Dyson 360 Vis Nav Review: Good On Paper, Not Anywhere Else

Worth When Reviewed

U.S. pricing and availability TBD

Earlier than I had the prospect 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.

Truthful 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 customary, there are all the time individuals prepared to pay for the perfect.

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 be certain that it gained’t mix into the background. If you happen to’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 individuals to note it. However as Dyson has opted to not add bumpers, it doubtless gained’t be pristine for lengthy: throughout testing, it shortly picked up just a few scratches and scapes.

In true model fashion, Dyson has innovated in relation to the robotic vacuum’s construct. In contrast to most opponents, the 360 Vis Nav shouldn’t be a featureless disc. It’s flat-fronted, with a large brush bar that may clear each carpets and laborious flooring. As an alternative of a spinning sweeper, it has a aspect 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 simple to take care of.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

On prime of the robotic, entrance and centre, is an embedded fish-eye digital camera lens, with a 360-degree visual field (therefore the identify). Which means that not like most opponents, 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.

But it surely doesn’t completely 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 underneath 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 suppose you’d obtained your cash’s price. How very flawed you’d be.

Efficiency and Options

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

Establishing the 360 Vis Nav is a chunk of cake. Plug within the dock, which is pretty compact and due to this fact simple 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 robotically hook up with your Alexa app, ought to you might have one. (It additionally help 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 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 nicely. But when it will probably’t get to the spots that want vacuuming, that turns into moot.

When you’ve obtained 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 method, 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 at the very least capable of finding the kitchen and toilet that point.

The bed room was extra sophisticated. There’s a large, raised threshold on the bed room door, which was an issue on your common robotic vac just a few years in the past, however instances have modified and newer fashions can deal with it.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

The Vis Nav is marketed as having good climbing means, so I didn’t anticipate an issue. But it surely beached itself immediately. I noticed it flailing hopelessly round for a great 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 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 nicely.

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 scrub particular rooms.

Battery life is one other concern. 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 might 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 consistent 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 adjustments path greater than every other robotic vacuum I’ve seen, which make its cleansing rounds gradual going.

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

It’s fairly galling to observe it tentatively change its angle three or 4 instances, solely to cheerfully plough into some pet bowls and slop water all around the flooring. And based on Dyson, it ought to have the ability to unwrap cables that tangle round it, however it doesn’t all the time work in apply.

On to cleansing. As promised, the 360 Vis Nav is a really efficient vacuum, with glorious edge cleansing. I set it some troublesome duties, together with selecting up flour sugar spilled alongside a wall, which it accomplished nearly flawlessly. Due to 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 in the marketplace, with 65AW of suction. Nonetheless, it’s laborious 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, Enhance and Auto. In Fast, it’ll do a run by the busiest areas of a room. Quiet mode is a misnomer: it makes numerous 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 facility when wanted. Enhance mode is only for spills and also you gained’t get quite a lot of 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 gained’t imply you’ll be able to 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 out there from Dyson within the UK for £1,199. It’s not but out there within the US, though you’ll be able to enroll on the Dyson web site to seek out out when will probably be.

This makes it among the many most costly robotic vacuums you should buy proper now. For a similar amount of cash – or much less – you will get a robotic vacuum which you can ship out with a voice command to exactly clear solely underneath your kitchen desk (the iRobot Roomba i7+), after which it’s going to empty its personal bin. You might get one which’ll mop your flooring, carry its mops if it crosses carpet after which cleans the mop pads when it’s carried out (the Ecovacs T20 Omni). You might 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.

Must you purchase the Dyson 360 Vis Nav?

I feel what I’m going to advise. It’s tempting to say that numerous the Vis Nav’s efficiency points may very well be fastened with software program updates – which Dyson is certainly planning. Nevertheless, that’s not a purpose to purchase.

For its extraordinary worth, 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 prime suggestions, take a look at our round-up of the perfect 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