ChatGPT: perspectives from human–computer interaction and psychology

As A Dyson Stan, I Wouldn't Tell Anyone To Buy The Dyson 360 Vis Nav Robot Vacuum

Table of Contents Table of Contents

I'll be the first person to tell someone to just grow up and buy a Dyson rather than settle for a cheaper cordless vacuum. Yes, the Dyson purchase probably requires extra saving up, and yes, I acknowledge that a vacuum costing the same or more than a month's rent puts it in the "overpriced" category. But if you can swing it, I think a Dyson stick vacuum is worth it.

And this is simply because my Dyson does such a good job that it makes me prefer doing the chore manually. If a robot vacuum does a crappy job of cleaning a hard floor, my Dyson V12 Detect Slim will snitch immediately, using its green laser to highlight any leftover hairs or specks that a robot vacuum missed. It's still clutch to be able to rely on a robot vacuum for surface-level jobs in a pinch, but for better or for worse, my ultimate robot vacuum test is how it stands up against my Dyson.

So what better robot vacuum to compete with my beloved Dyson stick vacuum than a Dyson robot vacuum? I went into my experience with Dyson's new 360 Vis Nav with high expectations, despite already knowing about Dyson's odd choice to omit crucial features like mopping and self-emptying. Here's how it went.

Dyson rarely releases robot vacuums, so this was huge

The 360 Vis Nav initially sold out at Dyson's website within hours of release on March 19. Stock subsequently dwindled completely at other retailers like Amazon and Best Buy within the following days. That's not surprising — demand for a Dyson robot vacuum has been bubbling since 2016, which is the last time Dyson released a robot vacuum in the U.S. And it was a flop.

Eight years later, the premise of a Dyson robot vacuum feels much more auspicious. Dyson has perfected its cyclonic suction power in the realm of upright cordless vacuums, so it should have no problem converting that expertise to robot form, right?

The 360 Vis Nav came out with the promise of being the world's most powerful robot vacuum, aided by a flat edge and a genius extending side duct for better corner cleaning than what a round robot vacuum can manage. A D-shaped robot vacuum is unique, but isn't something we've never seen before. And it's definitely not the most... Interesting choice Dyson made with this physical design. Let's start there.

This physical design will clash with a lot of home decor

You can tell a Dyson vacuum is a Dyson vacuum just by looking at it. The metallic gray bodies, bold pops of color, and chunky industrial details are pretty recognizable to anyone who has shopped for a vacuum before.

And I've never minded that boldness. My V12 Detect Slim, which is gray with a weird orange tentacle-looking piece on the dust bin and a purple filter cap, is a flex mounted on the wall in my kitchen.

That being said, Dyson should have reined in its signature design with the 360 Vis Nav, because it's kind of an eyesore. Rather than sticking to graphite, the entire body is bright indigo. That is topped off with an exterior circular dustbin that was probably meant to give cool exposed gear vibes, but more so resembles a curled-up centipede.

Something about the 360 Vis Nav and the Fleetwood Mac record just don't vibe. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

You can choose a cleaning mode on the touchscreen, but that's about it. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

I guess the polarizing design choice might be appealing to ultra-modern maximalists, but given my guests' puzzled reactions when they see the 360 Vis Nav in my living room, it's not exactly screaming practical.

Despite the fact that robot vacuums are becoming increasingly common, they can still feel a bit out of place — maybe too futuristic — in a lot of homes. Other brands have caught onto the consumer's preference for chicness and subtly, with iRobot going as far as to make its Roomba Combo j9+ dock double as a wooden top side table.

So the dust bin isn't concealed on the underside or back like it traditionally is on standalone robot vacuums. Yes, this means that the wad of gray dust will be facing outward until it's time to empty. You'd be off the hook from that for weeks and weeks had Dyson included a self-empty dock, but at least the 360 Vis Nav's 0.15-gallon dust bin is larger than most.

