Dyson V16 Piston Animal review: A new vacuum cleaner that is perfect for homes with pets

Summary

The new Dyson V16 Piston Animal vacuum cleaner comes with useful smart specs and cleaning methods that make it perfect for households with pets and small children

When the British home and lifestyle appliances maker Dyson entered the India market in 2018, and soon became a fixture in executive offices and wealthy households. Its premium positioning worked, overshadowing any engineering gaps its first series of products in India had. The new Dyson V16 Piston Animal has tried to address these points -- while amping up the style quotient.

What's new

Straight off the bat, the V16 Piston Animal is a partially smart vacuum cleaner. This means that while it has a sensor to detect and show a breakup of the kind of dust particles it collects on the vacuum cleaner's built-in display, the same does not show up in the companion 'MyDyson' app to view later.

While the company says that such feature may be integrated in a future software update, there's no way for users to view any concerning allergens in their home on the app after a cleaning session. Presumably, given that a vast segment of Dyson's buyers are families with kids and/or pets, such a feature is much-requested.

Beyond the analytics display, for those upgrading their vacuum cleaners after years, the V16 Piston Animal represents a major upgrade. There are major differences from the Dyson V11 Absolute Pro from seven years ago. The new anti-tangle head is well suited to cleaning all surfaces, thereby not needing users to keep on changing attachments. Also gone is the trigger gun from before, replaced by a single button instead.

The biggest change, though, is the angled multi-surface roller brush that Dyson claimed is capable of untangling hairs up to 25 inches long. For homes with pets, the combination of the head, along with the green laser, is an actually impactful upgrade, since it now captures fine lint, pet hair and other particles on a marble floor that isn't readily visible.

The conical design of the main roller brush, however, can be polarizing. In specific corners, the head comes across as useful as it gives users some leverage to twist and shimmy. In other corners, the design may actually be a hindrance.

What's Good

The cleaner's suction power and the anti-tangle hair roller is, however, a clear boon for pet households. For additional intensity, Dyson's hair screw brush is effective on sofa surfaces, and the real-time pollutant display shows clear spikes in 180um and 500um (micrometres) particles. The detangle feature also creates fluffs of hair, which Dyson's new 'piston' mechanism helps compress -- thus increasing the total bin capacity for collecting dust.

One interesting aside to this is the gravel-like, deeper tone of the Dyson vacuum motor, rather than shrill like some others. While this isn't new to the V16 Piston Animal, what makes a difference is that this sound isn't as alarming to pets. For this review, it was tested in a house with a golden retriever, and each of the V16 Piston Animal's 'animal' features worked very well.

The V16 Piston Animal also has a nifty little trick up its sleeve. The long cleaning stick can be detached from the floor roller, and then produce a small conical nozzle to swipe up cobwebs or a bit of dust from a corner. The stick can then be re-attached to the floor roller, and the entire process takes no more than the press of a button, without the user needing to bend downwards.

While the floor stand currently keeps the promise of retaining its upright position to allow attaching and detaching without bending, it remains to be seen if this holds up over time. What also remains to be seen is the longevity of the floor roller -- some reports on Reddit point to the roller getting completely blocked and becoming nonfunctional in less than a year. Over two weeks of use, this reviewer has found the roller's functioning to be smooth.

Verdict

Seven years ago, Dyson had possessed most of the necessary sensors to turn the vacuum cleaner into a fully smart apparatus, without actually doing so. With the V16 Piston Animal now having Bluetooth connectivity, there's even less reason for Dyson to not use the full smorgasbord of smart connectivity chops.

The Dyson V16 Piston Animal does indeed look and feel premium, and the matte black-gold finish looks suave. But at ₹79,900, the pricing is undeniably steep, and its competitors now offer many of the same features at a lower price point. Even Dyson's V12 Detect Slim at ₹49,900 offers capable competition. Those who want the flagship, though, should find the Dyson V16 Piston Animal attractive enough to consider making the splurge.