Abstract The present work is devoted to the study of the evaporation process of micro-sized water droplets levitating over a heated dry substrate. The study of this process is relevant in connection with the development of spray cooling systems. Due to the extreme complexity of this phenomenon the mechanism of spray cooling is still not fully understood. In this work we studied the evaporation of micro-sized water droplets levitating over a dry substrate heated from below. The working area was open to the atmosphere. Evaporation was studied in the temperature substrate range from 23 to 95°C. During the experiment local values of the substrate temperature and geometric characteristics of the drop were determined. In the experiment a shadow method with high spatial resolution was used, shooting was performed with a high-speed camera.