In this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite, Bart Busschots joins us to talk Dyson vacuums. I know that doesn’t sound too technical but you’d be surprised how advanced the tech is in the new devices. I share a few of my Dyson stories too and we both talk about our love for everything Dyson. Hide your pocketbooks before listening because all Dyson products are super expensive! Blog post by Bart below the fold.
Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: CCATP_2024_04_13
The Problem to be Solved
After many years of sterling service, my beloved Dyson V10 vacuum cleaner had finally reached the end of the road, and I needed to buy my second-ever vacuum cleaner.
Why Dyson Again?
The one thing I was sure of was that I would be replacing my old Dyson with a new Dyson, but why?
Fundamentally, I love Dyson products for the same reason I love Apple products — they align with my tech philosophy. I want well-designed tech that is well-built, feature-rich, delightful, robust, and fairly priced. I’m happy to pay good money for a good product, and I prefer to buy better quality products infrequently.
Apple is clearly that kind of company, and so is Dyson. While Dyson are not as well known as Apple, they do have some things in common. Both companies were founded by charismatic free thinkers with deep understandings of what makes products great, and both companies really sweat the details. Like Apple products, Dyson products are clearly designed with great care and attention, and the same Bauhaus ‘form follows function’ philosophy. Also, when I watch documentaries about industrial design I notice the same three companies being used as examples over and over — Braun, Apple, and Dyson (in that order).
Why Did I Love my V10?
Dyson have gone on to do other iconic designs like their bladeless fans (which rock), but their original gift to the world was the bagless vacuum cleaner, and that remains their biggest attraction to me. There are ZERO consumables!
The dirt gathers in a hopper under the motor, and you simply eject it into the bin when you’re done cleaning. The filter is reusable, you just need to rinse it under the tap a few times a year and leave it to air dry for a day.
The second thing I love is Dyson’s standardised connector — everything clicks together using the same big easy to use connector. No fiddly bits, just really easy to push big red buttons, and a very satisfying robust ‘click’ when you home something properly.
And finally — Dyson are great about spare parts, you get the feeling they really want their products to have long lives! I have never needed to replace a filter, but I could have. What I have needed to replace is a battery, which proved easy, and some broken cleaning heads (my brute force and ignorance broke them, not their fault 🙂).
I joke that I had “Trigger’s hoover” (fans of the classic BBC comedy Only Fools & Horses will get the reference), of if you prefer Greek mythology, the vacuum cleaner of Theseus!
What has Changed Since I Bought the V10?
When I bought the V10 we lived in a rented house with carpets in just about every room, and we had a cat, so, I opted for the V10 with optional pet accessories.
In hind sight, that was not the best choice because I ended up using none of the dedicated pet attachments because the standard rotating brush head and the thin pointy head for getting into corners actually did everything I needed!
Now, we live I our own house, and on medial advice, we chose as little carpet as possible, and no more pets. So, for safety reasons (no-slip) we still have carpets on the stairs and landing (the Irish/British name for the square area at the top of the stairs that the rooms radiate off), but nowhere else. The entrance hall, kitchen, and bathrooms are tiled, and everything else is beautiful spruce hardwood floors.
So, pet attachments are of no interest, cleaning carpets is much less important, and a good solution for tiles and hardwood floors has become very appealing.
The tiles are very rugged and easy to care for, but they take quite a bit of elbow grease — getting a good old fashioned manual mop each week. The hard wood floors are pickier, with the manufacture’s instructions making it clear that standing water must be avoided at all costs, and recommending cleaning with a damp cloth once a week. This I have been doing manually, on my hands and knees, with floor wipes.
Choosing a New Dyson
The basic design of the V10 was perfect, so I knew we’d be replacing it with an updated version of the same design, and my expectation was that very little would have changed, but that I would probably get better suction from some motor design advances, better battery life, and maybe some extra smarts.
I found that the newest upright cordless design is the V15 Detect, so there have been many iterations since the V10!
Needless to say, the V15 does indeed have improved suction and a better battery, and, it has some interesting better smarts across the line — the ‘detect’ suffix indicates that the V15 measures and counts your dirt!
The detect technology divides dirt into three sizes, and it counts how much of each size it’s sucking up. The default mode is now ‘automatic’, where the vacuum manages its own power level to match the dirt. The V10 gave you high, medium & low and let you choose your own trade-off between battery life and suction, now you can let the device optimise things for you (it works great!). There are still two manually selected fixed-speed modes — economy and boost, so when you disagree with what the automatic mode is choosing to do, you can still assert control. The eco mode is intended for use when you absolutely need the longest battery life possible, but I find I need to use it on my carpets because they are very deep and shaggy, and when auto ramps the power right up it becomes much too hard to push! The only time I used the boost mode was when I dropped a glass and was paranoid about not missing any pieces. (I stood on a shard of glass as a kit and it was a deeply unpleasant experience!)
Anyway, much to my surprise, there were two totally new innovations in the range that felt like they were made just for me — one focused on hardwood floors, and the other, tiled floors!
