Press the circle on the home screen to start, pause, and stop a cycle. Dyson will send you an alert when a cycle ends and make a map of your route. Like the Roomba 980 and the Neato Botvac Connected, the 360 Eye is app-enabled. Dyson told me it was trying to steer clear of any software gimmicks, so the app is very basic. You won’t be able to drive your robot on-demand from your phone, for instance.
Thus, the cleaning efficiency is greatly improved and the repetition rate is reduced significantly. However, we feel that the high price is only worth it if you’re definitely going to make use of the advanced mapping technology. 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.
Moving furniture doesn’t matter, as the map is constantly being updated on every cleaning cycle. Even if you relocated the vacuum and charging station prior to the next cleaning cycle, there wouldn’t be many issues in navigation. On most floors with a simple and open layout, this 45 minutes should be plenty. However, the vacuum goes in ten-foot grid areas to cover the floor, ensuring it covers every possible square foot. If you have a complex floor plan or have a lot of furniture, the grids will get interrupted, and the robot will have to find a new route.
We are not very familiar with the actual price of the robovac but it is estimated to be around $1,100. The new filing however doesn’t guarantee that Dyson will ever release the 360 Hyperdymium, but there is no harm in keeping our fingers crossed for a potential release date. I used to pride myself on being the tidiest, bleached-out house on the block. But then I had a child, and that all went out the window as I reclaim what little time I have to myself and my mechanical keyboard building hobby. There are certainly Dyson fans out there who will buy a Heurist no matter what. If you cannot abide vacuuming, and only want to do it every couple of weeks to grab any spots a robot might have missed, then perhaps this vacuum is for you.
The Roomba has side brushes; the 360 Eye has a full-width brush bar. And Toshiba’s Torneo Robo empties the dirt its gathers into its dock, allowing it to keep working without human intervention for extended periods of time. LG’s newest machine can send photos of its surroundings to its owner’s smartphone, allowing them to check if its done its job properly and order another pass if not. “In addition we’ve developed a vision system that enables the machine to be very methodical in its clean and not miss sections of floor space.” Dan works across a range of Immediate’s special interest brands. With a keen eye for what makes a product great, their expertise comes in handy when writing for publications like Countryfile, Science Focus and Discover Wildlife.
Hopefully this also means fewer instances of misaligned docking. But the best part of the app might be the Activity tab, which shows you a history of your vacuum’s outings, and the coverage area it cleaned each time. These graphs are only stored locally on your device, and show you how long the vacuum was working, how many charges it required to finish the job, and the total area your bot covered during the trip. The app also lets you start, pause and schedule the robot, and includes a full manual with a guide to cleaning its filters and emptying the dust bin. Meanwhile, the Roomba 980 does deliver the same degree of cleaning as the Dyson 360 Eye. But if you are more interested in being able to remotely control your robot from outside the house, then it will somewhat disappoint.
The best robot vacuum cleaners navigate around your home without crashing into furniture or plunging to the bottom of a flight of stairs thanks to cutting-edge tech such as lasers and cameras. Dyson has top-of-the-range options and it has reasonably sized options but, if all you want is one vacuum cleaner that isn’t too high-priced and does everything you require of it, there’s a £300 all-rounder for you too. The Dyson irobot vacuum cleaner V8 Animal (£300) offers up to 40 minutes of charge and uses Dyson’s Direct Drive technology to pick up dirt across both carpets and hard floors. It can also be speedily adjusted to a handheld for those closer cleaning jobs. The Eufy hybrid robot vacuum has you covered for both picking up dirt and deep cleaning the floor. Thanks to the 2-in-1 hybrid design, the robot can mop while it’s vacuuming for an efficient clean.
2000Pa has fast become the norm when it comes to the suction power of the best robot vacuums. So, if your budget allows, we’d recommend looking for vacs around this number. However, cheaper options are available that sport around 1500Pa which are still perfectly capable. A few robot vacuums have a clever self-emptying feature, most notably those of the iRobot Roomba series. These can transfer the refuse they pick up to a larger compartment in the docking station, letting them carry on for weeks with minimal maintenance.
Dyson previously showed off another robot vacuum cleaner – the DC06 – in 2001, but cancelled the project a few years later, in part because it would have cost consumers $3,000 (£1,820) or more. That’s because it appeared to have more actual suction than many other robot vacuums we’ve seen, and it also seemed to navigate a room less chaotically than much of the competition. That’s where we got some hands-on time with Dyson’s first ever robot vacuum.