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- Fantastic anti-hair tangle mechanism
- Powerful cleaning
- Head adapts to different floor types
- Expensive
- Our flour test upset the Dyson greatly
Dyson makes some of the best cordless vacuums around, but there’s no getting away from how expensive they are to buy, and its latest model does nothing to dispel this reputation. The Dyson V16 Piston Animal will set you back an eye-watering £750 (£900 if you opt to include the “mop” Submarine-head package), which is a huge amount to spend on something to clean your floors, and £150 more expensive than its predecessor, the V15 Detect.
At first glance, there seems to be nothing revolutionary about this vacuum – certainly not enough to justify such a price hike. On closer examination, however, there are some upgrades worth having and, as someone who fosters cats for a charity, I can tell you that the anti-hair tangle technology is the best I’ve ever come across. But the V16 is not without its niggles.
Dyson V16 Piston review: What do you get for the money?
Clad in the distinctive Dyson colours of purple and red, the V16 shares a similar design to its predecessors. In the box, you get the cordless vacuum cleaner unit, which comprises the motor and dust collection bin, an extension wand, the main powered floor head, plus a couple of other accessories, detailed below.
The main motor head is the V16’s big new upgrade and its design is quite different to previous Dyson heads. Instead of using a traditional straight brush bar, this one contains two opposing cone-shaped brushes that taper off to each side.
The idea is that, as hair is sucked into the head and wraps around the cones, it is gradually pushed off to the sides and ejected in a neat bundle, instead of getting tightly wound around the brush bar.
That’s not the only technological innovation on show here, though. The new head also comes with a combination of soft and hard bristles, which allow it to clean both carpet and hard floors effectively, without having to switch heads. It will also adapt its speed as you change from one floor type to another: on carpet, the head spins at 4,000rpm; on hard floors, that drops to 1,800rpm.
And it has a laser light mounted on the front that shows up surface dust on your carpets and floors to make it easier to make sure you’ve picked everything up and an app for updates and instructions.
You also get a standard crevice tool for getting right into the corners between carpet and skirting boards and a combi tool with a wide nozzle and slide-down brush. Take the main head off the extension wand and the wand can be used on its own to suction up small areas, while removing the extension wand reveals a crevice tool to instantly turn the V16 into a handheld vacuum.
Finally, Dyson’s Hair Screw 2.0 tool uses a similar technique to the main head for shedding hair but it’s smaller and designed for cleaning hard-to-reach places like the stairs and car interiors. All the attachments have tool ID, so your Dyson knows which ones are attached and can adjust power and suction accordingly.
Size wise, the V16 is of a similar size to other models (259 x 250 x 1,298mm) but the handheld unit with the battery attached is slightly lighter than the Gen5detect (2.3kg) at 2.1kg. With the extension wand and head attached, the whole unit comes in at 3.4kg and Dyson says it has redistributed the weight to make it less top heavy. I’m afraid I still found it quite heavy to use, particularly in handheld mode, but the smooth function of the head does make up for this as you glide along.
As we saw introduced on the Dyson V12 Detect Slim, the V16 doesn’t have a trigger. Instead, you press a button to turn the vacuum cleaner on and off, and there’s a second red button to cycle through the three power options – Auto, Eco and Boost.
Another big difference is the dust collection bin, which is larger than before at 1.3 litres in capacity, and comes with the new ability to compress the dust as you go, so you don’t have to empty it as often. Dyson says you can fit up to three times as much into the bin this way and I have to say that it did indeed hold a lot. I managed to clean my entire house without needing to empty the bin once.
I should explain that, while I live in a two bedroom terrace that isn’t that large, the amount of cat hair we have to deal with on a daily basis is often a challenge for cordless hoovers, which simply can’t fit it all in the collection bin. The V16 had no such trouble.
The final upgrade is to suction power, with the V16 taking the quoted power up to 315AW (Air Watts), from the 262AW you’ll find on the Gen5detect and 240AW on the V15. There’s certainly an enormous amount of suction in real world cleaning but, as with all Dysons, it’s difficult to say exactly how much (this is something we normally test using a vacuum gauge) as Dyson vacuum cleaners are designed to cut out when the pressure in the pipes reaches a certain point. However, I did measure the suction up until it cut out and found it a marginal improvement over the Gen5 on Boost and Eco modes.
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What is it like to use?
It’s always baffled me that previous Dysons haven’t come with a head that works on both carpets and hard floors. So, the addition of a head that works anywhere is a welcome change. And you can actually hear the adjustment of power as the vacuum moves between the two surfaces, which is bizarrely satisfying.
Suction power on the V16 is, as you’d expect – extremely powerful – but it’s the fact that you don’t have to spend ages untangling hair from the head that’s the real joy. The design of the heads means that hair gets sucked up and balled away so that it’s not going to get caught up in the brushes. It’s incredibly effective and no matter how much pet hair I chucked at it (more on that in the next section), the head always remained completely clear.