You hold the dustbin like a purse and click it open via the handle. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

And granted, if a robot vacuum is going to require manual emptying, Dyson's system is definitely the mildest pain in the ass. Just pull up the handle and un-click the bin while the vac is charging, hold it over a trash can, and push the red button. The door swings open downward and everything falls directly in the trash.

Speaking of questionable design choices, not even the religious RuPaul's Drag Race stan in me can justify the black and white checkered flags stuck to the 360 Vis Nav's dock. This thin panel needs to be attached in order for the vac to map correctly and find its way back. Without it, the 360 Vis Nav looks like me trying to parallel park. No other premium robot vacuums I've tested require obnoxious stickers to drive themselves. Just saying.

Smart mapping is accurate, but customizing zones is frustrating

A small LCD touchscreen and a small transparent sphere known as the Eye sit atop the 360 Vis Nav. You use the touchscreen during setup when connecting to the WiFi, and I appreciate that all of the steps are laid out in very simple terms. You can also use the touchscreen to select from four cleaning modes (which you can also do on the app): auto, boost, quiet, and quick. They're pretty self-explanatory.

The other piece of tech on top, the Dyson Eye, replaces the circular LiDAR tower that is seen on a lot of competing robot vacuums. The Eye has a 360-degree view of its surroundings and, with the help of 26 different sensors, is said to analyze up to 10,000 data points a second, allowing it to remember your home's layout and navigate around large obstacles like furniture and walls.

Tight-knit table legs or kitchen chair legs did not trip the 360 Vis Nav up once. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The 360 Vis Nav knew to not use its side suction around these defenseless blanket tassels. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The 360 Vis Nav's mapping run proved to be quite accurate the first time around, at least when assessing the general perimeter of the floor plan. (Dividing rooms in the app wasn't as seamless.) After each cleaning session, the MyDyson app offers what looks like a heat map version of its smart map, showing where it found the most dust. It'll work harder in those areas the next time you start a full home cleaning.

Navigation-wise, the 360 Vis Nav is nimble when dealing with tricky furniture. It never got stuck once in my apartment, and was able to carve tightly around our acorn-shaped coffee table. I'm not over the lack of small obstacle avoidance technology, though. And I elaborate on these gripes in the downsides section of this review.

Suction power: Great on carpet, rough around the edges (literally)

Dyson alleges that the 360 Vis Nav has double the suction power of any robot vacuum. That's honestly not totally unbelievable coming from a longstanding powerhouse like Dyson, but it is tricky to compare suction power on paper when other robot vacuums measure that in Pascals (Pa) while Dyson measures in Air Watts (AW).

Dyson does scale its robot vacuum's motor the same way it does its cordless vacuums, making contextualizing suction power a little more tangible. The 360 Vis Nav houses a proprietary Hyperdymium motor that spins at up 110,000 RPM — faster than all cordless Dyson vacuums that retail for more than $649.99. However, that motor only creates suction up to 65 AW of suction power, which is nearly half of the suction power pumped out by Dyson's cheapest cordless vacuum, the V8, which can often be found on sale between $300 and $350. As a reminder, the 360 Vis Nav costs $1,119.99.

Success stories first: The Dyson 360 Vis Nav is pretty stellar on carpet and rugs. It aced any debris test I threw at it, audibly boosting suction (in auto mode) when it came across a mess. These three piles of crushed tortilla chips, soil, and cat fur were totally cleared before the 360 Vis Nav went back to its dock, even when I was skeptical after it missed some pieces on the first pass.

Crumbs, dirt, pet hair — the usual. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The 360 Vis Nav sensed that debris was left and went back to get these pieces. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The effectiveness is probably a combination of sheer suction power and the triple-action brush roll. It's basically a spitting image of the one on Dyson's Digital Motorbar cleaning head for its cordless vacuums, combining soft nylon, stiff bristles, and anti-static carbon fiber strands that dig into carpet pile, attract debris like velcro, and suck it out.

