Dyson V8 Fluffy Pro.
Dyson V8 Fluffy Pro.
The Dyson V8 is the most fun I’ve had with a vacuum cleaner and it’s also the most expensive one I’ve ever used. It is Dyson’s newest cordless vacuum cleaner, with more suction strength than its predecessor, the V6, and double its battery life.
The V8 costs a pretty penny, at $999 for the V8 Fluffy Pro and $1,099 for the V8 Absolute Plus. Both editions ship with the same vacuum, but the Absolute Plus has more accessories, including a direct-drive cleaner head for deeper carpet cleaning. I used it for a month, and this is what I learned.
If most vacuum cleaners handle like pick-up trucks, the V8 handles like a road hugging car that responds to every nudge of the wheel.
For my part, I found it to be fine once I got the hang of it, but heaviness is subjective and I can’t say it’d be a comfortable weight for everyone.
Using it as a handheld cleaner was also fine for me.
The one body part that did get tired wasn’t my bicep, but my flnger. Continuously holding the trigger down to activate the vacuum got tiresome — it would have been nice to have a trigger lock of some kind.
The soft roller cleaner head, which ships with both, is likely the one you’ll use most of the time, and it’s highly maneuverable.
It can rotate parallel to the ground, and smoothly to the sides, making it easy to get to those tough spots. The other attachments give you quite a bit of flexibility to reach into odd spaces and get the cleaning that you want doing
The V8 can last up to 40 minutes on a full charge if you use the crevice and combination tool, up to 30 minutes with the mini motorized tool and soft roller cleaner head, and up to 25 minutes with the direct-drive cleaner head. Turn the V8’s suction power on to maximum effort, however, and you get a flat seven minutes, regardless of the attachment you use.
I was worried that 30 minutes with the soft roller cleaner head might be too short to complete a full sweep, but I never ran out of juice when using the V8.
For a complete sweep of my 1,400 square foot flat, I averaged a cleaning time of 20 to 25 minutes, which is under the Dyson’s maximum run time. It also means that if you have a bigger place than mine, you should probably not get the V8.
I’m constantly surprised by the amount of dirt that appears in the canister when vacuuming floors that look clean. The V8’s suction power is thanks to the V8 digital motor, which spins at up to 110,000 times a minute to suck air and debris in — that’s five times faster than a Formula One car engine.
Instead of roaring like other vacuum cleaners, the V8 runs with a diminished, higher-pitched whine that’s supposed to be 50% quieter than its older vacuums.
It’s not whisper quiet, but you can almost have a conversation over it. If you hold your face near the back of the V8, you’ll find a cool breeze blowing there. That’s where the air that’s being sucked in is ejected, and through a HEPA less, which means the air going out of the V8 is likely cleaner than the air that’s going in.
The V8 is a bagless vacuum, which means that you save money down the line by not having to buy bag replacements. But it also means that you have to empty the dirt from the canister yourself. It’s not a terrible chore, but it’s one of the inconveniences that bagged vacuums don’t suffer from.
And the V8 runs on battery, which means that the battery will eventually run down. Anyone who’s owned a smartphone for a few years knows that the battery will hold a lesser charge through time, that’s just how current battery technology works.
After a month of getting to know the Dyson V8 in all sorts of dirty situations, I’ve found it to be a thoughtfully designed machine.
