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Dreame A3 AWD Pro Review: A Compelling Case for LiDAR Robomowers
Robot mowers have come a long way in the last couple of years, but they’re still guaranteed to be compromise machines. One might be great at navigation, but only if it has good satellite reception in your yard. Another might fit in tight spaces but be two-wheel-drive and unable to deal with difficult terrain. Some automowers have great all-around performance—but they aren’t very affordable.
The $3,200 LiDAR-based Dreame A3 AWD Pro , which I tested for about a week, fits in that latter category. It’s got great satellite-free navigation. But although its all-wheel-drive nature means it can handle lumpy yards and steep inclines, it’s more prone to carving bald spots and wheel ruts in your yard than the comparable but cheaper Segway Navimow X430 . And unless you have a very big lawn—I tested the A3 AWD Pro 3500, the middle of three range-differentiated models, which can handle more than three-quarters of an acre—it's hard to justify its hefty price tag.
Assuming the A3 AWD Pro fits your circumstances and budget, it’s a capable automower with creature comforts not found on many competitors. Plus, since it uses LiDAR navigation, satellite connectivity is a complete nonissue. The device has its drawbacks for sure, but once you work through them and set a mowing schedule, things should be smooth sailing. Mostly.
Dreame’s imperfect, but capable robomower shows just how good LiDAR is—if you can afford it.
Many robomower makers—Mammotion, Segway, and others—seem to have decided that their devices should all look like tiny cars. Usually race cars, although I think the A3 AWD Pro has a sort of overwrought luxury SUV vibe. A red LED strip on the back is probably meant to drive that feeling home, but it really just reminded me (and several people who were at my house one night during testing) of the Cylons, Battlestar Galactica ’s race of murderous, sentient robots.
Without satellite navigation, the Dreame A3 AWD Pro is way less of a pain in the ass to set up than satellite-dependent competitors like the Navimow X430. LiDAR-based navigation lets you place its dock wherever works best for you, rather than wherever there’s a reliable satellite signal. Plus, you won’t have to install an RTK beacon in the middle of your yard. Once you’ve got the dock placed where you want it and the mower connected to the Dreame Home app (by scanning a QR code under the hood that covers its physical controls and hood), you can go straight to mapping.
Unlike with other automowers I’ve tested, automatic mapping is actually somewhat feasible in my cluttered area. All by itself, Dreame’s mower mapped the biggest open space in my backyard. It didn’t move beyond that on its own, but hey, I’ll take it. The other mowers I’ve tested either wouldn’t attempt automatic mapping at all—the X430 and its smaller sibling, the i2 LiDAR I didn’t review but have tested, algorithmically determine whether they can map an area themselves—or, in the case of the Roborock RockNeo Q110H , only managed a very small portion. I did the rest of the yard manually, walking behind the A3 AWD Pro and controlling it via the app.
Manual mapping was a bit frustrating at first. My phone’s Bluetooth connection to the mower was spotty, making driving the A3 AWD Pro sluggish and lurchy as the device kept losing signal, stopping, and restarting once it had reconnected. Thankfully, this got better later in testing; whether because of software updates or some mysterious wireless interference clearing up, Bluetooth became stable up to about 20 feet away, as long as I wasn’t manually mowing—the A3 AWD Pro won’t let you get farther than just a few feet before it stops its spinning blades and warns you in the app that you’re too far away.
The Dreame app shows a simple overhead map reflecting the contours of the boundaries you’ve set, and you’ll see the mower moving around on it as it works. There’s also a 3D button on this screen; tap that, and you can see and rotate a colorful point cloud visualization of your yard that shows just how far-reaching the A3 AWD Pro’s LiDAR sensor is. I could see the houses and cars across the street, my home’s roofline, and the shape of a tall tree in my backyard. It’s not an especially useful feature, but it’s fun to look at.
The A3 AWD Pro was about as good at navigating my yard as the Navimow X430, with some small but meaningful differences. Around the edges of my map, it had no qualms about running over slightly taller plants that Segway’s mower was more cautious around, which I liked but found to be a double-edged sword. For instance, the A3 mowed right over some daylilies in my front yard and got badly snagged on the same wire garden fence that gave the X430 trouble in my testing. Still, once I’d worked out the trouble spots by adjusting the map’s boundaries, it had no issues, even when mowing at night.
In the right conditions, the A3 AWD Pro’s grass-trimming performance was excellent. Being a robot mower, it’s designed to mulch already short grass rather than cut overgrown yards. After two or three passes, I found that it had left the vast majority of my lawn with a pleasantly even trim. Although its dual mowing discs move sideways to cut closer to the edges, they won’t eliminate the need to clean up afterward with a string trimmer.
Battery was never a concern during any of my testing, although I have a much smaller yard than the A3 AWD Pro is rated for. Between the front and back lawns, there’s only about 2,400 square feet of mowable area, and the device still had about 65% charge left after tackling it all in one job.
On the flip side, the A3 AWD Pro was more cautious than the X430 when maneuvering around obstacles inside of a mapped area. It gave raised garden beds about a foot of clearance, for instance, and as a result wouldn’t touch a strip between the beds and my house. That was a bit frustrating, because it could clearly manage tight spaces very well—it got farther into a corner of the backyard that always thw...
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