Great aspirations: how the Dyson 360 Vis Nav is made and how it performs

Dyson’s first robot vacuum cleaner, the DC06, was presented just twenty years ago, in 2004. It never arrived in stores because it was too heavy, too complicated, too expensive. Thus the English company’s first real product in the sector was the 360 ​​Eye, presented in 2014 and followed in 2020 by a revised and corrected version, the 360 ​​Heurist. Four years later comes the Dyson 360 Vis Nav, which is completely different from the previous two models.

As did

Meanwhile, it is no longer circular and tall, but flat and D-shaped, like several competitors. The reason is simple: the brush goes from one end to the other from the front and there is no need for the two rotating brushes that all robot vacuum cleaners with a circular design have, which are essential for collecting dust and dirt particles in the corners. At least in intention, because it often happens that instead of collecting them, they disperse them even further into the environment. Furthermore, the reduced height means that the Vis Nav can finally move under beds, sofas and other furniture: 10 cm is enough for it.

Then there is a touchscreen which, thanks to its high contrast display, is easy to read in any type of lighting. It’s also a button you can use to start the machine, choose the vacuum mode, pause a cleaning, check the charge and more. Next to the screen is the HEPA filter which captures up to 99.99% of dust particles as small as 0.1 microns and is completely sealed to keep dust inside the machine. When it’s dirty, just press the top to remove it from its housing and wash it. The 0.57 liter dust container is very well designed, with the typical radial cyclones of Dyson vacuum cleaners, and a red semicircular button to release it. The handle is folded down when attached to the robot and houses the red button that unlocks the bottom to let collected dust come out, a bit like on the Dyson V series vacuum cleaners.

In use

The first thing to do, as with all robot vacuum cleaners, is to connect the Vis Nav to the app, download any updates and then create a map of the house. In our case the operation lasted almost two hours, with a stop for charging; the apartment measures almost 200 m2 and has a regular layout, with a central corridor and rooms on both sides, there is little furniture and there are not too many crowded corners. During mapping, the robot does not vacuum, so the noise is not excessive, however it is better to avoid pets or children around because they could mislead it; It’s best to make sure there is enough light, even if the robot has rather powerful LEDs to illuminate the darkest areas. They are located on the top, around the camera: the Dyson, in fact, does not use lidar sensors like most of its competitors. Thanks to a technology called SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), the Vis Nav has a 360-degree view of the environment it is in, so it can recognize where it has been, see where to clean and create maps of the dust present in the house. According to Dyson , the images captured by the camera never leave the robot. “We only capture elements from the image useful for navigation, which are stored temporarily on the device and then deleted,” the company points out.

The vis Nav has 26 sensors for specific tasks, including detecting dust, obstacles and walls to clean right up to the edges: the data is processed by a powerful processor according to proprietary algorithms developed over years of research. All this, however, is not enough to avoid some uncertainty in the direction to take, short and inexplicable stops in the middle of the room, and above all it does not prevent the robot from cleaning some areas several times and completely ignoring others.

Unstoppable

On the other hand, the large wheels allow it to move easily and overcome even rather high obstacles: up to 2.1 cm, according to the manufacturer, but in reality even more. And the robot faces them with an enviable tenacity, trying and trying again until he succeeds or is forced to go back. The fact is that, unlike all the other similar products we have tried, this one never got stuck or stuck. He got lost a few times, especially in low light, but under normal conditions he always managed to find his starting point again.

And he had to do it often: autonomy is not in fact the best quality of this device, given that it stands at around 50 minutes in auto mode, then returns to the dock for charging, which takes up to 2 and a half hours. On the other hand, the power is excellent, indeed, for Dyson the Hyperdymium motor which reaches 110,000 rpm offers “six times more suction than any other robot vacuum cleaner”. There’s no way to verify such a claim, but the results are clear: clean floors and a full dust filter.

This is also thanks to the new triple action brush: the soft “Fluffy” nylon to collect larger debris on floors; anti-static carbon fiber filaments to collect fine dust; the stiff nylon bristles to effectively clean carpets. It is large enough to ensure that your hair does not get tangled and is also washable. When the Vis Nav recognizes that it is near the edge of a room or detects the legs of a piece of furniture, a red tab on the side pops out, a small suction duct specific for the edges, which allows it to clean even areas that cannot be reached with precision. normal robot vacuum cleaner.

The app

You can choose between different suction modes: Auto, Boost, Fast and Silent. The last one is not so silent, the fast one is not much faster than the others, Boost is excellent where deep cleaning is needed but reduces the autonomy a lot, so the best choice is the automatic mode, which varies suction power and speed of the brush in relation to the dirt. You can start cleaning instantly, even by pressing the touch screen on the device, but the app is essential for dividing the map into multiple zones and scheduling cleaning for specific times and days. At the end of each session, it will be possible to evaluate the work of the Vis Nav: a map of the treated areas is created in the app, with different colors to indicate the quantity of dust detected. The Vis Nav, like other Dyson connected appliances, is compatible with Alexa, but in this case you can only start cleaning or stop it.

We like it

• Suction power
• Ease of use
• It goes everywhere

We do not like it

• Price
• Inaccurate navigation
• Poor autonomy

In the end

The Vis Nav is a vacuum cleaner capable of moving autonomously, rather than a robot capable of vacuuming: understanding the difference between these two types of devices is essential to avoid being disappointed. It doesn’t wash the floor, it doesn’t have a base to dump the dirt in, it doesn’t work as a security camera. Its sole purpose is to vacuum dust, crumbs and debris of various types, and it does so very well, thanks to a powerful motor, a well-designed brush, and a very efficient filter. It has a design that does not go unnoticed, a simple and effective interface, a well-designed app, it is easy to use and clean. In the few days that we had it on test, it received two software updates, a sign of the constant care that Dyson dedicates to its products also from a software point of view. Which, however, still needs improvements and corrections: in navigation with low light, in the speed of mapping, in the ability to recognize areas that are already clean and those that are still dirty, in the optimization of autonomy. As it stands today, the Vis Nav is a big step forward compared to previous models, but even taking into account the brand, the construction, the technology used, for 1299 euros the market offers many alternatives.

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