Dreame A2

Just under a year ago we took a closer look at our first ever robotic lawnmower, Dreame's wild A1, but ended up not being able to review it due to the rather specific options that absolutely must be available in order to take a more critical look at such a product.

Put in a much simpler way; we didn't have access to a lawn of the right size and under the right conditions, but that's not the case this time with its direct successor, the A2, which has just landed on the market at a crazy price of over £2,000.

That's why we don't have a review to refer back to or compare, but it's a pretty significant improvement over the A1 we already got a positive first impression of in 2024.

First of all, the model is smaller, a lot smaller. It's still big and heavy, make no mistake, and not designed to be lifted around, but it's still impressive that they've made room for the new EdgeMaster cutting blades (we'll get to those) and all the other gizmos that make this a state-of-the-art robotic mower in a shape that looks like it's lost a good 30% of its length.

It weighs just over 16 kilos and, like the A1, is parked in a charging station and, again like the A1, there's no need for you to bury a cumbersome cable that helps the mower define the outer boundary of the area it needs to cover. It's IPX6 certified, so it can easily withstand rain, wind and weather. Overall, there's not much to complain about the construction; even the noise level is measured at around 50 decibels, so it's not going to wake the neighbours.

It's set up via the rather nice Dreame app, which we know well from the robot vacuum cleaners, and actually mows in the same U-shape as those same vacuum cleaners, it's a nice, uniform way to maintain the garden, and even if you have slopes it can handle up to 50 degrees, which, while not steep, allows the A2 to maintain different kinds of gardens, and not just the fixed stamps that appear in the press material.

In many ways the A2 works just like an X50 Ultra, it runs back to its dock on 15% battery, it uses a 3D LiDAR system on top to look up to 70 metres away and 360 degrees around it for orientation, and even has a 1080p HDR camera installed so it can see objects on the lawn or just let you spy on your kids while they play. Like the vacuum cleaner, the A2 notices if there are different sections and makes a preliminary division via Dual Fusion on the first scan, which you can then correct yourself, and in total it can cover over 3,000 square metres of lawn by taking these sections individually.

So how does all this work? Without too much context, as we've only now been able to actually test these mowers, one of the greatest geek experiences is watching the A2, over a couple of days, tackle my mum's rather large lawn, which due to illness has grown wild and unkempt over the past year. Yes, the cutting height is only between 3 and 7 centimetres, so you can't set it to shave down a jungle, but over 24 hours it took care of these 800 or so square metres quite convincingly, and the new EdgeMaster system even identified certain paths and moved parallel to them for a closer "cut" - and that was without any interference from us whatsoever. We didn't pay too much attention to all the AI features Dreame boasts, but to be honest, to quote Jeremy Clarkson; "you don't wander how it does what it does, you just marvel at the fact that it can do it all". The A2 is not to be recommended just because it can shave down a rather overgrown lawn, but it is to be recommended because this happened without any experience with robotic mowers, without prepping the lawn beforehand, and without any kind of maintenance or troubleshooting involved. It's expensive, too expensive to revolutionise garden maintenance, but the technology Dreame has come up with is truly in a class of its own.