My New Vacuum Cleaner — A Dyson V15s Detect Submarine with Hard Floor Optional Extras
So, the model I chose is the V15s Detect Submarine which is a bundle that includes the hardwood floor and tile extras.
Hardwood Floors & Lasers!
The hardwood floor head is officially called the Laser Slim Fluffy Cleaner Head, and while it came in my bundle, you can buy it separately.
The general purpose brush head is fine on hardwood floors, but not great. It has a tendency to push big things like popcorn around instead of picking them up, and it’s difficult to tell where you have and haven’t cleaned already.
Dyson’s new optional hardwood floor head solves both of those problems. At its most basic level it replaces the brushes of the generic head with a washable cloth cylinder that I suspect uses a static charge to attract dirt which then meets a scraper inside the head to lift the gunk off and free it to be pulled into the air stream and away.
The fact that the hardwood head is better at cleaning 50% of our floors rocks, but it has such a cool party trick — a green laser to show you the dirt! It casts a strong green laser parallel to the floor which highlights all the dust and lint unbelievably clearly. A stretch of floor that looks clean to the eye is revealed to be badly in need of some TLC by the unforgiving laser! I’m never in any doubt as to where or not I missed a bit now!
The head is also really low profile compared to the generic one, so it’s great at getting under the edges of beds and couches!
Wet Floor Cleaning 🎉
The single coolest thing in the V15 Detect range is a dedicated head for mopping floors, or, as Dyson have branded it the Submarine Wet Roller Head. Again, it came in my bundle, but you can buy it separately (though it is out of stock on the Irish site as we record!).
The optional submarine head has a water reservoir, a heating element, and a reusable mopping cylinder so it simultaneously sucks up dirt and mops the floor! I was skeptical that this would completely replace all my diligent manual mopping of our beautiful tiles, but I figured it would probably be good enough to use most weeks and then do it manually once a month or so. Man, was I wrong! This simple device cleans our floors better in just seconds than all my hard work ever has!!!
The reason this head is so effective is because it’s really well-designed! It has two water reservoirs — one on the outside that you fill before you start, and one on the inside where the used water goes. As the heated mop cylinder rotates it picks up a little clean water, contacts then floor, then as it comes up it meets a removable scraper that lifts the dirty water off the cylinder and channels it into the internal reservoir. When you’re done you slide the outer housing off, pour out the dirty water, rinse the scraper clean, and remove the mopping cylinder. You run the cylinder under some warm water to really get it clean, then let it dry in front of a window for a day. The instructions show a sun shining on it, but thankfully that part is optional 😉
But wait, there’s more! Because the submarine head uses water very judiciously, and because the cleaning head is heated, it doesn’t leave big puddles of water behind. It really is much more like using a very effective damp cloth than like mopping, so, I also feel completely comfortable using it on my hardwood floors once a month or so, and it does a great job, better than I ever did on my hands and knees with a cleaning wipe!
Overall Improvements
The generic heads have been improved in two noticeable ways:
- There is a real focus on preventing hair tangles, which is great, because my darling beloved’s long hair always got wrapped around the V10’s generic brush head, but that just does not happen with the V15’s improved heads (no idea what magic they are using, but it works!)
- The generic brush head has been improved a little to make it better at pulling gunk from the very edges of floors where they meet the walls, so I find I don’t need to use the separate edging tool nearly as much anymore, which is nice.
The UI is also just that little bit nicer — it was never complicated, but instead of status LEDs, we now have a nice colour screen on the back of the motor, and one single button that you tap to change modes, or press and hold to go into the settings. With just one button the settings screen is a bit cumbersome because you are constantly tapping and holding to ‘click’ on things, but everything in there is ‘set it and forget it’, so it’s not a problem. Day-to-day you now have a nice screen that shows any warnings you need to see, a live bar chart with the amount of each dirt size you’ve hoovered up, and a single button to toggle between the three power modes — Eco, Auto, and Boost
One Niggle
Despite how much I love my new laser submarine hoover, I do need to draw attention to one optional extra that got less useful with the upgrade 🙁
The V10, and subsequent models up to the V11, had an optional charging stand that plugged into the wall, had a charging cradle for the base unit, and clips to hold ALL the optional heads. The exact model I had is not available anymore, but it was basically this: dyson.ie/…
There is still an optional stand for the V12 to the V15, but it’s a very different beast: dyson.ie/…
I will it is better in one respect — the charge cradle is on a spring-loaded pivot so you don’t need to be nearly as precise lifting the main unit out or putting it back in, but it now has just ONE clip, where you put the wand with one head, and you need to find a home for all the rest in a box or something, the stand offers no help 🙁
Final verdict
Even without the dedicated hardwood floor and mopping heads, this would have been a nice upgrade after all these years, but with its two new superpowers, the V15s Detect has been a huge upgrade for me. It sounds mad, but, at least for now, hoovering is fun!