Dyson 360 Heurist
Super-powerful and smart robot vacuum cleaner.
the 360 Heurist is just about the most powerful vacuum cleaner I’ve used.
The Dyson 360 Heurist is a
Dyson’s first robot vacuum, the 360 Eye, was a decent cleaner, but it was a little on the dumb side, offering few configuration and fine-tuning options. Step forward, the Dyson 360 Heurist, which offers better cleaning in the form of an appliance that you can train to work the way you want in your home.
Boosting power over the original by 20%, the 360 Heurist is just about the most powerful vacuum cleaner I’ve used, easily dealing with mess on all surfaces from hard floors to carpet. Thanks to the motorised brush that runs the entire width of the vacuum cleaner, you get full suction power right up to the edges of rooms, doing away with the need for side-sweeping brushes.
The 360 Heurist isn’t directly available in Australia, but can be purchased on Amazon and shipped here.
Design
Brand-new it might be, but the 360 Heurist isn’t a great deal different on the outside from the previous model, the 360 Eye. Sure, the new model has a flashier blue-purple paint job, rather than the drab grey of the original, but in terms of size and shape, the two models are identical.
Most robot vacuum cleaners are short and wide, but Dyson has opted for a taller, narrower design with the 360 Heurist. Both shapes have their pros and cons. Here, the vacuum cleaner can squeeze through gaps, such as chair legs, which stop other cleaners, yet the height means that the 360 Heurist can’t always fit underneath furniture.
One of the key reasons for Dyson picking this design is because the company can fit a rotating brush bar that’s the full width of the robot’s body. This removes the need for side sweeper brushes, as you get the full suction power right up to the edge of the cleaner. Arguably, this is a better design: side-sweeper brushes are designed to push loose dirt into the main suction path, but they don’t always get everything.
Using a coin in the slot at the end, you can slide out the brush to cut away any hair that has become wrapped around its centre, although Dyson doesn’t provide a tool to do this. There are handy grooves in the bar, though, so slipping in a pair of scissors to cut away any mess is easy enough.
While the majority of robot vacuum cleaners make do with wheels, the Dyson 360 Heurist has a pair of tank tracks, designed to propel the robot over obstacles and
through longer-pile rugs, for example.
On the top of the unit you’ll find the familiar dome housing a 360-degree camera. The robot uses this for navigation, as opposed to LiDAR, used by much of the competition. No data is transmitted to the cloud, and there’s no option to view the live feed, so anyone worried about privacy or security can rest easy.
Performance
Released back in 2016, the Dyson 360 Eye has remained one of the most powerful robot vacuum cleaners to date, easily beating much of its new competition. The 360 Heurist is even more powerful, with its upgraded V2 motor delivering 20% more power.
It shows, too. Run the vacuum cleaner over new carpet and its bin will come back full of fluff; run it on a hard floor and you’ll be amazed at how much dirt this robot picks up. Running the vacuum cleaner through some tests with flour spilt on the floor in various locations, the 360 Heurist proved itself to be a winner.
It picked up mess right up to the edge of a room, sucked dirt out of a carpet, and even coped with a rickety old wooden floor where dirt had become trapped in cracks and dips. This robot vacuum cleaner manages to beat all of the competition. Performance comes at a price, however. On High suction mode, the robot vac measured in at around 70dB, which is louder than much of the competition.
It also isn’t the fastest of vacuum cleaners. Although it will learn and adapt to your home’s layout, the 360 Heurist is slower compared to rivals such as the Roborock S6 MaxV. The upside to this is that its accuracy and methodical approach to cleaning mean that every inch of a room will be covered and left feeling super-clean.
Navigation is generally very good, too – this robot rarely became stuck in tests, particularly when set up correctly with the app. Its tank tracks prove more than up to the challenge of dealing with rugs and even flooring at different heights.
App
Control of the 360 Heurist vacuum cleaner is through the Dyson Link app, which is true of all Dyson’s smart products, from its air purifiers to its Lightcycle task lamps. There’s a little more to using this vacuum cleaner than its predecessor, starting with a requirement to map an area before the robot can clean it. You can store maps of multiple floors, moving the 360 Heurist around your home to clean everywhere.
Once you’ve created a map, you can divide it into zones, splitting it into different rooms. Each zone can be labelled with a room type, with a handy icon allowing you to see at a glance how your home is split up.
It’s the advanced controls that really prove useful, allowing you to set restrictions to control how the 360 Heurist. The Avoid Area option is basically the no-go option on other cleaners, but there are two other options alongside. The No Brush Bar option turns off the spinning bar, which is good for more delicate hard floors and for deep-pile carpets.
Smarter and more powerful than its predecessor, the Dyson 360 Heurist is capable of cleaning your home pretty much as well as a regular manual vacuum cleaner. It’s a little slow to set up and a bit finicky about dock placement – but once set up, this is a methodical and powerful robot vacuum cleaner.
David Ludlow