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- Incredibly lightweight and compact
- Easy to manoeuvre
- Compression maximises bin capacity
- Not suitable for carpets
- Small castors can get tangled
- Expensive
Designed specifically for hard flooring, the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones (to give it its full and rather colourful name) is a fantastic little vacuum cleaner that does its job extremely well. Unlike the best cordless vacuum cleaners on the market, it won’t work on carpet and this is going to limit its usefulness for many people.
But if you live in a small home with hard floors throughout with just the odd rug around the place, this could be all the vacuum you ever need.
Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones vacuum cleaner: What do you get for the money?
As with most Dyson products, the price is quite high at £430 and physically, that doesn’t buy you an awful lot. In the box is the vacuum itself, the Fluffycones cleaner head, a crevice tool and a charger along with a magnetic charging dock.
Of course, minimalism is core to the appeal of this vacuum and, in fairness, its single head does a fantastic job. The Fluffycones floorhead has clearly evolved from Dyson’s Omni-glide vacuum cleaner (now only available refurbished) but instead of straight rollers, the PencilVac’s head is made up of four cone-shaped rollers, with the front and back pair rotating in opposite directions to help sweep dirt and debris into a suction tube in the centre.
The rollers are covered with a soft fabric to help prevent any damage to hard floors and the cone shape, which helps them shed and bundle up long hairs into carpet tumble weeds that can then be sucked up into the vacuum’s dust bin. The head also has Dyson’s LED green laser lights at the front and back, which are designed to illuminate dust on the floor, so you can target the areas that need cleaning the most.
The PencilVac is an incredible feat of engineering. Everything, apart from the floorhead, is contained in the handle of the vacuum, which has a circumference of just 3.8cm. With the floorhead attached, the PencilVac is 116cm high and it weighs just 1.8kg. The battery forms the top section of the wand, and you’ll find the bin below this, with a transparent casing, below which sits the motor.
This bin isn’t very big at 0.08 litres in capacity, but Dyson says it maximises the space available by using air to compress down dust and debris into the smallest possible space. Another nice feature is that the battery is removable, which means you can buy a spare one and swap out as needed.
You’ll also find controls for the PencilVac on the stick, with an on/off button and a second button to switch modes between Eco, Medium and Boost). Finally, a digital display shows you how much time you have left in each mode.
What’s it like to use?
The PencilVac feels nicely balanced in the hand, but I did struggle with the ergonomics. Because there’s no angled or looped grip – it’s just one big stick after all – you end up holding the PencilVac with your wrist cocked downwards. As a result, I found the vacuum uncomfortable to use for longer cleaning jobs.
Apart from this niggle, though, the PencilVac is a joy to manoeuvre, thanks to how flexible the floorhead is. You can hold it in any orientation and it’s easy to change direction with a little flick of the wrist, making it incredibly easy to direct into tight corners, as well as slide under sofas, tables and chairs. And because the ends of the rollers are exposed, you can clean right up to your skirting boards with zero gap. It’s a super-clever piece of design.
Dyson vacuums can be a little trigger-happy when it comes to emptying the bin, but the PencilVac’s system is slick and mess-free. You simply remove the floorhead, point the base of the wand into the bin and release a catch on the rear that slides the outer casing down and releases dust and dirt out of the bottom. And because it’s a comparatively thin tube that you can lower into your household bin, it doesn’t create much of a dust cloud when you do this.
The really clever thing about the dust collection system is that it uses the suction from the motor to compact dust and debris as it cleans, in theory allowing it to hold much more than you’d expect given its tiny 0.08-litre capacity. I was sceptical at first but I was impressed by how much it was able to fit into such a compact space.
How well does it clean?
To compare vacuum cleaners accurately, we conduct the same tests for every product we test. This involves measuring suction power and battery life for cordless models, and seeing how well the vacuum can clean up measured quantities of Cheerios, flour and pet hair on both short-pile carpet and hard flooring. All these tests are carried out with the vacuum straight out of the box before we conduct any real-world testing.
Like all Dysons, the PencilVac cut out when its airways are blocked, so I can only report the peak suction value when it cuts out; with other brands the motor has more of a chance for the reading to settle at a higher rate.
Nonetheless, the results were impressive, with the PencilVac recording a reading of 17kPa on its boost setting, 12kPa on medium and 8kPa on eco mode. These readings aren’t far off those of the VAX HomePro Detect Pet-Design cordless vacuum and, in eco mode, it’s marginally more powerful than the Dyson V8 Cyclone. Battery life isn’t bad either, considering the petite size of the vacuum. The PencilVac lasted 12mins 58secs in Boost, 20 minutes in Medium and 35mins 20secs when set to Eco.
The PencilVac is obviously a dedicated hard floor cleaner but, out of curiosity, I also carried out tests on a sample of short-pile carpet. This was mainly to see whether the vacuum would cope with a rug or similar in a space that was otherwise hard flooring.
Here are the results: on hard floors, the PencilVac picked up 11g out of 26g of Cheerios, 49g out of 50g of flour and 3g of 5g of pet hair. A surprising result as typically, we’ve seen fluffy rollers pick up larger particles more effectively than brushes on hard floor. The Dyson OmniGlide, for instance, performed better here, although it has no anti-tangle tech.
On carpet, the vacuum picked up 4g of Cheerios, 1g of flour and 1g of pet hair. That’s as expected, as the PencilVac doesn’t have anything to agitate the fibres to release embedded dirt and debris. However, in real-world testing, I did find that the PencilVac was powerful enough to clean small rugs of most debris with a few passes.
Using the PencilVac on my hard floors, I found it did an excellent job of picking up small clumps of cat hair from my foster cats – and the litter they so thoughtfully like to kick out of the trays. It also coped well with everyday dust, debris and fluff and the green LED lights do a great job of highlighting said dirt and debris, making it easier to check that you’ve cleaned the floor thoroughly.
As always, Dyson’s anti-tangle tech worked a treat, bundling both pet and human hair up into manageable clumps that were easy to then vacuum into the bin. However, it wasn’t perfect thanks to the four caster wheels that are located between the Fluffycones. Although these help the PencilVac to glide around effortlessly, I found that, over time, some hair became tangled in these wheels and had to be cut free.
Should you buy the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones vacuum cleaner?
If your house or flat has hard flooring throughout or great expanses of it, the PencilVac could quickly become your new best friend. It’s incredibly lightweight to use, swishes around corners and deals with everyday dirt and debris with ease.
It’s expensive at £430, and considerably more than many regular vacuum cleaners, but there’s no arguing with the brilliance of the design. If you live somewhere suitable, this could be all the vacuum you’ll ever need.
