For more than 20 years Dyson has been working towards the ultimate robot vacuum cleaner .. so have they done it?
As you’ll see in this review video above, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav is incredibly powerful but needs work on its navigation. The immense power also drains the battery fast, so cleaning will take longer between recharges. But it is a beast and Australia and Japan are the first to get it.
The Dyson 360 Vis Nav the most powerful robot vacuum on the market by a long way – probably ever made – so in that area it blows the competition away.
First thing you notice is the shape. The D shape means it can clean corners and edges properly. It amazes me that most robot vacs aren’t like this in form. I had the robot for a few days but it was long enough to work out what was good and what was bad about it.
The charging dock is as simple as it gets, very much like some of the earlier models I’ve used. You wind the charger cable to match the side the power socket is located. It only takes a one-click assembly and you’re ready to go. Although you can fix it to the wall, for the purposes of this review, I just sat it there.
Unlike other vacuums, there’s a screen on the top which doubles as a control button. You can select settings there but it’s best to download the Dyson app. It’s pretty sparse but easy to use. You can command the unit to do a light clean or utilise the full power of the 110,000 RPM motor. It also records the cleaning session with a debris map. This is handy to show where the dirtiest parts of the floor are located.
On full power you get between 10 and 12, possibly 13 minutes before it needs to recharge for 90 minutes. I don’t think this is an issue if you own one and use it regularly – but for my purposes – just a few days with it – it put me under time pressure. But that’s fine .. I wanted to see the Dyson robot cleaning at max power – it’s trump card. Lower power settings will give you closer to an hour before recharging – about 50 mins.
I limited the clean to two rooms and a hallway with hard floors and rugs. The full-width brush bar cleans more of the floor in one pass and that makes a huge difference. An extending side duct automatically redirects suction when cleaning against the wall. It didn’t work for me because the vacuum never completed a full clean of the mapped area at my place. I did see it in action at Dyson HQ so I know it works fine.
Dyson says the robot is 6-times more powerful than its nearest rival. You see the proof when you empty the bin, which is simple to remove and open. During a short high-power session, the Dyson essentially filled the bin. That’s an enormous amount of dust and debris in a little over ten minutes. Although it doesn’t have an auto empty station (which I’d much prefer) the bin is on top of the robot and easy to access.
Dyson’s filter system is unmatched. It ensures only clean air is expelled from the robot. The post-motor HEPA filter of 0.82m of PTFE folded 63 times traps 99.99% of particles down to 0.1 microns. Glass fibres within the post-motor HEPA filter are able to trap 99.99% of invisible particles as small as 0.1 micron.
It can climb 21mm and get under furniture with a 99mm gap. It does this thanks to 26 sensors and a navigation light that comes on in darker areas to assist with its 360 degree vision system.
The navigation is nowhere near as polished as an ECOVACS or Roborock robot. In the short time I had with the Dyson robot it stopped frequently. It appeared to be pausing to get its bearings before moving off. On one occasion it struggled to find the dock despite being right in front of it several times. As you’ll see in the video it looked confused. But it got there!
This is not a long term problem. All the sensors are in place, so it’s just a case of Dyson tweaking software to improve navigation performance.
If you’ve ever used a Dyson stick vacuum, you know that sound. There’s no mistaking this robot for anything other than a Dyson with a the motor spinning at up to 110,000 rpm. As a result, many people will choose to schedule cleaning when background noise is not an issue.
The Dyson 360 Vis Nav is a very good robot vacuum but not great … yet. What is important though, Dyson is finally in the robot vac game and that is better for all of us wanting superior floor cleaning products.
