Bought A Dyson PencilVac From Japan (Review Inside)

[vac14012]

I will preface this review by saying I live in a 1700 SQFT house, so obviously it wasn't designed for a house of this size. Being designed for smaller Japanese style homes. Battery life is only like 30 minutes or so give or take what power level you're on, so obviously it won't be able to do a full house cleaning of this size, so I won't be giving it any negatives on that front. But I wanted one anyway out of curiosity for new technologies, especially since it's the first and only Dyson without a cyclone system.

Pros:

• Extremely light weight as advertised, zero hand strain when in use compared to other stick vacuum form factors, say my Dyson V15.
• Cleaner head works as advertised with zero hair tangles. Any large hair is rotated outside the cones into a ball and you can then vacuum it back up.
• The lightweight nature of the vacuum, alongside the brushes rotating in different directions, gives the illusion that it's floating. So it's very fun to use and whizz around the house.
• Dust is compacted in a similar way to a bagged cleaner. I was able to store a lot more than I was expecting, considering how small the bin size is.

All of the cons for are when it comes to emptying the vacuum. Unfortunately it's not as easy to empty and clean as Dyson claims in the videos. I vacuumed up cat litter and noticed quite a lot of it went to the backside (shown in Picture 2) of the bin. I cleaned out the vacuum before I thought to take pictures, so I'll have to come back next time to show. But I had to take the bin off and dust the backside of the vacuum with a duster. I'm willing to accept some form of user error here, but I'm not sure what it would be. I did take off the bin/metal shroud piece to have a look at how it works before using, so it's possible I didn't place it back on tight enough, allowing dust to go behind. I also noticed quite a bit of small dust was stuck to where the cleaner head connects to the vacuum, which fell on the floor when I removed the cleaner head. Lack of cyclones also means you're relying entirely on the pleated filter and shroud, so prepare for having to tap them against a garbage bin, in a similar way to other non cyclone bagless cleaners. (Dyson does show this in the maintenance instructions on YT, so they're not shy about it tbf) But all that combined means even in a small area as designed, the maintenance is still going to be way more annoying than say a Dyson V8 or V12.

Overall I will say it's still a very fun machine, and I'm probably going to enjoy using it for awhile. But it feels like the non cyclone technology and tiny form factor wasn't 100% ready for primetime yet. The new Dyson Piston will be a much better product I imagine with similar anti tangle cone technologies, and dust compaction etc.

 

[cheesewonton]

In Japan non-cyclonic bagless vacuums with a thick pleated filter at the back of the removable dust chamber ( most often with a fine mesh screen in front of the pleated filter to catch the bigger chunks ) are pretty popular. There is usually some sort of scraper thingie built in to knock stuff out of the filter and back into the dust bin. I think every major company makes or has made them at some point. Our Japan market Panasonic Rulo robot vac has that kind of set up. Seems to work. I buy these vacuums used from Japanese internet flea markets and they are surprisingly clean inside. The dust bin is dusty but lift the dust bin out and all the rest is clean. The filters do their job far better than you would expect.

 

[vac14012]

Vacuumed another area, here's some pictures of what i'm referring to, with dust going behind the bin. Also the pin connector gets covered in dust. Not sure if any of this would effect performance, but definitely cosmetically ugly.

The cleaner head itself is amazing though, I would totally use it on my V15 if I could. So it's a shame the actual vacuum itself isn't quite there yet.

 

[cheesewonton]

Btw, you must now pay the "Cat Tax" and show us a photo or two of your kitty or kitties. I mean, you have to do it !