In terms of battery life, Dyson alleges that the 360 Vis Nav can run for 65 minutes. I was able to send the Dyson out to cover two rooms that took just under half an hour each, and it had enough juice for both on one charge. However, I can see this run time dwindling significantly if more of the floor is carpet or needs to be cleaned in boost mode.

Hard floors were more of a struggle than carpet, which is surprising because it's usually the other way around for robot vacuums.

My bathroom is one place where I need a robot vacuum to reliably clean on a daily basis. It's where one of my cats' litter boxes is, and is where my hair sheds the most — and is the only place in the apartment where I always walk barefoot. So tell me why, on multiple occasions, I walked in there after a 360 Vis Nav run to see the back third of the floor still scattered with kitty litter and long hairs. Either the 360 Vis Nav's suction did virtually nothing, or it didn't attempt to go back there at all. Considering a $299 Shark robot vacuum successfully came to the rescue afterwards, neither of those excuses will fly.

Similarly, the laser on my Dyson V12 Detect Slim showed a decent amount of dust still remaining in front of the litter box in the kitchen after the 360 Vis Nav cleaned there.

Yes, this is *after* the 360 Vis Nav came through. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Dyson's hyped edge cleaning was a huge letdown

Aside from rocking a flat edge to scoot into 90-degree angles better than a round vacuum, the 360 Vis Nav is equipped with side ducts that extend when cleaning along a wall. These target suction power to the side of the vacuum that the wall is on, replacing the traditional flimsy spinning side brushes that operate on mere hope. This was going to be huge if true: Robot vacuums universally struggle to grab the dust bunnies that blew into the corner behind the couch or the crumbs pushed up against cabinets or appliances.

I thought this was a first pass blunder, but no, it was left like this. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Once again, the Dyson V12 Detect Slim saved the day. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Unfortunately, the 360 Vis Nav fell short of edge-pectations. During my spill-rice-on-purpose challenge, the vac did an OK (just OK) job at clearing the middle of the floor, but hardly grabbed any of the rice hanging out under the lip of the cabinets.

Downsides: Dyson skipped crucial features, then charged too much

My list of cons of the 360 Vis Nav will be pretty straightforward — not because Dyson got very few things wrong, but because there's actually not a ton of features to evaluate. No self-emptying, no mopping, no small obstacle avoidance. I'll cover those in the section exploring the competition, but first, I want to touch on the features that are present, but disappointing.

There's a lot of misplaced innovation going on here. Rather than ensuring some basic features that every high-end robot vacuum should have, Dyson put its energy into things like a touchscreen. That would have been cool if you could do anything more proactive than select the cleaning mode through it.

Similarly, I've already gone off about how the 360 Vis Nav doesn't even reliably clean edges — the one thing it was supposed to excel at.

Spot cleaning is another huge miss. Sometimes, scheduling a cleaning for one room in particular isn't specific enough. Sometimes, you just need to directly tackle the few feet surrounding the kitchen counter, or the front door, or the litter box. If the ability to physically pick the vacuum up, plop it in the spot that needs attention, and press a button on the top to make it go isn't an option, I'll settle for drawing a zone in the app.

JUST LET ME PINCH THE DIVIDER EASILY, I BEG YOU. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The MyDyson app doesn't differentiate between rooms and zones, despite referring to the entire room-labeling process as "zoning." The most intuitive robot vacuum apps allow you to drag a rectangle onto whatever area of the map you desire for a one-time cleaning, no questions asked.

But if you want to spot clean with the 360 Vis Nav, you have to put dividers up just like you would when separating a bedroom from the hallway. That'd be fine if the dividers were easy to set up with your finger. But they barely respond to pinching or dragging, and then get mad at you for not being arranged correctly. This once again had me sending a $299 robot vacuum to cover those spontaneous spots.

The competition

Dyson's choice to simply omit features like self-emptying and mopping is unforgivable at this price point. These "advanced" autonomy features may have been considered premium in 2020, but have become accessible at any price point in the past two years. You can easily score a robot vacuum that empties itself and mops for less than $500 even without a sale.

