A cordless vacuum cleaner that can clean from the ceiling to the floor of your home on a single charge, sounds like sales spiel, but Dyson believe they have actually achieved this with their latest and greatest handheld cordless cleaner, referred to as the Dyson DC59 Animal (also known as the V6.

Design

It’s familiar in aesthetic terms to previous cordless entries from Dyson, but things have been tweaked and implemented differently to make this what we believe to be the best release yet.

For example, the cleaner had previously to be snapped apart to gain access to the filter in the old top of the line DC44 Animal, but is now conveniently available on top of the cleaner within the centre of the cyclones. The power trigger now has a satisfyingly light click in use and the handle just feels nicer to hold; maybe because of the reduced weight from the 2.3kg of the DC44, down to 2.1kg with the DC59. The button that releases the bottom of the cleaners's bigger 0.4L bin, in order to dispose of its contents, is also much more precise in usage. Yes it’s small, but this can be forgiven as it’s so easy to empty.

Ease of Use

Lifting the Dyson DC59 Animal up to the ceiling and along shelving is no straining task and is much easier than having a hose from a traditional upright cleaner trailing and restraining movement. Cleaning furniture on a level footing, like stairs and going over floors with the pole and motorised head, demonstrates a well balanced product that is exceedingly manoeuvrable. This cleaner has intentionally had the bulk of the weight (motor & battery) located at the back of the body, which pulls towards you when pointing the cleaner upwards and pulls away from you when pointing it downwards. We didn’t experience any fatigue from having to hold down on the trigger whilst cleaning, which could be prevalent if the design's mechanism was harsh or the plastic was sharp, but Dyson have made clear efforts to make sure it’s not at all strenuous to use for 10-20 minute periods. The trigger is important as the temptation to leave the cleaner running if the operation button wasn’t trigger based would diminish battery charge whilst changing accessories, going to a new area to clean, etc.

Included Accessories

Everything Dyson think you need to clean the average home with is bundled in the box. This includes a pole, a rigid crevice tool, combination tool, mini motorised tool and the bigger motorised head tool. Each tool click locks onto the cleaner and is detached by the press of a button; it's blissfully simple to use. To make storing them less of a hassle, Dyson have allowed two tools to be clicked in and stored onto the wall docking station and, of course, another tool plus the pole can be stored on the DC59 whilst mounted. But that does leave one tool without a home.

Suction Performance

Like us, you too may have also thought from looking at this cleaner, that Dyson have just plunged 15 cyclones onto the DC59 Animal for marketing purposes. The suction is supposedly the same in the normal mode, rated at 28AW (Air Watts), as the DC44, but we’re actually confident that the DC59’s suction is stronger. However, the suction produced by the 2 Tier Radial cyclones in boost mode is dramatically more powerful by nearly a scale of 2x, at 100AW, than the previous top dog with 65AW that was the DC44. The new Dyson digital V6 motor has a whizzing-style sound that isn’t outrageously noisy and our cats accepted it very quickly. The suction actually goes beyond many upright power hungry vacuum cleaners, like the Vax Air3 Complete we reviewed last year, and it goes leaps and bounds over every previous cordless cleaner we've reviewed in suction performance terms; it’s a very impressive feat of engineering.

The serious suction and compact design of the main body and tools make reaching areas like under beds and cupboards, where we're unable to get to with any other upright we’ve reviewed, accessible to clean with the motorised brush tools. We also liked using the pole and either the crevice tool or combination tool to rid dirt from tight and inconvenient areas that manual dusting just won’t reach; particularly great for cleaning cars. But the Dyson DC59 also finds itself being used for spot cleaning frequently, as we don’t need to trail a chord around and find a socket, so it’s the 'go to' cleaning appliance if flour is spilled when baking or dirt from outdoors is brought in on shoes when coming home.

Performance on Floors

When cleaning surfaces such as carpets, effective suction can be less than half the story because the cleaner's brush bar head needs to get into the carpet, not just roll over it. Dyson have designed a new motorised cleaner head with 180 degrees of manoeuvrability for the DC59; it has carbon fibre filaments and it’s quite a bit wider than previous heads supplied with their cordless cleaners.

Dyson DC59 Animal Carbon Fibre Motorised Cleaning Head.jpg

The intention is for it to be usable on hard floors and carpets. So we tested it on wooden floors and tiled floors. On hard floors such as wooden ones, where exceptionally fine dust can get trapped in the cracks of the floor, most cleaners force the brush bar to be disabled, as it can damage the floor, but this can lead to the cleaner being unable to capture this segment of dirt. We were surprised to find that this Dyson tool successfully removes exceptionally fine debris in just two passes, particularly as our older upright Dyson failed to capture this beforehand. The reason it scoops up this hard to see fine dust is because the carbon fibre filaments disturb it, so it’s then free to be sucked up. We couldn’t be happier with the results, and our wooden and hard floors looked and felt noticeably cleaner after the Dyson DC59 Animal had been over them.

Dyson DC59 Animal Motorised Brush Bar with carbon Filaments.jpg

Dyson DC59 Animal Cleaning Wooden Floor.jpg

After using it on a plethora of carpet types within our studio and beyond, we were left satisfied with the results. The head cleans deeply and picks up very fine debris but doesn’t mind sucking up bigger pieces of debris such as cornflakes. The head also draws dust from its front and sides too, so it really does manage to clean into the corner edges of rooms. There is only one trick we think Dyson have missed out on, and that is the inclusion of a brush bar self cleaning mechanism, like the one found on the AEG Ultrapower Plus that we reviewed a while back. Dyson do make it easy to remove the brush bar for cleaning but this does have to be hands-on, whereas the self cleaning mechanism, from our experience, eliminates the need to ever manually do this.

Dyson DC59 Animal Carpet Hard Cork Floor Cleaning Test.jpg

Battery Life

More serious routine cleaning sessions require stamina, and we were pleased to see that the battery life has been increased within standard mode from 20 minutes on the DC44 Animal to around 25 minutes (around 22 using the motorised heads) with the DC59 in our testing sessions. In boost mode the DC59 lasts for around six-eight minutes, but this mode doesn’t need to be constantly enabled for a brilliant clean. The standard mode may require a few more passes over floors, but we could definitely clean all the floors in a small apartment on one charge. However, if you need to clean all the rooms in a regular sized family home, a single charge likely won’t stretch to meet your needs, but you could make a conscious decision to allow the DC59 to ease into your life: You could clean half your home in the morning, leave it to charge and clean half in the evening.

Overall

The Dyson DC59 (V6) Animal is with no argument the best cordless cleaner from the company yet. It has so many improvements both little and big, from ease of use to suction, that it continues to change the perception of cleaning with a vacuum cleaner, making the task ever more enjoyable and free from hassle.