I made a review video of the excellent Dyson V15 vacuum cleaner a couple of months ago,
I'll link to it in this video, and if you've not already watched that I would definitely
recommend that you take a look at it, as I cover everything about this model in a lot of depth.
3 months later, my overall thoughts about this Dyson haven't changed, I still really do like it.
But, as with all technology products, using it for a few months has revealed a few things that I
at first hadn't noticed, some things that I really like, and some that I'm not so keen on,
but things that I do think are important additions to my original review.
So in this video, that's what I'm going to talk about, the things that I've
noticed about the Dyson V15 Absolute, after living with it for 3 months, good and bad.
OK, let's get into it.
**1) The laser really does help**
When I first saw product videos showing the little green laser triangle beaming out in
front of the vacuum, I figured it was nothing more than a gimmick. But, I can honestly say
with complete sincerity, that this is probably the most useful feature of the cleaner in my opinion,
if you own a home with a lot of hard floors. In fact, when we use this to clean our bathroom or
our ensuite, it's actually easier and more effective to switch the room lights off
and shut the door, and vacuum in the dark, than it is to have the lights on,
because the laser genuinely does highlight where the dirt is in your room,
drawing you to areas that you might otherwise have ignored, had it not have been for the laser.
It's really effective, and definitely more than just a gimmick in my opinion,
unlike the particle sensor readout on the top of the display, which I still think is
nonsense I'm afraid. Oh, and if you're not a fan of it, and reading through some reviews on
the Dyson website, there are a small number of people who really do not like the laser,
you can switch it off, which will also increase your battery life a little.
**2) You MUST maintain your vacuum**
Now, I can imagine that this point is going to get some conflicting opinions, a lot of people
I speak to believe that with modern technology, you really shouldn't have to invest any of your
own time and effort into maintaining them. But the fact is, vacuums are mechanical devices,
and you do need to do the odd little thing here and there to keep them running properly.
Now, we're not talking much maintenance here, essentially you want to ensure that
there are no blockages in your vacuum, and ensure that the filter is cleaned regularly.
The blockages part is easy, especially on this vacuum, but the main areas that I've
noticed you need to keep an eye on is here, the area where dirt transfers into the bin,
and at the main suction holes in the various tools, these seem to be the bottle-neck
areas where blockages are most likely to happen. We had a real Christmas tree this year,
and used this tool carpet the needles up off of the floor,
and those caused a few blockages which I didn't know about, until I realised that the vacuum
seemed to be running in Boost mode constantly, but wasn't sucking anything up.
And it's a similar story with the filter. We bought this when we first moved into our new
house, and this was used a lot for general cleaning, but also cleaning up things like
building dust and the general grime that comes with doing loads of DIY when you move into a new
place. So, it probably shouldn't have been that big of a surprise to me when I took the filter
out a week or so ago, and found that it was just caked in dust and dirt, absolutely thick with it.
Now, fortunately, it's really easy to clean. You rinse it under some hot water,
then leave it to dry somewhere warm in your house, a window sill in the sun
or perhaps outside if it's summer, and that's it, job done. But you will really notice the
performance improvement once you put this back in, and your vacuum doesn't have to work
anywhere near as hard to do it's job, so you get a performance improvement
and an improved battery life all from the same piece of maintenance. Well worth doing.
**3) The bin mechanism is awful**
I mentioned this point in my original review video, and I had a few people comment saying
that it wasn't the bin mechanism, that I was doing it all wrong, and I'm sorry but no,
just no. This is an expensive vacuum cleaner, made by experienced design professionals at
the top of their game, and they MUST be able to come up with something better than this.
Let me tell you everything that's wrong with the bin mechanism on this vacuum. To empty it,
you push this red bit in a kind of pump-action shotgun manner. This pushes open the lid and
expels the dirt out, in theory. The reality is that two things usually happen. Some of the
smaller, finer dirt, the dust usually, shoots out into the bin and leaves a huge cloud behind it,
which can't be massively healthy, and also spreads all around the outside of your bin.
But any long hair usually gets caught up by the chamber here, refusing to budge. You can
try closing and emptying the bin a few times, this is sometimes enough to dislodge it, but
more often than not, I find that I have to reach my fingers in and pull the dirt out manually.
Now, I can live with this, it's a reality of owning a bagless vacuum,
but it is disappointing, you would think that for £600, this wouldn't be an issue,
and it's definitely something I'd like to see Dyson drastically improve in future models.
**4) You need to learn how to use it**
Dysons are designed to be simple to use, and they therefore don't really come with any instructions.
It's a bit like Apple devices, you should in theory just be able to switch them
on and go. And generally, that is the case with this vacuum,
it's pretty straightforward to both setup and use. But there are a couple of things that I wish
I'd known from the get-go, about how to use this vacuum around the different areas of your home.
Generally, when you pull the trigger, the vacuum will operate in Medium mode,
which should really be called Auto mode in my opinion, as the vacuum will automatically
operate at different suction levels, depending on the dirt that it detects. It will flit from Eco
suction to Boost section as needed, and that's why the battery prediction in Medium mode can be a bit
all over the place, as the vacuum is going to be operating at inconsistent levels.
If you're on hard floors, just leave it on Medium and use the Laser head,
let the vacuum figure out what's needed for wherever you're cleaning. But if you're on
carpet, and using the anti tangle tool, you might need to manually set the power level.
We tried using Medium on our carpets when we first moved in, and we literally couldn't move
the vacuum along the floor, the suction was so intense that it kind of welded the vacuum in
one place. You can adjust these sliders on the carpet head which helps make minor adjustments,
but in general we just found Medium to be way too intense.
We now vacuum our carpets using Eco, and find this works just fine, and still picks up plenty
of dust each time we use it, and then set it back to Medium when we're off of carpeted areas.
Minor things, sure, but had I have not figured it out, I would have felt a bit cheated spending this
much money on a vacuum that was a nightmare to use on our carpets. So, do play around with it,
do try all of the different attachments, and do find a way of using that works for you.
**5) You MIGHT need another battery**
I don't consider our home to be all that big, but it's bigger than the average house,
we've got 4 bedrooms, and the downstairs rooms are quite large. We tend to vacuum the kitchen
every day, because it's a kitchen and it usually needs it, and then all the other rooms get
vacuumed about twice a week. The battery of this vacuum always lasts long enough, even on the most
intense cleaning days, we never need to vacuum for longer than say 30, 40 minutes maximum, and this
vacuum cleaner can handle that without issue and still have a bit of charge left. If you use it on
Eco mode throughout, you should be able to go for about an hour, albeit at a reduced power level.
But, if you use Boost mode a lot, or if you have a house that's large enough that you need to be
able to vacuum for an hour or more at a time, you may need to consider a second battery. Thankfully,
you can do this with this vacuum, the battery slots off easily enough, and can be charged by
itself, so you could always have a spare, ready to swap out when needed. This is Dyson, so you're
looking at £85, or about $100, so definitely not cheap, but perhaps worth it if you want all of the
benefits of the V15, but just find that you need a bit more battery than it offers out of the box.
**Conclusion**
So there you are, 5 things that I've learnt about the Dyson V15 after owning
it for 3 months. I do still really like this vacuum, and even though it was expensive,
I think it's worth the money, there are just a few things I think you need to know
before investing more than £500 of your hard-earned cash.
What do you think? Do you own a V15? If yes, how are you getting on with it?
Or, are you not a fan of Dysons? If yes, how come? Drop me a comment, and let's talk about it.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like,
and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.