Blown away by fine details
It has zero megapixels and absolutely no camera lenses. There’s no touch screen, and it does not connect to Wi-fi. All of which makes this week’s Gimme a bit of an outlier in this aspirational gadgets section. After all, who really wants to do vacuum cleaning? But the Dyson V8 Absolute cordless vacuum cleaner answers a question few have thought to ask: what happens if you engineer a household appliance as you would a luxury car?
British brand Dyson’s claim to fame is that it has an industrial engineer for a founder (James Dyson) which gives it a fresh perspective on the products it makes. The story goes that Dyson took apart his own ineffective vacuum, decided the bag was the cause of diminishing suction power, and came up with a bagless version inspired by the cyclonic tower design used in factories.
That narrative (emphasising engineering, invention and innovation) has been a powerful marketing story for the firm, which is now a global manufacturer of high-end small household products.
The V8 is its latest cordless vacuum cleaner and is oddly attractive, though it looks a bit like a weapon from a sci-fi movie (made of shiny plastic in grey, purple and red). The red trigger-style onswitch fits right into that feel, though it can be pulled accidentally. The powerful suction that Dyson promises (and definitely delivers) is generated by a motor that achieves
110,000 revolutions per minute, and incorporates, the company tells us, 18 months’ worth of engineering, testing and improvements on the previous model, the V6.
Despite the powerhouse motor, the V8 is exceptionally quiet. But power requires power — and the battery life is a maximum of 40 minutes from being fully charged. Depending on peripherals and mode, it might give a lot less than that in everyday use.
The primary part weighs 2.6 kg and it feels comfortable in one’s hand. You add attachments directly to it or to the end of the long metal tube, depending on whether you want to use it as a handy vacuum cleaner or a traditional one.
All attachments clip in securely and smoothly. These aspects add up to an impressive package: the clip mechanism, a combination of stiff nylon and soft anti-static carbon fibre on the cleaner heads, direct-drive motors in the cleaner heads, the simple pull release to empty the dustbin, and the clear polycarbonate the dustbin is made of to make it virtually drop-proof.
A lot of thought went into a gadget that most of us give very little thought to. But that’s how the manufacturer justifies the cost: all that research and development means the recommended retail price for the V8 is R9,999. Fortunately, it comes with a two-year guarantee on its parts and labour.