If you were asked to think of a vacuum cleaner brand, it’s very likely that Dyson would be the first to pop into your head. The home appliance giant’s products have been around since the early Nineties and are known for their top of the line, bagless vacuum technology.
Fast forward to present day and the product range now includes cordless, handheld and robot vacuums as well as hair care, air treatment and even lighting products.
The Dyson 360 heurist is only the brand’s second robot vacuum (the first was the 360 eye) and this one features 20 per cent more suction power, personalised room mapping, night vision via a ring of eight LED lights around its top camera, as well as 8GB of memory so that it can really learn every area of your home. But does the nifty gadget live up to Dyson’s usual standards, and is it worth the eye-watering £800 price tag? We find out.
How we tested
We put the device to the test by using it in a very busy household across three floors of the home. Surfaces included wooden, carpeted and tiled floors, all with plenty of obstacles so that we could closely observe how the robot navigated through rooms and see what it did and didn’t clean up. This allowed us to understand the pros and cons of the machine and judge whether its advanced technology is really worth the hefty price tag.
- Weight: 2.51kg
- Battery life: 75 minutes
- Charge time: 2 hours 45 minutes
- Bin capacity: 330ml
- Size: H 120mm x L 240mm x W 230mm
- Variable power: Max, high, quiet
- Accessories included: Charging base
- Additional features: Adapts to different floor surfaces
Design
This futuristic-looking robot certainly catches the eye with its blue and silver design. A key difference between this and pretty much every other robot vacuum on the market is that this one is compact but tall, meaning it may not be able to get under every piece of furniture in your house and clean those hard to reach areas.
However, the reason for this height is so that a full length rotating brush bar can fit underneath the robot’s body, allowing for better suction power across the entirety of the robot – there’s no need for side brushes which are a common feature of other robot vacuum cleaners which often don’t manage to pick up everything. One downside we found with the brush was that it was easy for hair to get stuck and wrapped around it (especially if you have long hair). We had to spend some time cleaning it to make sure that this didn’t affect its suction power.
The robot also features tank-style tracks instead of wheels, so it can travel at quite a speed across the room and has no difficulty in moving through obstacles or across different surfaces such as a thick rug to a wooden floor – something which we have seen other robots repeatedly find difficulty with. The dustbin is on the small side at 330ml and we did find it needed emptying after every complete clean (even when the house was reasonably dust-free to start with). However, we liked that the machine comes with a lightweight charging base, it can be folded up when not in use or easily tucked away in a corner.
Set up
Set up is via the Dyson Link app, and if you have other compatible Dyson products they will also show in this visually pleasing and easy to use software. Setting it up properly does take some time, but it’s worth doing to ensure that you make full use of the advanced technology of the robot and create a truly bespoke clean for your home. The 360 heurist has to map out your house before it starts to clean so that it can learn all of the floor areas in your home, after which the maps will show in the app where you can manually edit them, set up exclusion zones and assign different settings to each area such as a higher power level. We were particularly impressed that you could create areas where you didn’t want the vacuum to climb – this meant that the robot didn’t attempt to climb across the horizontal bars of the dining room chairs.
Cleaning
You can press the quickstart button on the top of the robot to begin cleaning, ask your Amazon smart speaker or Google Assistant, or you can schedule a clean via the app. We did find communication between the app and the robot via its built-in dual-band wifi to be slightly patchy –the Dyson’s wifi had connection issues on several occasions. This meant that communication to the robot was lost and we were unable to start a clean via the app (until we rebooted the machine) which was quite frustrating. Once we managed to get it cleaning though, it did an incredibly thorough job. The robot easily followed the exclusion zones that we had drawn up in the app, constantly scanning the room with its 360 panoramic camera and we were particularly impressed by the circle of LED lights that came on if a room was too dark for the robot to see clearly.
We found the 360 heurist easily transitioned between the three power modes of max, high and quiet, and cleaning on the quiet setting provided a 75 minute run time – this was more than enough time to clean a flat or a small home. The robot was very methodical in its cleaning and the only areas that were missed were unsurprisingly, the room corners which the robot couldn’t get into. When set to max or high power we found it to be a pretty loud machine, but this was worth it for the seriously impressive suction power which was a stand-out feature and provided a deep clean every time. We also liked that you could monitor the robot’s progress remotely via the app – we could see exactly where it has cleaned and how long it took.
The verdict: Dyson 360 heurist
There’s no doubt that this robot has some impressive technology and it really is a powerful machine – the suction ensures your home is left dust free making it a great choice for pet owners or anyone suffering from allergies. However, we feel that the high price is only worth it if you’re definitely going to make use of the advanced mapping technology. If not, you’re better off opting for a cheaper machine.