The competing robot vacuums in the same $1,000+ pricing tier are actually going far past just automatic emptying or just mopping, too. The theme of the robot vacuums announced at CES 2024 was fully self-sufficient mopping, including automatic washing and drying of the mopping pads. Considering Dyson just released a mopping version of one of its best cordless vacuums in Sept. 2024, it's surprising that its robot vacuum ignores mopping completely.

It's also impossible not to compare the 360 Vis Nav to Dyson's own stick vacuum lineup, especially when the 360 Vis Nav costs more than the most expensive cordless Dyson, the $1,049 Gen5 Outsize. That vac more than doubles the suction power and dustbin capacity of the 360 Vis Nav, plus can be trusted to get into corners. Yes, you'll be the one doing the work, but it's actually fun when you're guided by a game-changing laser that highlights exactly where dust and debris are. You already know I back the V12 Detect Slim, which can often be snagged for less than $500.

Is the Dyson 360 Vis Nav worth it?

Nope. And that's not an "unless you have the budget to spend over $1,000 on a robot vacuum" nope. It's just a hard nope.

Similarly-priced competitors empty themselves, mop, wash and dry their own mopping pads, and can detect small obstacles like cords, pet waste, and socks. The 360 Vis Nav doesn't do any of that, and doesn't even ace edges, the main thing it claimed to be good at.

And even if the 360 Vis Nav wasn't drowning in competition from other robot vacuums, it would still lose to its number one enemy: its own cordless stick vacuums.

Opens in a new window

Credit: Dyson

Dyson's 360 Eye Robot Vacuum Is An Able Roomba Competitor, Despite Its Blunders

Fifteen years is a long time to work on any product and it's like a century when it comes to technology. Which is why I find it a little surprising that Dyson seems comfortable characterizing the Dyson 360 Eye autonomous robotic vacuum as well-over a decade in the making.

This occurred to me as one of the marketing managers recently explained to how Dyson made the bold decision to include a camera in the vacuum way back in 2001. Would they have made the same decision if they started development in, say, 2014?

I became further concerned about Dyson being a little out of step when I realized that the robotic vacuum could not connect to 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks. If this were 2007 or even 2009, I could understand that, but 2016?

I'm not saying the Dyson 360 Eye is not a good vacuum or expertly-designed product. It certainly is, but the product, which was actually launched in Japan almost a year ago, lacks the tech polish of, say, an iRobot Roomba, which has actually had robotic vacuums in consumer hands since 2002.

Suck it up

Dyson's second consumer robotic vacuum (in 2004, Dyson built a much larger robot, the DC06, that proved too heavy to bring to market), is, at 9 inches in diameter, considerably smaller than iRobot's comparable 13.9-inch Roomba 980 (both cost around $1,000). However, the Dyson 360 Eye is, at 4.7 inches, over an inch taller than the Roomba so it can accommodate Dyson's trademark radial root cyclone, a miniaturized version of the same vacuum technology found in Dyson's upright, non-robotic vacuums.

Under its gleaming, gray plastic body is a pair of tank-like treads that help the Dyson 360 Eye ride up and down obstacles up to 20 millimeters high (I once saw it take on a thick extension cord and survive). The cleaning system is backed by Dyson's digital motor which spins at 72,000 rpm, generating a reported 20 air watts of suction. There's a mostly clear bin (which also houses the cyclone). It breaks the near perfectly round Dyson 30 Eye profile with a little extra bump. A little button adjacent to the bin lets you remove it for cleaning.

On the top is the eponymous eye. It's a black and white, relatively low-resolution 360-degree camera pointed at a roughly 45-degree angle that gives the robot a live, panoramic view of its environment.

The Dyson 30 Eye vacuum ships with a charging station that features a base with connectors and, at a right angle, an A4-sized white plastic back with two black targets on it. The robot vacuum uses the symbols to find its charging station (it cleans for 45 minutes and then will return to the base before heading back out to finish the job). The charging base has a port on each side for the charging cable – a nice touch that gives you more flexibility on placement. It also folds up for easy storage.

