Dyson Detect V15

V15

Tired of constantly walking on breadcrumbs, the old cabled Hoover massively noisy and underpowered, I took yet another middle-class/middle-age plunge and bought a Dyson.

I saw ads for an "optic" Dyson, with a green light emanating parallel to the floor. This made sense to me as I'd just been experimenting with a LED torch in the dark for hunting tiny items on the floor.

These portable Dysons are sold as bundles, there are only few main motor unit variants, but they come packaged with different set of nozzles. This one was V15 Detect "fluffy", aimed more for pet households which sounded good enough for tackling strands of long hair. 

Extra nozzles, the main one not included

The package was not too bulky to carry in public transport. Opening the box, I encountered an enormous pile of cardboard for all the sub-parts, and very minimal instructions. 

The plastic and carbon-fiber appearance wasn't very convincing at first, but the parts fit together with a nice and satisfying lock. It does feel slightly flimsy, with the long pipe and a nozzle attached, but not horribly so.

I don't like the Dyson looks and color choices all that much, but at least as it turned out, the actual design (i.e. how it works) is rather well thought out.

The head with the rolling furry bar and green "laser" light is effective. The nozzle adapts and turns along multiple axes, making operation quite gentle and flexible. The light is not a gimmick, you can easily spot hair and dirt concentrations.

The main nozzle layzoer experience

It's almost addictive. After having this experience, the other nozzles don't seem to do anything. Perhaps it could be considered "gamification", but in a good way, it gives a sense of purpose to see the dirt at first and then feel the achievement of the the dirt and hair going away.

When there was more hair, they would circle around the yellow/black bar. These were easy to remove, though.

As usual, the floors and surfaces should be in basic good condition. Porridge particles stuck on the floor won't be removed by the vacuum just like that, and the light will forever highlight them.

The bagless operation was one draw, but this is common even in many crappy hand-held vacuums, so how does the Dyson fare? Well, the trash ejector handle works nicely, so mostly you just eject to get the dirt out of the compartment.

Gun and the gun-like ejector-rod

Hair proved to be a little more tricky, though. The end of the compartment could get a little bogged with a "donut" of hair, but the entire container is also quite easy to remove.

So, on the whole this is all thought out very well.

I sung the praises of the optic "fluffy" head, the rest of the heads were not as impressive. There's this corkscrew thingy that's supposed to take out pet hair out of sofas and beds, but couldn't confirm if it's any more effective – it doesn't have a light.

As the nozzle carries a motor, it's heavy and the sound is crunchy. It's possible you really need to have cats and dogs to appreciate this one better.

The corkscrew thingy

Talking of sound, the Dyson does make some noise but it's far less whiny than the old Hoover or a Bosch hand-held I already recycled. The quality of the sound needs to be taken into consideration, too. Again something to check later, if old age changes things on this front.

The Dyson Detect is portable, yet fortunately larger than the smallest of portable vacuums, so I don't think I need two separate items. The trigger needs to be pulled all the time, with no lock function, and this can be considered a little minus. The other thing is the stiff hose is not perfectly suited for vacuuming from under sofas, so you need to be a little more nimble to reach those places.

The display that tells how many microbes, small particles and crap have been accumulated is probably just a statistical approximation based on how far the head has rolled, but why not.

ECO-mode was fine for standard floor-cleaning, this likely lasts about an hour or even more. AUTO might be better when using the various heads and trying to get into more difficult places. I dared not really use the BOOST for more than a few seconds, as it might deplete the battery under 10 minutes.

The battery is not super powerful and takes a few hours to load. I believe the idea is that cleaning doesn't take a huge amount of time and there's ample time to recharge in-between. At first I'd find all kinds of excuses to use the vacuum, so the battery also depleted faster. A plastic wall-dock was also included.