function in vacuum cleaners is nothing new. Of course, you can also place the Dreame H12 Dual on its station and it will automatically rinse its roller with water.
This removes any remaining dirt and removes any residue that may still be stuck in the vacuum’s channels.
And yes, this works! The vacuum cleaner does 99% of the cleaning work itself. Every now and then you have to remove the roller and perhaps hair that has gotten stuck in cracks behind the roller yourself, but that’s about every 2-4 weeks that you have to intervene manually.
A special feature of the Dreame H12 Dual, however, is the drying. After self-cleaning, the vacuum cleaner starts targeted drying of the roller. This is slowly rotated and dried with warm air. This is to prevent odors.
The small disadvantage of this function is that the vacuum cleaner hums slightly during drying. If this bothers you, you can stop drying at any time.
Conclusion
The Dreame H12 Dual* is a very interesting concept! A “2-in-1” washer/vacuum cleaner with which you can also vacuum crumbs and upholstery.
Dreame has implemented this concept largely without compromise. The Tineco S5 Combo also relied on a similar concept, but the “Combo” version was slightly weaker than the regular models from a performance perspective.
This is not the case here! The Dreame H12 Dual offers high-end “washer vacuum performance” and superior performance as a vacuum cleaner.
As a vacuum cleaner, this is initially completely convincing. We have top cleaning performance here. House dust, footprints, spilled liquids (even sticky liquids), jam, etc. are no problem at all.
We have very good edge cleaning, large tanks, good battery and strong self-cleaning.
Full marks here!
The vacuum cleaner function is also good if you primarily have smooth floors. The Dreame H12 Dual is completely convincing on smooth floors and also when vacuuming crumbs etc. Here it offers top suction power and large air throughput.
It is only not completely convincing on carpets due to the design of the floor brush. Yes, it also works on carpets, but it is clear that the Dreame H12 Dual is optimized for smooth floors.
So if you primarily have smooth floors, a light to medium amount of dirt and are looking for a 2-in-1 model without compromises on the vacuum cleaner part, then the Dreame H12 Dual is a great choice!
However, if you have pets and/or carpets, then I would recommend a vacuum cleaner (like the normal H12) + a normal cordless vacuum cleaner.
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