Cleaning time

I installed the accompanying Dyson Link app with the hope that I could launch, schedule it and track the Dyson 360 Eye's work from there, but, as I noted above, the robot vacuum didn't like my Wi-Fi network (I have both a 2.4 Ghz and a 5 Ghz available; it didn't like either one). Fortunately, you do not have to use the app to use the robot or enjoy its cleaning intelligence.

I simply pressed the power button, which sits on the top in front of the camera, to turn it on and then pressed it again and the Dyson 360 Eye took off from its charging base and started cleaning my floors. That button also serves as a status indicator, showing you with LED lights when it's powered on, cleaning, paused and running low on battery power.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

My first-floor layout is pretty open and it includes tile, wood and rug-covered floors. The Dyson 360 Eye uses its camera, obstacle sensors and SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) to read the room as it goes. The Roomba 980 also uses a form of SLAM for navigation.

In the Dyson 360 Eye's case, it looks for corners and straight lines to triangulate its position in the room, slowly building a map and ensuring that it doesn't clean any area twice. Dyson reps explained that the vacuum generally cleans in 5 x 5 meter sections and approaches the overall cleaning space as a grid. That said, it may not clean all of one room before moving onto another, especially as it follows an unbroken wall into another room.

Mashable Top Stories

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

In my experience, the robot's cleaning process looked a little haphazard. It's such a large space that it had to charge two or three times to finish all of it (charging can take up to 2 hours and 45 minutes, though it can be less if the robot is in the middle of a job).

After its first big pass, the Dyson 360 Eye's cleaning motor, which is pretty loud, turned off and then the vacuum quietly glided around in search of it charging base. Because the robot knows the room layout, it has an idea of where to find it. Unfortunately, the Dyson 360 Eye could not find the unobstructed charging base in my home. It rolled near it and then started banging gently into the wall next to it. Eventually it gave up. The instructions advise keeping a 20-inch perimeter clear of objects around the docking station. I believe I did that.

Take 2

I returned the Dyson 360 to the office and, this time, it had no trouble connecting to the Wi-Fi network or finding its charging base. To connect to Wi-Fi, you first have to identify your Wi-Fi network for the app and then briefly connect directly to the vacuum via its built-in Wi-Fi and enter a password for the robot, which is hidden behind the bin. It's a little convoluted, but it works.

The benefits of the app connection were immediately clear. In addition to letting you name your vacuum (mine is Blinky), I could track the Dyson 360 Eye's activity (not in real time) and look back at the activity log to see how it had cleaned my house. A map showed all the areas it had cleaned in blue and an outline of the somewhat insane-looking path it took to do so. It looked like it had gotten it all. In the future, though, I'd like to see some virtual wall accessories so I can stop it from rolling straight from the dining room to the den.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The app also let me use a virtual button to start a cleaning cycle, stop it and even have it immediately stop and return to its starting position (usually the charging base). There's also a scheduling feature in the app that lets you set daily or every day schedules, but it never worked properly for me. Also, I didn't appreciate that it only offered a 24-hour military clock with no option to switch it to 12-hour time.

While the app can show you virtually all of the Dyson 360 Eye's activity, the robot itself will not remember the layout of a room it has previously cleaned. This is on purpose because people move chairs and other furniture with some regularity.

Doing the job

Watching the Dyson 360 clean and navigate its environment, one is immediately impressed by its intelligence and problem-solving skills. I watched over and over again as it encountered rugs, chairs, uneven surfaces and obstacles and could almost see it working out possible navigation and cleaning solutions. In my home, it did get stuck under my futon at one point, though. I suspect the lower-profile Roomba would have handled that situation with ease.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

On the vacuum front, the robot did an excellent job of cleaning all surfaces (it has a carbon-fiber blade for breaking the static electric bond often generated between dirt and hard, shiny surfaces) and even handled some cereal I threw in its path. Despite being smaller than the Roomba, the cleaning brush is virtually the full-width of the robot, making it almost as efficient a cleaner as the larger robot vacuum where the brush sits between the wheel, making it considerably narrower than the full width of the vacuum.

