Cleantech On A Stick

It's no secret that dyson's vacuum cleaners  are the gold standard when it comes to performance and space-age design. Yet, with the new Cyclone V10, Dyson took its flagship vacuum back to the drawing board, tweaking its form factor and design in ways that make it demonstrably better on possibly the only metric that matters – suction power.

If you have eyed the company’s products earlier or seen the last-gen V8 in stores, you will almost immediately notice that the shape has undergone a major transformation. The Dyson digital motor, which used to sit perpendicular to the suction tube, now is inline with the tube and the bin, which not only makes the motor more efficient (direct air flow) but also evenly distributes the weight above the handle so that the entire mechanism is easier to hold. Behind the barrel sits the device's larger cyclone array, with 14 chambers in total, followed by that new V10 digital motor, in all its handheld compactness, which is 20 per cent more powerful and revs up upto 125,000 rpm. That’s a touch over 2,000 revolutions per second – a mind-boggling feat of engineering considering it is half the size of the V8’s motor. The visual effect is striking as well - the V10 looks even more the sci-fi weapon than the previous V8, if that was possible!

Compensating for that extra power is a battery pack that has grown smaller yet lasts an impressive full hour of vacuuming per charge, up from about 45 minutes on the V8. That’s on the lowest power suction mode, and as you move up the three-stage power selector, your tradeoff is run times, with the V10 lasting only eight minutes when the motor’s hitting the highest revs. Once you plug it in to charge, it takes about four hours to fully charge and the only thing you need to really figure out is which attachment is used for what type of cleaning. There’s a soft roller head for regular floors, or a rougher version for couches and carpets, and each of these can be combined with extenders and bendable accessories to get at the hidden corners and the high shelfs that often go ignored in your daily cleaning.

In action, there’s very little the V10 can’t pick up. Across a variety of non-scientific tests involving crumbs, pulses and masalas dropped onto the floor and between sofa cushions, the vacuum was up to the task, and I even noticed the regularly swabbed seams in the floor tiles looking cleaner after a couple of passes of the motorised head. It’s still only meant for dry cleaning, so no water spills and wet dirt. Once it’s done sucking up dust, both visible and hidden, from the corners of your home, between the cushions and the like, the new bin mechanism scrapes and pushes the dirt down directly into your trash can. Be warned though, since the V10 sucks in microscopic particles like bed mites and insect fecal matter, you would best be emptying the bin some place where it doesn't release the dirt back into the house.

So yes, the Dyson V10 represents the pinnacle of vacuum cleaner design and while there is really no match for its build quality and simplicity of use, spending this much money on a vacuum isn’t for everyone. Highly recommended if you are dealing with a lot of dust and have equal amounts of cash to splurge on this.