If you have it in auto, you’ll see the impact changing floor type has on the battery. The display shows the different run-time you’ll get in three modes: eco, auto and boost. And it’s such a simple thing, it makes you wonder why Dyson took so long to include it. So your educated guess at battery life suddenly became a race against lithium ion. Motorised heads drew more power from the battery, unsurprisingly. The problem was that the battery life could be affected not only by the mode you had the cleaner in – the Max boost wound things down incredibly fast – but also the type of cleaning head you had on the machine. But it was more of a broad hint than an exact number. The V10 brought in indicator lights for the battery and a filter blockage alert. The first indication you’d get that the battery was struggling was when the vacuum cleaner switched off. On one hand, you had the maximum battery life the company put forward on the other, you had the tendency to stick the cleaner into boost mode and just hope you finished before the battery ran out around 10 minutes later. In the past, you had to make an educated guess about how long you could get out of the battery. But the latest Dyson has one obvious difference: it has a small display that gives you a countdown of how long you’ll get out of the battery. That will also be reflected in the run-time, as it would with all Dyson’s cordless cleaners. If you take it from a hard floor on to carpet, you’ll hear the difference in the motor as it adjusts to the new floor surface, working harder to clean the carpet. The new V11 has some smart sensors that detect factors such as the floor texture and adjusts the power accordingly. It feels like a toy, snap the parts together and off you go. It doesn’t feel like a boring vacuum cleaner. Maybe it is the way everything fits together on the Dyson machines.

There’s only so much you can do with that.Īnd yet, 30-(cough)-year-old me is interested. They have one job: suck up the crud that daily life grinds into the carpet. It’s hard to make vacuum cleaners interesting to most people. My first vacuum cleaner was chosen based on price (it was under €60). Twenty-five-year old me was still slightly incredulous that I actually cared about vacuum cleaners enough to think that it merits the price tag that comes along with the Dyson. And also that consumers were willing to pay the extra for the cordless technology. It was a bold move, but Dyson felt the technology was at a point where the cordless cleaners could do as good a job if not better than the traditional version.

The founder of the company that had made its name on bagless cylinder vacuum cleaners was drawing a line in the sand: cordless was the future and Dyson would no longer develop the traditional plug-in version. Just over a year ago, James Dyson unveiled the V10 and declared the corded vacuum cleaner was dead.

Dyson v11 torque vs absolute