Each time I emptied the bin, I was impressed by how much dirt and debris the Dyson 360 Eye picked up. It certainly looked as if it was doing the job.

Cleanup is easy. You detach the plastic bin, remove the top and dump. A number of parts and filters are hand-washable under water, but you need to let them dry completely before putting the robot back together.

Robot vacuums like the Dyson 360 Eye can be tremendously convenient for busy home and apartment dwellers, but they are not exactly like regular vacuums. First of all, they're diminutive size means they can't hold that much dirt and you'll want to empty the bin more frequently. The Dyson 360 Eye's bin is noticeably smaller than that of the Roomba 980. Robot vacuums like the Dyson 360 Eye work slowly and methodically and can be maddening to watch -- they know what they are doing, but you do not. Plus, as battery powered devices, they can only do so much of the job at once. The Dyson 360 Eye's 45-minute cleaning cycle is a bit short for my tastes (the Roomba 980, by contrast, will clean for a solid 2 hours). Between cleaning and recharging, the loud little bot was rolling around my house on and off for hours. Dyson should adjust the speed or battery life.

I do like the size and weight (there's no handle, but there's an indent on each side that make the Dyson 360 Eye easy enough to lift) and was impressed with the intelligence and cleaning power. If Dyson can fix the Wi-Fi issue, update the app for the U.S. Market and maybe get the cleaning cycle to 1 hour and 15 minutes per charge, iRobot could have a robo-fight on its hands.

Dyson 360 Eye

The Good

Small, might get to some spots wider vacuums could miss

Wheel design helps it handle tougher terrains

It's smart and sees the whole room

It's a good vacuum

The Bad

Needs more forward-leaning Wi-Fi support

Battery life and cleaning cycles are too short

App seems geared toward an international market

The Bottom Line

Dyson's late entry in the U.S. Robotic vacuum market is an impressively intelligent cleaner, but could use a bit of tech polish.

The Dyson 360 Vis Nav Is Way Too Simple For The High Price

Dyson has gained a reputation as an expensive vacuum brand, but one that's worth the spend. The 360 Vis Nav doesn't hit that mark.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

Dyson has established a reputation for top of the line but expensive vacuums, and in my experience, that usually holds true. However, in its first venture into robot vacuums, Dyson kept the price tag but forgot the features. The 360 Vis Nav is a stripped down robot vacuum, and it lacks any of the basic features premium robots generally do. In fact, all the 360 Vis Nav offers is vacuuming, meaning you'll need to empty the vacuum yourself manually (there's no tower to auto empty it for you), and if you'd like the floor mopped, you'll need a different robot to do that for you. You also can't decide what order to vacuum your rooms in, or use the app to locate the robot if it gets lost. To be frank, even if the 360 Vis Nav worked exceptionally well, I'd still have a hard time justifying the $1,199 price tag when more fully featured, premium robot vacuum & mops can be had for that price. And while I thought the 360 Vis Nav did a decent job, it didn't do a great job.

The simplicity starts at unpacking

Before I get into more details, I want to celebrate one highly welcome aspect of the Dyson 360 Vis Nav that most people probably won't think about: it's very portable. The Vis Nav arrives in a blessedly small box, about the same size that a laptop might arrive in, and an average person could haul the box up stairs without any physical risk. As someone who tests robots, the vast majority of robovacs arrive in gigantic boxes that routinely weigh forty to fifty pounds, and I'm grateful that I didn't need to throw my back out to start testing this. But even if you're not a reviewer, this actually perfectly foreshadows who the Vis Nav is for: people who want a simpler device more than they do a fully-featured one, and who are willing to go to pay extra to get it from a brand name.

