I recently purchased the Dreame A1 Pro robotic lawn mower — definitely overkill for my garden, which is about 700 sqm in total across three areas. I still chose this model because, on paper, it seemed more reliable when managing multiple zones.
After a not-so-simple but manageable setup (thanks to customer support), it took us two full weeks to figure out why the robot wouldn’t start in the morning according to the programmed schedule. And the reason left me speechless.
Basically, I had created two separate maps to manage the different areas of the garden, and assigned a schedule to each one (carefully avoiding any overlap). However, we discovered that the software only runs the schedule linked to the currently selected map — it completely ignores the second one. So, despite having two schedules set up to manage everything automatically, I still have to manually select the active area every morning.
To me, this is absurd. What should we call this — manual automation?
I really hope this major issue gets resolved in future software updates by allowing a single unified schedule with automatic zone selection.
Fingers crossed for a pleasant surprise soon.
P.S. We also discovered another serious issue: while the Dreame A1 Pro does a good job avoiding obstacles while mowing, it completely ignores them during transfer movements between areas. Anything accidentally left in its path gets hit or run over — a significant safety concern for the robot, for property, and for people. This too could be solved with proper updates. Let’s hope.
