In fact, Dyson is so confident in the V10 that it’s stopped developing any new corded vacuums at all, investing entirely in cordless. That’s a bold move, but can the V10 back it up? Find out in our review.
Dyson Cyclone V10: Price and availability
There are three versions of the V10 available, which differ in colour and which attachments you get, but are otherwise identical. Our review unit is the £449.99/$699.99 Dyson Cyclone V10 Absolute, but you can also go down to the £399.99/$599.99 V10 Animal. From there it varies slightly by country. UK shoppers also have the option of the £499.99 V10 Total Clean with a few extra cleaning tools, though US buyers can get those extras for free by registering their vacuum with Dyson. The US also gets an even more stripped down V10 Motorhead version for $499.99, which isn’t on sale in the UK. Those prices are high – especially compared to competing cordless cleaners – but actually represent a slightly lower launch price than the V8, suggesting Dyson is shooting for slightly more mass market appeal, and bringing the V10 much closer to value for money. Another decent alternative, this one from Philips, is the SpeedPro Max. You should also check out our round-up of the best vacuums we’ve tested to see the other options on the market.
Dyson Cyclone V10: Design and build
If you’re reading this review you’re probably wondering why you should opt for the Cyclone V10 over one of Dyson’s cheaper cordless models – the V6, V7, and V8 – or indeed why you should buy a Dyson at all. The answer, according to Dyson, is a total redesign that makes the V10 a significant leap forward from the V8 – hence skipping the 9 – improving battery life, suction power, efficiency, and usability. Quite a bit then.
Let’s start with the basics. The Cyclone V10 is a cordless, battery-powered stick vacuum with a self-contained bin. Like most Dyson products, it’s got a distinctly sci-fi aesthetic – this could have been a leftover prop from Flash Gordon, from the trigger grip right down to the unexpectedly satisfying ‘pewww’ noise it makes every time it powers down. That’s been true of every Dyson stick vacuum so far, but is even more so with the V10 thanks to a redesign that moves the bin parallel to the main shaft, rather than perpendicular. That’s not just to make it look cool of course – Dyson boasts it’s part of what makes the new vacuum so much more efficient, and from a user perspective it facilitates a point-and-release method of emptying the bin that couldn’t be much easier. If we have any gripe it’s that the V10 is a bit weighty – all those cyclones add up to a total weight of 2.68kg/5.9lbs, which means waving the V10 around isn’t quite as effortless as Dyson’s official product photography suggests – worth bearing in mind for the frailer among us.
Dyson Cyclone V10: Features and performance
As for the actual vacuuming, the V10 sucks. Hard. By which we mean, of course, that it’s pretty bloody great. You get a choice of three modes – 1, 2, and Max – but so far we haven’t met anything that required the second setting, let alone maxing it out. Dust, dirt, hair, and general grime were all hoovered up with relative ease, and bits of carpet that would normally take three or four passes with our standard issue Henry were spotless after one attempt with the Dyson. With the Absolute model you get an exhaustive (and perhaps exhausting) list of different brush heads and extensions. The standard direct drive cleaner head will be your staple, suitable for both carpets and hard floors, moving smoothly across either surface. Next there’s the soft roller head – the only one missing from the cheaper Animal model – which is dedicated to hard floors, with a felt head that creates a tighter vacuum seal to the floor. It works well, but with a £50/$100 price jump just for this one tool, it’s hard to justify unless your house is basically carpet-free.
Beyond the main cleaner heads, you get a mini motorhead, a crevice tool for tight spots, a dusting brush, and a combination tool, most of which are destined to gather dust (ironically) outside of fairly specific circumstances. If you opt for the cheapest Motorhead model in the US you miss out on the dusting brush and mini motorhead; if you stump up for the pricier Total Clean in the UK you also get a mattress tool, an extension hose, and a hook adapter for cleaning high spots – but you oddly miss out on the dusting brush. It’s a massive array of extras and extensions, but luckily Dyson’s quick release design makes it a doddle to switch between modes – just press one red button and you can swap one tool out to replace it with another. It’s just as easy to detach the main shaft, instantly converting the V10 into a handheld vacuum, perfect for cleaning furniture or getting into tight spaces. All these options are another reminder of what the V10 represents to Dyson: a cord-killer, the only vacuum you’ll need to buy, capable of covering every vacuum-related eventuality, no matter how niche.
As always with a cordless though, the limit is battery life. Dyson claims it’ll last an hour, a big advance on the 40 minutes touted by the V8, and way up from the 20 minutes you can get with the V6. Look closer though, and it’s not so simple. That hour is for using the lowest suction mode with a non-motorised cleaner head like the crevice tool – not either of the main cleaning heads you’ll be using for cleaning your carpet. Battery life drops when you switch to one of them or crank up the suction, to a low of 10-15 minutes using Max power and the direct drive head in our testing. Day-to-day, you can expect something between those two extremes, so you need to decide if that suits your cleaning habits and house. Vacuuming a three-storey house top to bottom in less than an hour might be a real push, but hoovering my pokey two-bed flat was very manageable. It’s also much easier to shift your habits to an occasional small clean rather than a weekly blitz thanks to the V10’s inherent portability, and the handy wall-mountable charging dock – you can just leave the Dyson charging at all times, grab it for a quick go-around, then put it back, all without any faffing about with cords and cables. Tech Advisor’s Deputy Editor, Dom covers everything that runs on electricity, from phones and laptops to wearables, audio, gaming, smart home, and streaming - plus he’s a regular fixture on the Tech Advisor YouTube channel.