Dyson 360 Vis Nav Review: Great On Paper, Less So Elsewhere

Worth When Reviewed

U.S. pricing and availability TBD

First off, we’ve edited and republished this assessment after Dyson requested that we relocate the 360 Vis Nav’s charging base and retest it. The retest hasn’t materially affected our view of whether or not or not you can purchase it – however we now have awarded it an extra half a star.

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 an excellent cleaner.

Honest sufficient, I believed 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 normal, there are at all times folks prepared 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
• Digital camera-based navigation

The 360 Vis Nav has a attribute Dyson design. Its matt blue end, stripy curler and distinctive form make sure that it gained’t mix into the background. In case 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 possible gained’t be pristine for lengthy: throughout testing, it shortly picked up a number of scratches and scapes.

In true model type, Dyson has innovated relating to the robotic vacuum’s construct. Not like most rivals, the 360 Vis Nav is just not 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 prime to show present motion and in-depth troubleshooting info.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

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

Emma Rowley / Foundry

On prime of the robotic, entrance and centre, is an embedded fish-eye digital camera lens, with a 360-degree visual view (therefore the title). Because of this in contrast to most rivals, it’s not primarily utilizing laser-based navigation. You’ll spot the primary drawback of this technique when it ventures right into a dimly-lit room: it wants to change on a light-weight 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 wanting stairs.  

Emma Rowley / Foundry

With a reasonably low profile of solely 99mm excessive, it ought to have the ability to get beneath your mattress and couch to hoover. That’s, if it will probably discover them – however I’ll come again to this.

As you’d anticipate, the construct high quality is prime notch. Once you’ve simply unboxed it and set it up, you’d be tempted to assume you’d received your cash’s price. How very flawed you’ll be.

Efficiency and Options

• Alexa and Google Dwelling appropriate
• 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 straightforward to discover a house 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 hook up with your Alexa app, ought to you’ve one. (It additionally helps Google Dwelling.) The MyDyson app itself is clearly laid out and a pleasure to make use of.

The 360 Vis Nav is priced to take a seat among the many prime tier of robotic vacuums, competing with the likes of Ecovacs’ T20 Omni, whose function set is just too in depth to enter right here however consists of mopping with sizzling water, cleansing its mops pads, emptying its onboard bin and responding to voice instructions through its devoted voice assistant.

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

When you’ve received 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 similar time. Others want a devoted run. Both manner, it’s not a lot of a problem. Off it goes, and it comes again with a reasonably correct map that you simply 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 an alternative 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 course of the room. (It wasn’t, and nothing had been moved.)

Properly, by no means thoughts. Anybody can have a nasty 5 minutes. The second mapping run was higher, because the robotic was no less than 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 in 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 skill, so I didn’t anticipate an issue. However it beached itself immediately. I noticed it flailing hopelessly round for a superb 4 or 5 minutes with the identical disappointment that David Attenborough should really feel when he sees a child seal that’s simply not going to make it to summer time.

So, it gained’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 effectively.

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 lavatory and kitchen once more, and a bit of the sitting room was lacking.

Foundry

That’s once 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.

Dyson requested us to retest the 360 Vis Nav, as they felt that the spot by which I set it up could have affected its skill to map and navigate appropriately. I ought to say that I check all robotic vacuums in the identical place and it hasn’t been an issue up to now, however the Vis Nav is a delicate beast and Dyson does say that you simply want no less than 50cm of clear area across the dock for it to have the ability to return house efficiently (you possibly can watch a video from Dyson to search out out extra about excellent positioning).

In our retest, the efficiency wasn’t vastly completely different: this time round, the robotic was capable of finding the kitchen and loo, however left a part of the sitting room off the map and was unable to cross the bed room threshold once more.

Battery life is one other problem. It has a acknowledged 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 house with out working out of battery life utterly and needing to return and recharge. That is simply not in step with the efficiency of rivals.

A part of the rationale it’s so power-hungry often is the 360 Vis Nav’s hesitant method. It pauses, recalibrates and modifications path greater than some other robotic vacuum I’ve seen, which make its cleansing rounds gradual going.

In some situations, that is helpful. It’ll by no means bang into your ankle – and your cat will likely be completely secure round it – but it surely nonetheless has irritating navigational blind spots, equivalent to low objects and cables.

It’s fairly galling to look at it tentatively change its angle three or 4 occasions, solely to cheerfully plough into some pet bowls and slop water everywhere in the ground. And in accordance with Dyson, it ought to have the ability to unwrap cables that tangle round it, but it surely doesn’t at all times work in apply.

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

Dyson claims that it’s probably the most highly effective robotic vacuum cleaner available on the market, with 65AW of suction. Nonetheless, it’s arduous to match 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 the busiest areas of a room. Quiet mode is a misnomer: it makes loads of rackety mechanical noise, particularly on hardwood flooring, though it’s considerably quieter on carpet. Auto is the mode you’ll need it in more often than not, so the robotic can flip up the facility when wanted. Increase mode is only for spills and also you gained’t get various minutes’ battery life from it.

When it cleans, it’s wonderful. It does a significantly better job on carpets than most rivals, though it gained’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 house 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 essential function.

Worth and Availability

The 360 Vis Nav is on the market 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 search out out when will probably 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 which you could ship out with a voice command to exactly clear solely beneath your kitchen desk (the iRobot Roomba i7+), after which it can empty its personal bin. You may get one which’ll mop your flooring, raise its mops if it crosses carpet after which cleans the mop pads when it’s performed (the Ecovacs T20 Omni). You may even simply use half the cash and get a wonderful self-emptying vacuum with mop (the Eufy X8 Professional) and spend the remainder on a spa day.

Must you purchase the Dyson 360 Vis Nav?

I believe you already know what I’m going to advise. For its extraordinary worth, it ought to ship extraordinary efficiency. That’s not fairly the case and we will’t but advocate you spend your cash on it.

What we will say is that houses more likely to get probably the most from the 360 Vis Nav will likely be giant, sparsely furnished and effectively carpeted.

To see a few of our prime 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 dimension: 0.5l
• Charging time: 2.75 hours
• Battery life: As much as 65 minutes
• Suction: 65AW
• 4 cleansing modes