If there’s one thing that Dyson knows, it’s how to make hugely powerful motors for cordless vacuum cleaners. The Dyson Gen5detect is the most powerful cordless vacuum cleaner that it has made yet. Putting this cleaner through our tests, we measured it at a massive 369AW on maximum power – the highest, by far, that we’ve ever seen from a cordless cleaner.
Otherwise, it runs at 30AW on its gentle power mode (good for dusting) and 75AW on medium. Well, kind of. As with previous Dyson vacuums, the Gen5detect has a piezo sensor for detecting dust, adjusting its power automatically based on how much dirt it has encountered. In automatic mode, the vacuum ups and downs its power on the fly, so that you get the best clean without having to worry about which power mode you’re in.
Cleverly, the LCD on the back shows the amount of dust being picked up, as well as the battery life remaining in minutes and seconds.
For hard floors, there’s an additional tool, the Fluffy Optic head, which uses a green laser to highlight dust. It works brilliantly, making it easy to see where you have and haven’t cleaned.
On maximum power, we found that this cleaner could collect grains of rice from more than 3cm away. If you’ve got the hand tools attached, this means you can quickly collect dust or suck it out of hard-to-reach areas.
Moving on to our regular tests, we found that this cleaner picked up 98.25% of dust on carpet, which is the best result that we’ve ever seen from a cordless cleaner. Edge performance was the same: 95.3% of dust collected. Hard floor collection was at 100%.
Moving to the anti-tangle tests with human hair, the Dyson Gen5detect refused to get any hair caught up in its brushes.
The only slight issue we encountered was when using the vacuum cleaner on a rubber-backed mat. Here, the Dyson Gen5detect produces too much power and suctions itself to the ground, stopping the brush bar from moving. We had to manually dial down the power. Still, it demonstrates just how powerful this cordless cleaner is.
Measuring battery life in auto mode, we found that the cleaner lasted 26m 13s. Given that you can clean thoroughly with a single pass, that’s more than enough time to tackle an entire home in one go.
Arguably, most people will find that the cheaper Dyson V15 Detect will suit their needs, but if you have the cash and want the absolute best, there’s no other cordless vacuum cleaner that comes close to this one for power.
