Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones - Silly Name. Serious Clean

It's a problem as old as vacuum cleaners themselves. In fact, I assume it dates back to the manual floor-sweeping machines that came before them.

Tangles.

If you, or someone close to you has hair of any length, sooner or later some of it's going to end up on the floor.

If you have some hairy breed of pet, they're also contributing to your vacuum cleaner's next tangly ambush.

But it's just the physics of floor cleaning, right? If you have a rotating brush of any kind, tangles are just an inevitable part of it.

Well, not according to Dyson.

The PencilVac Fluffycones is a hard-floor cleaner like you've never seen before.

How many times has Dyson caused us to say, "Like you've never seen before," over the years?

As usual, the fabled Dyson engineering team has taken the tangle problem, and instead of adapting current technology to it, they've essentially built a solution starting from scratch.

Well, not quite. We have seen a couple of recent Dyson products with tangle-free heads and they seem to work one of two different ways. Some heads are fitted with a special comb that pulls hair from the brush before it can get all wrapped up but then there's the second, even more elegant solution. Telling the hair to get screwed.

Much like an Archimedes screw, the device he invented to get water to flow uphill, Dyson looked to a rotating cone to force long hair to one end of the brush head where it gets sucked away.

But why have just one cone when you can have four? Now you begin to understand what makes the PencilVac Fluffycones so good at its job.

The four cones have been mounted in pairs and the mechanical head rotates them towards each other, so there's no escape for any dust, dirt and yes, hair. Long hairs are simply "coned" out to the edges of the brush head where they can be sucked up by the startling power of Dyson's fastest motor yet.

But why just solve one problem at a time?

What about cleaning the edges of your floor? In my experience, the only way to vacuum along skirting boards is to use some kind of specific brush attachment and that's probably after you've already scratched the paintwork with years of vacuum heads running pointlessly along it.

The Fluffycones are indeed fluffy - and they stick out slightly past the brush head housing so you CAN actually butt them up against the skirting, leaving no corner unvacuumed.

Problem three?

How about how heavy and bulky conventional stick vacuums are? Sure, they may come with attachments for brushing away cobwebs from walls, ceilings and light fittings, but have you ever tried waving one around over your head for any length of time?

Which is why Dyson made this the world's thinnest vacuum. The handle, battery and dustbin is just 38mm in diameter - about the same as Dyson's Supersonic and Airwrap haircare devices. One reason hairdressers and consumers love using those tools so much is how light and comfortable they are to hold - even for long periods of time. So yet again, Dyson has completely reinvented the form-factor of a stick vacuum so it's essentially the size and shape of a broom handle.

Unfortunately, that means the dustbin only has a 0.08 litre capacity, which would be an issue except thanks to that groundbreakingly fast hyperdymium motor, the bin fills from the top down, with the contents compacted by a continuous blast of compressed air. This not only means you can fit more icky stuff into less space, it also results in much less dust when you empty it out.

Oh... about that; yet another problem solved. Bagless vacuums of the past always seem like a good idea right up until you open them over your bin, attempt to shake the contents out and end up having to dig half of the mess out with your fingers, while a helpful breeze blows all the dust back in your face.

The PencilVac Fluffycones eliminates those hazards with its unique "syringe" emptying system. It literally squeezes the contents of the dustbin down into the tube when you slide it open - then it falls gracefully into the bin without ever touching my delicate digits.

So it's tangle-free. It's slim. It's light. And there's absolutely no mess when it comes to emptying.

What more can you ask for? Well... it's probably the most flexible head of any vacuum I've ever used. It rotates 360° and because the Fluffycones spin towards each other, it can be used in any direction. 

The head is also equipped with green LED lights front and back (if there IS a front or a back) so you can detect every speck of dust, every crumb and every strand of hair.

When it comes to hard floors, the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones certainly cleans up.

The funny thing is, because Dyson is essentially my personal benchmark for great design, there are a couple of things that have made me ask, "Why haven't they done this as well?"

The first thing I'd like to see is even more ability to get under things. Dyson claims the Fluffycones head will reach under anything more than 95mm off the ground - which is crazy - but in fact, the head itself is even slimmer. If the handle joint - which, as we've established, is probably the most flexible I've ever seen - if it could somehow lie down flush with the head itself, there wouldn't be many pieces of furniture you couldn't vacuum under.

The next thing I'd change if I could would be an extra set of controls on the other side of the handle. This is because the PencilVac is so manoeuvrable, you end up holding the handle "backwards" about half the time. That means I often reach for the power button, only to find it isn't there and I have to twist everything around again to get at it.

By the same token, the magnetic charging stand also only works one way - and it never seems to be the way I first attempt to dock the PencilVac - so again, another twist is required.

I'm sounding high-maintenance now, aren't I?

So one more then; I would also like to be able to leave it standing upright in the middle of the floor, without having to lean it against anything. When you're moving mats and small pieces of furniture out of the way to clean under them, it's kind of annoying to have to lie the PencilVac down on the floor or lean it against a wall - especially because being so twisty and turny, it's actually quite difficult to lean it against the wall without the totally round handle sliding down and clattering to the floor anyway.

Please, Dyson engineers - if you're reading this, don't take these comments as complaints, take them as suggestions for the next model. If your past performance is anything to go by, you've probably thought of all this stuff anyway and you're already working on the next prototype.

    

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones cleaner.