Once you open that box, whether you'll actually like the Vis Nav's design will be up to personal taste. Robovacs are generally black, white, or gray, and almost always seem to be striving to be sleeker and less noticeable. Dyson has gone the other way. The Vis Nav is purple, grey, black and a reddish orange, keeping the same general look as the robot's manual siblings. The dock also doesn't have a full tower, since it doesn't need to empty the vacuum or house a water tank, but it does have a small slot for the robot to charge in. The whole overall aesthetic was a little garish to me, but I was able to keep it from bothering me too much by hiding the dock away in my bathroom.

The Vis Nav is made for a different kind of owner

What the Vis Nav offers that you don't see on any other robot is a usable interface on the robot itself. You can actually operate the robot by pressing a button on top of it and then scrolling through options and selecting what you want. It's not a touchscreen, but instead a very basic interface with one button with a satisfying clicking sound. While rudimentary, it could be charming to someone who doesn't want to bother with an app. Again, simple.

With so few parts, I had the entire robot unboxed and up and running within minutes—the only assembly I had to do was snap two parts of the dock together. Like many people with Dyson products, I have had the Dyson app installed for a while, but I can't remember the last time I opened it. Most products urge you to register them in the app, but the app doesn't offer any functionality for those products, so I ignore it. I was surprised that the same app would be used for the Vis Nav, but it really shouldn't have been.

As stated above, this robot is for people who don't care about advanced features. While you can view and edit a floor map much like you would in dedicated robot vacuum apps, complete with options for dividing and merging rooms, naming those rooms, and creating zones for cleaning, you can't differentiate floor types or designate furniture for the vacuum to navigate around. Other premium robot models, like Dreame, Roborock, Narwal, and Ecovacs, all allow you to do this, so it's a pretty big loss. Unfortunately, the only other thing you can do with the app is make a schedule for your robot, so it doesn't make up for it elsewhere. Honestly, I'd at least have expected for Dyson to offer data on my robot's parts, as most robovac apps do now (all the above brands offer this), telling you how much life is left in a roller or brush before it needs replacement. At least the app is easy to navigate, which might be enough for some.

Suction power doesn't translate to performance

I watched the Vis Nav push this piece of floof around for 30 minutes. Credit: Amanda Blum

The real issue is, how does the Vis Nav perform? At launch, much was made of the Vis Nav's 22,000 Pa suction power, which Dyson said was twice that of any other vacuum currently on the market. That's simply not true these days, even if it might have been when the Vis Nav was released, and even if it's still on all the marketing. But even if it were true, pure suction power isn't everything.

While suction power is important, I've found that it's much less relevant than robovac companies make it out to be. Suction only matters if the debris can make it to the rollers, which depends on how effective the sweeping mechanism is, how likely the rollers are to get tangled, and how low the robot rides to the ground. The Vis Nav rides very low to the ground and has a completely different design than most of the competition, in that there is no traditional sweeping brush. All of this meant that, during testing, the Vis Nav did great on small and medium debris like dust and dirt, but it couldn't handle medium large-large debris at all. I watched the vacuum push around a relatively small piece of dog toy floof for thirty minutes, and the design of the robot wouldn't allow the floof to slip under it to give the rollers access. This is especially odd, because unlike most robot vacuums, where the roller is located underneath the robot towards the back, the Dyson has the roller right up front, and it's twice the size of most robots. You would think it could overcome this very simple task, but no. Halfway through my testing period (a few weeks) I realized that as much as I liked my Dyson Detect 5 stick vacuum, it has the same roller and the same problem. But at least there, I can manually work around it.

What do you think so far? Post a comment.

There's also a downside to all that suction, too. I have a relatively healthy amount of tolerance for robot noise, more than most. I don't expect to have a Zoom call while my robot is running, for instance. But the Dyson is absolutely the loudest robot I've heard in years. Loud enough that I would have to leave whatever room it was in. So loud that even on "quiet" mode, I would stare at it, as if by doing so, I could shame it into being quieter. There is no amount of suction worth that noise, if you ask me.

