I was new to robot vacuums, but the Dyson 360 Vis Nav surprised me with how much it could do.
I’m probably not alone in saying that vacuuming is not my favourite task. No sooner have you just finished it, when it feels like it needs to be done again. Especially having a dog who sheds, it seems like there is no end to the dirt, dust and hair in our house, so anything that promises to lighten the load of cleaning is more than welcome.
However, although robot vacuums have been on the market for a while now, I hadn’t seriously considered buying one, as I was sceptical about how well they would actually clean. I figured that not only would the suction be poor, but that there would be many spots they would struggle to access, and therefore wouldn’t be worth it.
That is, until Dyson announced the launch of the Dyson 360 Vis Nav, their first robot vacuum. Always at the forefront of vacuum technology, I had more faith in their offering than any other, and jumped at the opportunity to try it out for myself.
Not only did it promise six times the suction of any other robot vacuum, its 360-degree vision system knows where it has been, sees where to clean, and is intelligent enough to respond to dust sensed in the home.
When it arrived, it was easy to set up. It has a charging station, and it can be connected to an app that allows you to customise how you use it, give it areas to avoid if you wish, and it can even report on where it found the most dust (which may or may not be information you want!).
As I turned it on, it was incredible to watch as it carefully made its way around. Not only could I hear its suction change depending on how much dust it was finding in different areas, I was surprised how little trouble it had navigating the room.
Despite the fact that my home isn’t anything like as spacious and open as the image above, it had no issues with obstacles or changes in surface, moving from tiles, to thick rugs, to wooden floors easily. It trundled over the base of a clothes horse like it wasn’t even there, and as it’s surprisingly low-profile, it actually fitted its way under a lot of furniture.
It also cleans the edge of each room perfectly thanks to sensors that detect the edges of a room. It then redirects suction through a side-actuator, while the D-shaped body and full-width front-mounted brush bar help it reach into corners.
It’s also amazingly powerful despite being quite compact. It alerts you when it’s full, and is really easy to empty. And when it runs out of battery, it simply makes its way back to its charging station.
As a result, when it had finished cleaning I was shocked at how well it had done. While I was expecting corners and awkward spots to still be dusty, needing me to go over them with a normal vacuum, there was barely anywhere that it hadn’t reached – I’d be more than happy to hand over most of the vacuuming duties to it.
In fact, it’s the first time I’ve actually wanted to buy a “robot” appliance – I don’t want to talk to my speaker, I don’t need my coffee machine to ping my phone when it needs descaled, but a vacuum that can clean by itself? This is the future.
Megan Burns received a loan of the Dyson 360 Vis Nav for this article.
Also Read
