Dyson 360 Vis Nav review

Value When Reviewed

£1,199.99

Finest Costs At this time: Dyson 360 Vis Nav

Earlier than I had the possibility to check the 360 Vis Nav for myself, I used to be invited to see it in motion. Dyson defined that they noticed it primarily as a cellular, hands-free vacuum, and that they’d put their efforts into making it into a superb cleaner.

Honest sufficient, I assumed to myself. Sure, it’s breathtakingly costly, particularly for such a restricted function set – however hey, it’s a Dyson. If it does its job to a excessive customary, there are all the time folks keen to pay for the very best.

However then I examined it. Right here’s what occurred.

Design and Construct

• Straightforward to take away filter and dustbin
• Low profile at 99mm
• Digicam-based navigation

The 360 Vis Nav has a attribute Dyson design. Its matt blue end, stripy curler and distinctive form make sure that it received’t mix into the background. When you’re going to spend north of a grand on a robotic vacuum that doesn’t mop, empty or clear itself, then maybe – on the very least – you need folks to note it. However as Dyson has opted to not add bumpers, it seemingly received’t be pristine for lengthy: throughout testing, it shortly picked up a number of scratches and scapes.

In true model fashion, Dyson has innovated relating to the robotic vacuum’s construct. In contrast to most opponents, the 360 Vis Nav just isn’t a featureless disc. It’s flat-fronted, with a large brush bar that may clear each carpets and arduous flooring. As an alternative of a spinning sweeper, it has a facet duct to which a portion of its suction energy is diverted, to assist it clear proper as much as partitions and into corners.

It additionally has a full-colour touchscreen on high to show present motion and in-depth troubleshooting data.

It options an easy-access filter and bin, each of which come out from the highest of the robotic. The bin is cylindrical and could be carried to the kitchen with its personal little carry deal with and each could be washed by hand. These options make it simple to take care of.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

On high of the robotic, entrance and centre, is an embedded fish-eye digital camera lens, with a 360-degree sight view (therefore the identify). Which means that in contrast to most opponents, it’s not primarily utilizing laser-based navigation. You’ll spot the primary drawback of this method when it ventures right into a dimly-lit room: it wants to change on a lightweight ring across the digital camera to assist it to see.

However it doesn’t totally depend on the digital camera. It has a complete of 26 sensors to navigate, together with time of flight sensors to detect objects round it and drop sensors to cease in need of stairs.  

Emma Rowley / Foundry

With a reasonably low profile of solely 99mm excessive, it ought to be capable of get underneath your mattress and couch to hoover. That’s, if it might discover them – however I’ll come again to this.

As you’d count on, the construct high quality is high notch. While you’ve simply unboxed it and set it up, you’d be tempted to suppose you’d acquired your cash’s value. How very improper you’d be.

Efficiency and Options

• Alexa and Google Dwelling suitable
• Mapping unreliable
• 4 cleansing modes

Organising the 360 Vis Nav is a bit of cake. Plug within the dock, which is pretty compact and subsequently simple to discover a dwelling for. Then obtain the MyDyson app for iOS or Android, and it’ll stroll you thru the set-up course of. It’ll even routinely connect with your Alexa app, ought to you may have one. (It additionally assist Google Dwelling.) The MyDyson app itself is clearly laid out and a pleasure to make use of.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

The 360 Vis Nav is priced to sit down among the many high tier of robotic vacuums, competing with the likes of Ecovacs’ T20 Omni, whose function set is just too intensive to enter right here however consists of mopping with scorching water, cleansing its mops pads, emptying its onboard bin and responding to voice instructions by way of its devoted voice assistant.

As compared, the 360 Vis Nav does one factor: it vacuums properly. But when it might’t get to the spots that want vacuuming, that turns into moot.

When you’ve acquired a robotic vacuum arrange, the very first thing to do is ship it out on a mapping run. Some robots map and vacuum on the identical time. Others want a devoted run. Both approach, it’s not a lot of a trouble. Off it goes, and it comes again with a reasonably correct map that you just then edit (altering room thresholds) and annotate (naming rooms).

The Vis Nav’s first mapping run went spectacularly awry. It wasn’t even capable of finding its dock on the finish, as a substitute spinning woozily round till it ran out of battery life.

The map it produced was weird, with half of my flat lacking and the dock positioned in the midst of the room. (It wasn’t, and nothing had been moved.)

Properly, by no means thoughts. Anybody can have a foul 5 minutes. The second mapping run was higher, because the robotic was at the least capable of finding the kitchen and loo that point.

