This cordless wet vacuum sucked up an entire raw egg and syrup — but there’s one major thing wrong with it

There’s a lot of talk about wet and dry vacs at the moment, and the Dream H12 Pro wet and dry vacuum is no different. What is the difference between a wet and dry vacuum, and, well, a dry vacuum?

Basically, the H12 Pro has two water tanks: one for clean water (plus floor cleaner), one for dirty water you have to empty after a couple of uses. It can still vacuum without dispensing water, but it’s worth remembering that if you use the wet vac and try to use it dry immediately after, the roller will still be wet, and will wet your floors anyway.

So if the vacuum can suck up raw eggs (shell and all) and sticky syrup, why isn’t it one of the best vacuum cleaners around? Well, its self-propulsion is a little too excitable, and it’s not the most user-friendly option on the market. Could it still be worth $449, though? Find out in this Dreame H12 Pro vacuum review.

Dreame H12 Pro Wet and Dry review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A wet and dry vacuum, ideal for hard floors
• Who is it for? People with no carpet in their homes
• What does it do well? Cleans up wet messes well
• What are its weaknesses? Its on/off button has an irritating delay, and the self-propulsion makes you feel like you’re walking a very eager dog

Dreame H12 Pro Wet and Dry review: Specs

Dreame H12 Pro Wet and Dry review: Price & availability

The Dreame H12 Pro wet and dry vacuum is $449 from Amazon U.S. and £299 from Amazon U.K.. It’s unclear right now where there’s such a price difference, but you’re getting a much better deal over in the U.K..

However, it is worth noting that the H12 Pro hasn’t been sold at full MSRP since July 2024, and usually hovers between $400-460. If you can snag it on sale, there’s no reason why this couldn’t be one of the best budget vacuums.

$449 is a pretty middle-of-the-road price for a wet and dry vacuum. The Dyson V15s Submarine is $949 (but it is a Dyson), and is ideal for half-carpet half-hard floors as it can easily convert between wet and dry.

Shark’s HydroVac MessMaster — which has one of the best names I’ve ever seen on a vacuum, just saying — is just $299, so I’d recommend that as the best starting point for newcomers to the wet/dry world.

Dreame H12 Pro Wet and Dry review: Design

I think one of the most impressive aspects of the Dreame H12 Pro is its design. The vacuum is sleek, monochromatic black with some gold accents. It’s pretty light when the water tanks are empty, too, and even when both tanks are full I was able to lug it up and down stairs with little effort.

The H12 Pro, much like the Gtech AirRAM 3 I was testing at the same time, has a self-propulsion system. However, unlike the AirRAM 3, this self-propulsion was a little too eager. It felt like an overexcited puppy dragging its owner along on a walk. I actually had to brace myself to turn it on.

Although this self-propulsion means cleaning requires very little manual effort, do not be surprised when the vacuum seems to transform into a dog dragging you around the floor.

I do really like the LCD screen on the top of the vacuum body. This shows me what mode I’m using, and is quite bright so I didn’t have to squint at it to figure out what it said.

There are three buttons on the handle: one for self-cleaning (when on the charging base), on/off, and switching modes. There’s also a button on the back of the vacuum for turning off the really annoying voice alerts, which I was incredibly thankful for. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s AI/Robot voice on home appliances.

The only thing that really ground my gears was the Dreame-branded floor cleaner. Let me explain. For some reason, the bottle of floor cleaner Dreame provides (which I appreciate muchly) comes with a lid that doubles up as a measuring jug and pouring container. Great, right? Until I poured said floor cleaner into the H12 Pro’s clean water tank, and it went all over my hands.

No, this wasn’t me being silly or angling the spout incorrectly. The spout is shaped in such a way that it physically does not fit into the clean water tank hole. I was really incensed by this, but then I washed my hands and got on with cleaning. I’d like to see Dreame sort this out on future models, as it’s such an easy fix that would massively improve customer experience.

Dreame H12 Pro Wet and Dry review: Cleaning capabilities

Before we get into my testing data, there’s a few things I want to discuss about the H12 Pro. Firstly, its on/off button is really delayed. It takes a few seconds to boot up, and then it takes a few seconds to turn off.

At the beginning of my testing, I thought I wasn’t pressing the button hard enough, so I was actually turning it on and back off again repeatedly. So, take note: you have turned the vacuum off, it just takes a second.

Also, as I mentioned above, its self-propulsion is weirdly strong. Just be warned that you need to control the vacuum, lest it control you.

Another thing to note is that ‘Ultra’ mode takes about 30 seconds to activate. It has a nice percentage display that counts up how ‘ready’ Ultra mode is, but I really don’t know why it has such a long activation time.

Carpet

Although wet and dry vacuums aren’t necessarily intended to be used on carpet, for curiosity’s sake, I tested out the Dreame H12 Pro on some thick pile carpet.

I threw 20g of Cheerios and cat litter on the carpet, weighed the dustbin before and after vacuuming all the Cheerios and litter up. Here are my results.

As you can see, the H12 Pro did really well with the Cheerios — it even got extra! This was likely because it sucked up the surrounding dirt and dust at the same time as the Cheerios. Unfortunately, it left 0.6g of cat litter, but this isn’t intended to be a carpet vacuum so I want to forgive it.

Here’s a photo of the hair before and after.

You can’t really see (that’s the nature of hair, I guess), but it left about 20% of the hair. I had to go over the carpet with my Gtech AirRAM 3 afterwards, which finished the job for me.

Hard floors — Dry

Next, I tested the H12 Pro by using it on hard floors with both the ‘section only’ (dry) and ‘auto’ (wet) modes. Here are the results of the dry tests, using the same criteria and environment as before.

