Dyson V8 Cyclone review: Capable cordless cleaner

When I think about it, I've never really owned a great vacuum cleaner. As a student I'd scour the Argos catalogue for the cheapest thing going, and latterly I've survived with the supplied machines from various landlords.

Until I received the new Dyson V8 Cyclone in to test out, I'd been trying to clean my house with a pitiful cordless Hoover HF9 that even when new struggled to pick up carpet fluff. Three years or so on, and it barely lasts twenty minutes on a full charge and leaves my carpets and hardfloors looking a way off spick and span.

Thankfully the V8 Cyclone, the latest in Dyson's popular V8 line up, has improved things. Hair, threads and dust show up on my light coloured carpets, and after one run round I could tell the Dyson was a solid upgrade.

It's available to buy now for £349.99, a sizable chunk of change though a price that's actually, terrifyingly, at the low-end of Dyson's range.

But if you want a no-frills, charge-and-go cordless vacuum cleaner, it fits the bill.

The first thing I realised is you have to store the V8 on the supplied wall bracket, so you'll need a drill and two screws. As I was drilling into plasterboard, I had to pop to the local DIY shop for rawl plugs too.

The vac needs to hang regally in my utility room on its bracket because it is not freestanding like traditional dust slurpers. Dyson helped popularise this cordless design where the motor and guts of the machine at the top in the handle part. This is so you can more easily manoeuvre the head, which is light, around the floor or even up to the ceiling for cobwebs and the like with the included crevice tool.

Such a top-heavy design is great for vacuuming but necessarily means you have to store it hung, or else flat on the floor or in a long cupboard.

It's good to see Dyson give the V8 Cyclone a power button - press it and the machine is on. Older V8s used trigger power where you had to keep the trigger pressed in with your finger. This hurts for long sessions and means you're less dexterous. Not so on the new model.

I live in a relatively modest terrace house with seven rooms but found the small 0.54L dust bin filled up before I had run the V8 Cyclone through the whole place. It's a small inconvenience but something to bear in mind if you have a larger place.

The Dyson team still managed to bring a smile to my face with the clever bin dump mechanism, which ejects the contents downwards with a door opening and a shove, all with the pull of a big red handle.

You'll need to disconnect the shaft first, as you will when changing tools. There are three supplied, with the main head, mini motorised tool and the crevice doodad.

The main bar coped well with hair thanks to the de-tangling brush bar, and on carpets it runs smoothly. That's thanks to a motor that spins at a zippy 110,000 RPM to muster 150 watts of suction, power Dyson says is 30 percent higher than the old V8.

Hardwood floors are also well cleaned, but I feared for the plastic head and wheels when cleaning my stonefloor kitchen tiles. This was an occasion where I felt the build quality was a little on the cheap (or at least fragile) side, even though overall the V8 feels premium for the price.

The mini motorised tool clips directly onto the unit without the shaft and is a smaller head so you can get into scrubbing and sucking dirt from sofas, mattresses, stairs, car seats and the like. It worked well on dog hair but for stubborn dirt I still needed to fetch a bucket and cleaning products.

At least you shouldn't run out of battery. Dyson claims 60 minutes of run time, and I did not kill the cell with more than 30 minutes of use, which is how long it takes me to thoroughly vac the house. One annoyance is there is no display on the V8, so no readout of which mode you're using - there are three suction levels: Eco, Medium and Boost - and how much battery power is left.

It's a minor quibble but for the asking price I think there should be more than three different colour LEDs letting me know what's going on. But I do appreciate the V8 Cyclone's simplicity. It's a plug-and-play cordless vacuum cleaner with no extraneious features, just a product with good suction that will suit most homes with its cleaning ability, versatility and battery life. If you can afford one, that's all you really need.