welcome to vacuum Wars and to our in-depth comparison of the dream l20 dream l30 and dream x30 Robot vacuum mop combos the dream l21 are best robot vacuum of 2023 competition but since then the l30 and x30 models have come out so we bought those two as well and have been testing them over the past few weeks in this video I'll go over their similarities and differences and give my opinion as to which one is the best and why so links in the description and let's get started first I need to talk about a somewhat confusing issue the dream l30 not to be confused with the x30 came out after the l20 but before the x30 and is priced in the middle of the two and for whatever reason the l30 is no longer available on the dream website and I don't know if it was discontinued or if it's just out of stock so though I will reference all three of these models in the video right now it seems that the comparison that will matter the most to you is going to be the l20 the previous Flagship with the x30 the new flagship starting off with the things that they have in common they're all able to do the same basic things that is vacuum hard floors and carpets as well as mop hard floors they all use the same basic mopping Hardware which includes two spinning brushes all three have something called mop extend where the right mop pad extends to better reach edges of wall walls and Corners though there are some software differences here which I'll talk about in a minute they seem to me to be equally great with their mopping ability which we tested a number of ways like with a dried on coffee stained test and a dried on grape juice stained test both of which they did equally good with all three of them come with large docking stations that in addition to automatically emptying the contents of their dust bins into an included bag when they return to the base to recharge they also automatically walk wash and automatically dry their mop pads as well as refill their mop tanks they all have great mop pad management for example they can all automatically raise their mop pads 10.5 mm which is above average when they detect carpets so that they can both vacuum carpets and mop hard floors in the same run which eliminates the need for two separate runs and is one of the best advancements in recent years for efficiency all three of these go a step further with this and that they have an option in the app to leave behind their mop pads at the base using a magnetic system and go vacuum carpets first and then return grab their mop pads and do hard floors it's something that even further reduces the risk of getting carpets and rugs wet and so far it's a feature unique to dream as far as I know all three of these have very good and very similar obstacle avoidance systems which include a front mounted camera a 3D structured light system lasers and over 70 types of objects current currently recognized in their Library they also have an LED light on the front that allows all of this to happen in the dark in our obstacle avoidance test there was a minor variation in their scores but they were all very similar and all three were above average they all have the same app which is well-designed very responsive and full of the latest features including multi-level mapping 3D mapping virtual wall barriers lots of control over bin behaviors and mopping settings a host of scheduling options and more the final similarity I'll mention is that they all have the same basic vacuuming Hardware such as a single side brush and a floating main brush they're all compatible with a new brush which actively detangles hair which I first saw at CES this year but that brush apparently is not included in any of these packages but is instead sold separately one of the major differences is that the oldest one the l20 does not have hot water washing which means that when the l30 and x30 wash their mop pads they use hot water to do so this does not mean that they will mop your floors with hot water which is a common misunderstanding the x30 also has something called Robo swing technology which is a software-based feature which swings the extendable mop pad in and out of tight spaces for better coverage where the l20 just mops in a straight line another difference is the size and shape of the docking station the x30 has a slightly more compact bin compared to the other two the x30 also has a different detergent tank compared to the other two it seems that you can use any kind of detergent that you want now where previously you had to use theirs though all three have removable drip trays which allow you to clean the area most likely to collect dirt and hair over time the x30 also has a new automatic cleaning mechanism in the tray which uses a mechanical motor and a series of squeegees to clean the tray for you so it's one more step toward complete automation other Hardware differences include a slightly larger internal dust bin on the x30 compared to the others as well as a larger battery on the x30 along with a longer official runtime on low power in our tests the actual difference in runtime over all the power settings was negligible compared to the l20 in fact the l20 had better overall battery scores than the x30 in the real world navigation tests where we run the robots on a fixed floor plan on all of their power settings the x30 and l30 did quite a bit better than the older l20 in terms of actual efficiency for example it took the l20 about 10 to 15 minutes longer on average to cover our floor plan compared to the other two but they were all pretty smart robot vacuums that navigated well with good coverage and were not likely to get stuck or have other issues and that brings me to the performance tests where there were a few surprises the official suction power on the x30 is higher than that of the l20 and indeed in our tests it was slightly higher as well but with most of the other performance tests the older and cheaper l20 seemed to do quite a bit better than the newer x30 for example in the airflow test the l20 was better than the x30 same thing with the carpet deep clean test I don't really have a good explanation for why this is it could of course be operator error on our part but we did test it many times to make sure in any case these things did not affect the basic pickup performance arguably the most important thing a robot vacuum needs to do where they were all equally good sweepers with debris of all shapes and sizes on both hard floors and carpets a final thing to consider is that because the latest Flagship the x30 has been released the price on the l20 the previous Flagship was dropped considerably making it of much better value than when we first named it our favorite robot of 2023 so my conclusion is this while the new x30 is slightly better at navigation of fish and has new features like hot water washing Robo swing a dock that scrubs its own drip tray and a few other great upgrades the older l20 model has most of the important features and is arguably slightly better at Raw performance at least according to our tests the only difference now is that it's being offered at a lower price so at least for now the older l20 Ultra still has the crown but the competition is heating up out there links in the description and be sure to subscribe to vacuum Wars before you leave thanks for watching all of the links in our description section are updated regularly to reflect our current favorite Vacuums in multiple categories if you don't know where to start check out our latest vacuum buyer guide video linked here you'll also find links to the vacuum wars.com website in the description where we post all the latest vacuum news as well as much more detailed top five lists in multiple categories