Increased suction power
The V16 is much more powerful than its most recent predecessors, the V15s detect submarine (£649.99, Dyson.co.uk) and Gen5detect (£609.99, Dyson.co.uk). The “hyperdymium” motor in the V16 offers an upgraded 315AW (air wattage). That’s 35AW more than the gen5detect, and a huge 75AW increase over the V15s. This AW rating is reflective of the vacuum in its boost mode, which is the most powerful of the three settings, which also include eco and auto.
Another key improvement is the combination of two brush attachments – the old “fluffy optic” hard floor head and “digital motorbar” carpet heads are now in a single floorhead. It’s an unwieldy name, but this new “all floors cones sense” cleaner head instantly adapts to different surfaces.
New features
This floor head can manage long hair up to 25 inches without getting tangled or caught. It’s by far the best feature of this vacuum. Unlike other vacuums, the brushes on the V16 taper to the end. This prevents hair from wrapping around in a single spot; the shape wraps any hair into a tight hairball while shunting it to the outside of the floorhead to be sucked straight into the dustbin.
This feature, combined with powerful suction, meant I never had the gross job of cutting hair out of the brush bar. This conical design also translates to the hair screw tool 2.0, so you can take advantage of it on upholstery and soft furnishings, too.
One of my favourite additions to the V16 is a thumb-sized red lever on the rear of the dust canister. Called the “cleancompaktor”, this simple but effective feature compresses the debris and build-up within your bin so you can vacuum for longer between empties. Plus, when the time for emptying inevitably swings around, it’s considerably easier to leverage and dispose of that compacted dirt.
While the Dyson V12 slim detect absolute (£499.99, Dyson.co.uk) is the brand’s lightest vacuum at 2.2kg, the V16 is slightly lighter than its immediate predecessors, coming in at 100g and 400g lighter than the gen5detect and V15s, respectively.
Besides Dyson’s line of robot vacuums, the V16 is the brand’s first full-size cordless device with app functionality. Together with the MyDyson app (as demonstrated above), users can take a deeper dive into the ins and outs of their cleans with session reports, maintenance alerts and a whole library of how-to guides.
I enjoyed the cleaning reports, but I don’t think I’ll be using this function that frequently. Most people just need clean floors; they don’t need to go into the minutiae of cleaning them. If the app doesn’t blow your socks off, the V16 works without it, so if you don’t like using an app – or feel that it’s a little pointless – you don’t need to worry about navigating Bluetooth connections.
The V16 tweaks the submarine attachment from the V15s to bring a new max mode, which introduces boosted hydration for dried-in, particularly stubborn stains.
Carpet
Considering I vacuum all the rooms in my house in one fell swoop, the new brush head meant I could quickly clean both hard and carpeted floors.
The attachment felt particularly suited to carpet and picked up the crumbs I placed in its path in a single pass, leaving behind satisfying vacuum lines like a professional cleaner.
When I placed a hefty wad of hair on the floor, the V16 made quick work of it and, in the blink of an eye, I could see the strands in the dustbin. This was a stark change from my usual vacuum, and I was shocked not to hear the signature loud whirring of my old device struggling to process the buildup of hair on my carpets.
Hard floors
On hard floors, I was slightly less convinced. If anything, it’s a victim of its own success. It’s so powerful in auto mode that it can be tricky to push. It will pick almost everything up, but this friction on the floor made the device feel a lot heavier than 3.4kg. Dropping down into eco mode helped with this, but it’s obviously not as effective. In eco mode, it took me several passes to pick up all the crumbs from a handful of oats, with some of them falling out of the brush head.
It’s a similar story with the submarine attachment. With the option to buy the V16 with or without it, I’d opt for the latter (dry version, £749.99, Dyson.co.uk). Plenty of V15s owners found their old submarine attachments would leave trails of water in their wake, and were tricky to clean. Aside from the max mode for dried-in stains, the new V16 submarine attachment doesn’t feature any other notable changes, so these gripes from the previous model remain
The first few passes of the mop head were very impressive and, as the video above demonstrates, the submarine attachment did away with my hefty ketchup spill efficiently. However, it was once these spills made their way into the grey water tank that my issues began. After around one minute of use, the ketchup-tainted water began spilling out the side of the mop head, leaving a stream of red residue in its wake. If you’re quick enough, you can speedily mop these new trails away before new ones make their way out of the system, but, if I’m honest, it’s not worth an extra £150, especially when you can buy a great steam cleaner for less than £100.
While assembling the submarine is simple enough – if a bit clunky – disassembling is impractical. The design of the grey water tank needs rethinking; at the moment, the runoff from the mop roller sits in the crevices on the underside of the attachment. If encountering messier spills (like the ketchup above), you’ll have to extract those liquids from every plastic ridge.
Emptying the dirty water tank was unproblematic; I just wish the entirety of the waste had landed within the tank and not on the ins and outs of all the plastic components. You’ll also have to rinse the mop roller and leave all the components out to dry. It’s a lot more faff – and more expensive – than a good old-fashioned floor mop and soapy water.
Handheld attachments
The combi and crevice tools proved particularly handy around skirting boards, dusty plug sockets and ceiling dust. It was especially helpful that I was able to use these attachments with and without the long arm, as this wasn’t a feature of my previous vacuum. I found the brush element of the combi tool worked wonders on dust, while the crevice tool came into its own when cleaning away crumbs between sofa cushions.
The addition of rug strips on the hair screw tool 2.0 meant that the attachment was able to glide across my sofas and fabric bed frames without stalling on the material. This tool was surprisingly one of the quickest to pick up crumbs and, I’d argue, puts the V16 on par with many of the industry’s most popular handheld vacuums. In fact, it worked just as well as my own Shark wandvac 2.0 (£130, Argos.co.uk) – though it’s admittedly heavier.
Read more: Best floor mops for sparkling results, tried and tested