There's another design deviation on the Vis Nav that I'm more mixed about, though. Instead of the rotating side brushes that most robots have, Dyson has an extending "side-duct" that opens up and can get close to walls. While every other robot has rolled out longer and farther extending sweepers and arms, like the Roborock Saros and Dreame x50, the side-duct was surprisingly effective in some scenarios, even if it can't reach as far as other brands might. In a room where no furniture or toe kick is preventing the robot from getting near the wall, the side-duct does a great job getting the floor clean wall-to-wall. But when there's a toe kick the Dyson can't get under (I have one in my house that's almost four-inches tall and thirteen-inches across at the front) or floor furniture to navigate around, it performs worse than a more traditional sweeper. For instance, in my bathroom, the Dyson couldn't get close enough to the area in between my toilet and sink to pick up the dust there, while other robots have fit in that space just fine.

No self emptying tower is a huge bummer

If you're vacuuming a large, open space and pet hair is your biggest debris issue, the Dyson is going to be a great solution. It does the job admirably, using a series of cameras for navigation, and in my case, didn't miss any medium or small debris while simply navigating around anything larger. Even when it got caught on some large floof, it didn't stop the Dyson, and didn't affect the vacuum. Again, the Dyson simply pushed the floof around for a while. Also, I believe Dyson's data on how the onboard HEPA captures and contains dust and dander. My only issue with that premise is that, at some point, you will have to empty your Dyson. And the process of manually emptying a vacuum still sucks, even when it's a Dyson. All the dust you worked so hard to contain goes flying around the room as you try to dislodge it from the container. Dyson has gone to some length to try and make this more palatable, by creating a very cute container with a handle, like a purse. You push a button on the top of the purse and the dust is shot into the trash can at high speed. This still created dust blowback, but was easier than most vacuums. Still, call me elitist, but the labor of having to manually empty a vacuum is absurd given the price tag. Many vacuums at half the price, like the Switchbot K10+ Pro, offer this service for less than half the price.

The Vis Nav, despite appearances, doesn't feel modern

Even though the Vis Nav removed surface dirt, only a mop is going to get this edge clean. Also, I dare you to put a close up of your floor on the internet. Credit: Amanda Blum

What my experience with the Vis Nav taught me, more than anything, is that the greatest advantage to modern robot vacuums and mop combos is that, instead of simply aiming to zoom around with high suction, they now see and treat floor mess as a general problem to be solved, from which they can pull whichever tool is more appropriate, whether that's the mop or vacuum. For a few weeks, I put the Dyson through the same tests I do all my other robots, exposing it to kitchen debris, the muddy pawprints and my dog pulls in through the pet door, and the dust and dog hair the design of my house pulls into the hallway. While it did a fine job on dry dirt, the reality is that most floor messes require both the vacuum and mop. A vacuum alone can only do so much, and even then, this one is missing some key features.

There are better options than the Vis Nav 360

There's probably a certain segment of people who are both Dyson loyalists, and love the idea of accessing robot technology with less fuss. For them, having the interface on the robot itself rather than buried away in an app is probably something they'd enjoy. For this group, simplicity is the point. And they simply might not know or care that there are vacuums out there that'll sweep your place and empty the vacuum for you, too. I could see shipping a Vis Nav to my nana, and bonus: given the color scheme, there is no chance of her tripping on the Vis Nav: you can spot it from a mile away, and you'd certainly hear it.

For everyone else, though, I simply can't justify spending the money on the Vis Nav, which has not lowered in price since it was released, especially when the same money can get you a fully operational robot vacuum and mop, with self emptying features. The Roborock MaxV Ultra is only $999 and performs better. If you truly only want a vacuum, I'd still generally steer you towards the Switchbot K10+ Pro instead, which at full price is still only half the price of the Vis Nav. It does a better job vacuuming and gets into smaller spaces, all while emptying your vacuum for you.

---