Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Dyson has another winner here: A light vacuum constructed around a high end "dustbuster" type rechargeable handheld entirely defies expectations as a full service vacuum. Those who've followed my reviews know I had a love/hate relationship with an early version of Dyson's handheld. That model, from several years ago, was great at picking up dirt, but had a ridiculously short battery life run time, and also suffered from some electronics problems that manifest themselves after about a year. Fortunately, Dyson learned their lessons on that model, and followed it up with a newer handheld that both improved battery life (mostly by cleverly adding a lower power mode that is still plenty powerful for most tasks) and improving the electronics. That one was a winner out of the box, and remains a winner in my household. This, the Dyson V6 Motor Head cordless, basically adds full upright vacuum functionality to that second generation handheld. I have to say that I was skeptical. I assuredly wanted this to work. While I have a decent top-of-the-line Sears/Hoover full-sized vacuum, dragging that beast around to vacuum the stairs is a pain and a half. Not to mention the difficulty one has using such a vacuum to get to hard-to-reach places such as under beds, in tight corners, etc. So if--IF--this Dyson worked the way they promised, it would be great. But it was hard to believe that relatively light handheld could properly power the rotating pickup heads and not suffer from weak suction. Amazing, however, it DOES work. Considering how light and portable this thing is, you might even say it works shockingly well. First, a note about run times. As mentioned above, in more recent portable models, Dyson introduced the concept of low and high power modes in their second generation hand helds. The default mode is low power, and run time in that mode is around 20 minutes. (In my testing, I got 22 minutes). In high power mode, you only get 6-7 minutes, tops. So the real question is: Is low power enough? I thought it wouldn't be. But in my cleaning experience, I found only a SINGLE instance where I needed to use the high power mode (removing a ton of cat hair from a cat bed). I think it's safe to say that in standard use, low power is adequate. And that means that the advertised run time of around 20 minutes is realistic. Alright, so how does it do? To test it, I first used the vacuum (with the standard direct drive head) on a low rise, dense carpet that had JUST BEEN VACUUMED with my top-of-the-line Sears/Hoover vacuum). In other words, it was a carpet that looked pretty clean. I was amazed and perhaps shocked that from this supposedly clean carpet, the Dyson portable was able to pull a ton of additional dirt. (See the attached photo; this was the contents of the dirt jar after cleaning that "clean" carpet). OK, so now I'm a believer. The vacuum worked equally well on hardwood floors, and had no trouble picking up standard dirt from such floors. One thing I absolutely love about this vacuum is that because it's so light and nimble, and because the head is pretty much all cleaner head from end-to-end (unlike the large pickup platter on a standard vacuum), it can get into very tight corners, and can get really close to the walls. This means it's really good at picking dirt in those places that standard vacuums usually miss. I also tested this vacuum on a particularly difficult floor: The one in the "cat's" bathroom, i.e. the room where the cat's litter box lives. The floor in that room is constantly a mess of wayward litter pieces and cat hair. (Yes, yuck). There, I found that I could do pickup with the standard head though that mess, but I found I had to make several passes and some of the litter pieces got strewn around several times before I got them picked up. (Higher end models of the V6, but not this one, come with a "soft roller" head that works better in these cases; if you have a pet who makes messes, you might consider one of those models. Note that the central vacuum in all V6 models is identical). A few additional notes: This vacuum did a great job on heavier throw rugs with a tight weave, but was pretty worthless for plush shag throw rugs. When used on the latter, the rug would get sucked into the vacuum and the head would stop rotating. I imagine similar problems might be encountered on an installed plush loose shag carpet. Also, the hand-held vacuum around which this full length vacuum is constructed can, in fact, be used as a simple hand held. All the other pieces can be removed to allow you to use the handheld alone. For that use, I found that this vacuum was basically as good (no better, no worse) than the standard Dyson hand held. It's much more expensive than the hand held alone, of course, so if you don't plan to use the attachments, then you should just get the hand held. On the whole, this is a great piece of engineering that functions remarkably well and defies reasonable expectations for what a portable handheld vacuum might be able to do. It works quite well even in low power mode, which means that run times of around 20 or so minutes are realistic. Dyson offers four different models in this V6 series, and all are powered by the exact same handheld vacuum. The differences are in some of the included attachments and whether there's a post motor filter. My suggestion would be that if you don't have any animals at home, probably any of these models would be sufficient (look for cheaper, such as this one), but if you have a shedding animal, the added attachments that come with the higher models (soft roller head and mini motorized tool) may be worth the extra cost.