The surface wettability determines the condensate mode and the adhesive force on the metal fiber surface, which can directly affect the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of wet air in metal foams. In order to reveal the performance of metal foams with different surface wettability, the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop characteristics of wet air in metal foams with different wettability were investigated experimentally, and the influence of surface wettability was analyzed. The tested samples include the hydrophobic, hydrophilic and uncoated metal foams, and the experimental conditions cover the inlet air temperatures of 27°C-35°C, the inlet air relative humidity of 30%-90% and the air velocities of 0.5-1.0 m/s. The experimental results show that, the heat transfer coefficient in hydrophobic and hydrophilic metal foams are larger by 4%-33% and 3-21% than that in uncoated metal foams, respectively, and the heat transfer enhancement in hydrophobic metal foams is more obvious than that in hydrophilic metal foams; compared with that in uncoated metal foams, the pressure drop in hydrophobic metal foams is larger by 3%-139%, while the pressure drop in hydrophilic metal foams is smaller by 1%-20%. The comprehensive performance of metal foams was evaluated, and the performance of hydrophilic metal foam is better than that of hydrophobic and uncoated metal foams.