As promised, here are the photos of the hair situation. Given that hair is, by nature, very small, you can’t really see, but I assure you it’s there.

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The H12 Pro did pretty well at vacuuming up the hair, but I did have to use the Gtech AirRAM 3 to pick up the rest of the hair. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the H12 Pro as being your only vacuum cleaner, just another option for hard floors and a mop replacement.

Hard floors — Wet

Seeing as this is a wet vacuum, I did some more tests but with… well, wetter messes. Here are my results.

As you can see, the H12 Pro cleaned up every morsel of mess, and I was really impressed with the overall cleaning performance here. I had to go over the syrup mess about 30 times to eradicate initial stickiness, and the next day the floor was still sticky so I had to clean manually with a sponge and water. I was impressed with the egg and coffee stain, but not the syrup.

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It was much easier than getting on my hands and knees with a sponge or setting up a whole mop bucket situation. After cleaning, I dried the vacuum on the charging port, which I’ll discuss in depth in the ‘Battery life’ section below.

Ease of use

While the H12 Pro performed well in our cleaning tests, I wouldn’t jump at the chance to use it as my main vacuum. The H12 Pro’s overall ease of use is pretty mediocre.

As touched on above, the overpowered self-propulsion means it’s a bit of a hand+shoulder workout just getting the vacuum where you want it to be. It takes effort to reverse the vacuum, and every time I missed a patch, moving the vacuum to the side was really laborious.

I thought the fourth icon on the screen — a sun — would be drying mode, as in, I could turn it on and then dry my floor. However this is not the case — it’s only for drying the vacuum roller while on the charging base. As a result, I had to wait for my floors to dry.

Sometimes the roller brush left streaks over my floor that I had to clean with a sponge once it was dry. Although emptying the water tank was easy, I found it had to be emptied really often — after just two uses.

As a result, I found actually using the H12 Pro a little bit frustrating. However, it performed well in our general cleaning tests, so if you can look past the overly excited self-propulsion and emptying the tank often, it’s a good buy.

Volume

I measured the volume using DecibelX. The Dreame H12 Pro maxed out at 75dB, which is considerably quieter than the Gtech AirRAM 3 I was testing at the same time. However, Dreame advertises the H12 Pro as running at 68dB — so I think that statistic is a little too quiet.

When I put the H12 Pro on the charging base for self-cleaning, it ran at 69-74dB.

Dreame H12 Pro Wet and Dry review: Battery life

I love that the H12 Pro automatically cleans itself during charging to prevent nasty smells like mold and mildew, but it is a little loud while it does so. As I mentioned above, the self-cleaning operated at 69-74dB. After the initial clean, it reduced to around 54dB for the rest of the cleaning time, which took around 55 minutes.

The H12 Pro’s battery runs for approximately 30 minutes, but it varies based on floor type and power level. Unfortunately, there’s no remaining time countdown, so I ran the vacuum down 10% on each setting. I timed it until it went from, for example, 95% to 85%.

The Dyson V15s Submarine has the best battery life out of any wet/dry vacuum I’ve seen at a whopping 60 minutes. This 60 minute range is pretty good for just a cordless vacuum, let alone a wet and dry vacuum.

In comparison, the Shark HydroVac MessMaster runs for 35 minutes, the same as Dreame’s claims of the H12 Pro.

Dreame H12 Pro Wet and Dry review: Storage & maintenance

Dreame has one major warning on the base of the H12 Pro: “Do not lay the appliance flat”. As a result, I’d recommend storing the H12 Pro on the charging base, which will then clean and dry the roller in between uses.

The charging base is pretty big, 11.8 inches, but it’s also very sturdy. The base station never wobbled, even when I was stomping next to it.

As the charging station cleans the roller, I didn’t have to do any major cleaning or maintenance during testing. However, this doesn’t mean no cleaning. I would recommend keeping an eye on the roller itself and cleaning manually with a hot cloth or sponge.

Dreame advises that users only clean with Dreame-branded floor cleaner as other floor cleaners will damage the machine. Dreame floor cleaner is a whopping $17 per bottle on Amazon U.S..

Dreame H12 Pro Wet and Dry review: How does it compare?

As this vacuum isn’t suitable for use on carpet, I wouldn’t recommend it for use on a house with half-carpet half-hard flooring. This is only worth it if you have mostly hard floors.

If you think about it, buying this $449 wet vacuum and then an additional ~$400 carpet vacuum, that’s almost the same price as buying the Dyson V15s Submarine, which is compatible with both thick pile carpet and hard wood.

If you’re a complete beginner to the world of wet vacuums, I’d recommend the Shark HydroVac MessMaster as it’s only $299 and overall easier to use.

This doesn’t mean that the H12 Pro is a bad product, it just means there are cheaper alternatives that do pretty much the same thing.

Dreame H12 Pro Wet and Dry review: Verdict

The Dreame H12 Pro is a good vacuum cleaner for people with a large amount of hard flooring. However, those with carpet won’t be able to get the most out of the vacuum, so I’d recommend something like the Dyson V15s instead.

The H12 Pro performed well in our cleaning tests, and was able to clean up whole smashed eggs (shell included) and coffee stains with little protest. It did manage to get up most of the syrup, but I had to go back in with a sponge and bucket to remove 100% of the stickiness.

However, I found the vacuum pretty frustrating to use given its super-strong self-propulsion. But some people might really like that — especially if you’re stronger than me, which isn’t hard.

The bottom of the line is: if my criticisms don’t feel that important to you, then this is a good vacuum cleaner that will mop up messes on hard floors with ease. However, if you want a super user-friendly vacuum, I’d look elsewhere.