Of course, Dyson isn’t the only brand making floor heads with anti-hair tangle tech. Shark has had them on its main vacuum floor heads for some time, with many of the best Shark vacuum cleaners including it as standard.
The laser is another useful feature. It helps ensure you haven’t missed anything and it’s bright enough to reveal dust and debris in all but the brightest sunlight. I really liked the built-in combi tool, too, which makes cleaning stairs and crevices quick and easy. And I was impressed by how close to skirting boards the motorised heads were able to clean.
I personally like the ease of the on / off button although I know some of my fellow Expert Reviews testers find it a bit small. Perhaps it’s better suited to those with smaller hands. And I also love having a separate button to cycle through the three power modes.
I’m less keen on the fact that the LCD screen shows, in real-time, how much dust is passing into the collection bin. I’m not really sure what the point of this is. It’s just as easy to see the proof of this in the collection bin. Speaking of which, Dyson has added in a feature it calls CleanCompaktor, which the brand claims can compress the dust and debris to hold up to 30 days worth of vacuuming.
I’m not entirely sure how you can decide on a number of days here, as everyone’s house is different size, but there’s no doubt it’s a useful and simple feature. You simply push down a lever on the side of the collection bin and an internal plate slides down to compress the debris, instantly creating more room in the bin so you don’t have to run to empty it quite so often.
One thing that is useful to see on the LCD screen is a count-down timer that shows you exactly how much battery life is left. It’s entirely accurate and doesn’t leave you guessing as most other vacuums do.
But as I said above, I still don’t think Dyson has quite got on top of the weight issue. The main bulk of the V16 may be slightly lighter than the Gen5detect, but it’s still over 2kg and if you have a large house, I think you’d find your arms getting a bit tired after a while. It’s also heavy to use handheld. But in fairness to the V16, it makes up for this with how great it is at cleaning your floors.
How well does it clean?
We conduct the same tests for all our vacuum cleaners. We spill measured quantities of Cheerios, flour and pet hair onto a short-pile carpet sample and hard floor, weighing the collection bin before and after a single pass at maximum power, to see how much the vacuum collects on a single pass.
And we carry out all these tests before using the vacuum in real-world testing to ensure results are consistent with other vacuums we’ve reviewed. We also test battery life and suction power to provide a balanced look at overall performance.
One thing I noted immediately was that the new Dyson head design meant some larger particles were caught up in the centre and pushed along rather than immediately sucked up into the collection bin. I also found that the roller would occasionally spit a little debris out the side as the vacuum cleaner moved forward due to being crushed as the rollers moved over the top of them. However, it was simple enough to pick up any small leftovers on a second pass.
As expected, the V16 performed particularly well in the pet hair tests, collecting 4.7g out of 5g on carpet and picking up 100% of the 5g on a wood floor. Best of all, when I picked up the cleaner to examine the head, there was no sign of any hair at all tangled in the mechanism. Cheerios proved more challenging, with only 20g of 26g collected on carpet in a single pass, but it collected a near-perfect 25g out of 26g on hard floor.
Finally, I ran a test with 50g of flour. The V16 picked up a perfect 100% on hard flooring but only 40g on carpet. The biggest issue came after I’d emptied the flour out of the collection bin, however, with the vacuum registering an error and refusing to work until my husband went outside and shook as much flour out of the filter as possible.
Now, you’re unlikely to be hoovering up this amount of flour very often, but fine dust is a part of everyday household dirt, and it was disconcerting to see that the V16 became clogged so quickly. Certainly, if you’re an avid baker, this might not be your top choice of vacuum cleaner.
It’s also a mite disappointing to see that this new Dyson actually lagged behind its immediate forebears in these cleaning performance tests, with an overall average of 88% spills cleaned compared to 99% achieved by the Gen5Detect.
Having said that, it was in real world cleaning that I found the V16 really shone. Some vacuums I’ve used in the past have struggled with our real wool carpets , but the Dyson made short work of them, and they looked visibly cleaner after just one pass.
Finally, I also ran battery tests to see how long the battery lasted from fully charged. The V16 has a timer on the back but I also ran a stopwatch on my phone alongside this to correlate the results. In Boost mode the V16 stated a run time of 16 minutes and actually lasted for 16mins 20secs. In Eco mode, the timer stated 73 minutes but lasted a fair bit longer at 77mins 29secs. That’s incredibly good when you consider how powerful the V16 is.
Dyson V16 Piston Animal: Should you buy one?
The V16 is a fantastic vacuum cleaner that I’m happy to give a Recommended badge to – mainly for its absolutely exceptional cleaning powers when it comes to dealing with pet and human hair on any surface. The anti-hair tangle heads are great and even picked up my fairly long hair.
But it’s not perfect, as demonstrated by its aversion to flour and slightly haphazard picking up of larger particles. And there’s also no getting away from the price; £750 is a vast amount of money to invest in a vacuum cleaner, even if it is a Dyson. For these reasons, I’ve awarded the V16 four stars.