The bed room was extra difficult. There’s a large, raised threshold on the bed room door, which was an issue on your common robotic vac a number of years in the past, however occasions have modified and newer fashions can address it.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

The Vis Nav is marketed as having good climbing means, so I didn’t anticipate an issue. However it beached itself immediately. I noticed it flailing hopelessly round for a very good 4 or 5 minutes with the identical unhappiness that David Attenborough should really feel when he sees a child seal that’s simply not going to make it to summer season.

So, it received’t be cleansing the bed room. Not the top of the world. However when the robotic returned to the dock and the map was made, half the lounge was lacking as properly.

On the third mapping run, it did get into the bed room (though it wanted a rescue to get out once more) however misplaced the toilet and kitchen once more, and a piece of the sitting room was lacking.

Foundry

That’s after I gave up on mapping. I picked one of many maps I’d made and sectioned off and named rooms. This lets you arrange exclusion zones, and ship or schedule the robotic to wash particular rooms.

Battery life is one other challenge. It has a said most runtime of 65 minutes, however that’s a stretch. A 22-minute clear in Auto mode used greater than two-thirds of the battery life. It’s unlikely that it will handle to make a full circuit of a bigger dwelling with out working out of battery life utterly and needing to return and recharge. That is simply not consistent with the efficiency of rivals.

A part of the explanation it’s so power-hungry stands out as the 360 Vis Nav’s hesitant method. It pauses, recalibrates and adjustments route greater than another robotic vacuum I’ve seen, which make its cleansing rounds gradual going.

In some situations, that is helpful. It is going to by no means bang into your ankle – and your cat can be completely secure round it – nevertheless it nonetheless has irritating navigational blind spots, similar to low objects and cables.

It’s fairly galling to observe it tentatively change its angle three or 4 occasions, solely to cheerfully plough into some pet bowls and slop water all around the flooring. And in keeping with Dyson, it ought to be capable of unwrap cables that tangle round it, nevertheless it doesn’t all the time work in follow.

On to cleansing. As promised, the 360 Vis Nav is a really efficient vacuum, with glorious edge cleansing. I set it some tough duties, together with selecting up flour sugar spilled alongside a wall, which it accomplished nearly flawlessly. Because of its HEPA filtration, it doesn’t vent any mud again out both.

Dyson claims that it’s essentially the most highly effective robotic vacuum cleaner available on the market, with 65AW of suction. Nonetheless, it’s arduous to check its on-paper efficiency to rivals as each different robotic vacuum model makes use of Pascals as their key metric.

It has 4 cleansing modes: Fast, Quiet, Increase and Auto. In Fast, it’ll do a run by way of the busiest areas of a room. Quiet mode is a misnomer: it makes a whole lot of rackety mechanical noise, particularly on hardwood flooring. Auto is the mode you’ll need it in more often than not, so the robotic can flip up the ability when wanted. Increase mode is only for spills and also you received’t get various minutes’ battery life from it.

When it cleans, it’s glorious. It does a a lot better job on carpets than most rivals, though it received’t imply you possibly can chuck out your vacuum cleaner. The issue is that it’s such a nuisance in each different respect: gradual, noisy and bumbling.

I realise that I haven’t talked about the one uncommon function of the 360 Vis Nav. It produces a mud map of your private home every time it cleans. I didn’t know what to do with this throughout testing and I don’t know what to say about it now, besides that it’s removed from vital function.

Value and Availability

The 360 Vis Nav is offered from Dyson within the UK for £1,199. It’s not but out there within the US, though you possibly can join on the Dyson web site to seek out out when it will likely be.

This makes it among the many costliest robotic vacuums you should buy proper now. For a similar sum of money – or much less – you may get a robotic vacuum that you could ship out with a voice command to exactly clear solely underneath your kitchen desk (the iRobot Roomba i7+), after which it can empty its personal bin. You could possibly get one which’ll mop your flooring, carry its mops if it crosses carpet after which cleans the mop pads when it’s achieved (the Ecovacs T20 Omni). You could possibly even simply use half the cash and get a wonderful self-emptying vacuum with mop (the Eufy X8 Professional) and spend the remaining on a spa day.

Do you have to purchase the Dyson 360 Vis Nav?

I feel you realize what I’m going to advise. It’s tempting to say that a whole lot of the Vis Nav’s efficiency points might be mounted with software program updates – which Dyson is certainly planning. Nevertheless, that’s not a cause to purchase.

For its extraordinary value, it ought to ship extraordinary efficiency. That’s not the case and we wouldn’t advocate you spend your cash on it.

To see a few of our high suggestions, take a look at our round-up of the very best robotic vacuums round.

Specs

• Dimensions: 99 x 330 x 320mm
• Weight: 5kg
• Dustbin measurement: 0.5l
• Charging time: 2.75 hours
• Battery life: As much as 65 minutes
• Suction: 65AW
• 4 cleansing modes