This Vacuum Has Me Insomnia Cleaning and Liking It: My Unfiltered Review of the Dyson v12 Detect Slim

However, attachments, design and even the sound of a device (this guy is quiet— 70 decibels on its lowest “eco” mode, comparable to a group conversation) isn’t what I’m primarily looking for in a vacuum. I want power, which means the ability to clean a hardwood floor and carpet with one swipe of the machine. This guy handles that great, slurping up not only little bits of grass and debris that are visible to the naked eye, but also dust that frankly I don’t even notice but is revealed by the green laser light that the floor attachment shows in great detail. The penumbra of grunge that the vacuum reveals is what kept me vacuuming past my bedtime after my road trip—it’s frankly fun to suck up more and more dust trails. Call it the gamification of household cleaning.

The Dyson isn’t just an indiscriminate suction device, however—it has a sensor that calibrates the suction power in real time, as you vacuum. A digital bar chart on the device tells you if you’re in Eco, Auto or Boost modes, and how much battery time you have left in each mode (Boost uses more power than Eco). As for battery power, the vacuum runs for one hour on eco mode, which some users have complained is not enough battery power. To which I say: I salute you, cleaners who can run a vacuum for over an hour at a time, since my home is 1,250 square feet, and I’ve found that I can pretty much vacuum the whole house on one battery charge, which is easy to remember to keep charge because I just plug it in when I store the vacuum on its wall-mount inside a bedroom closet.

The vacuum comes with a range of attachments beyond the primary two heads (the laser-enabled fluffy head for wood floors and the Motorbar head for carpets), a small, powerful, motorized brush head that removes long hair and pet hair from upholstery, a crevice tool and a brush tool. I especially love the brush tool for this vacuum’s secret superpower: using it as a handheld mini-vac for the car. You just remove the long wand attachment and pop the brush tool on in its place and suddenly, all that hard-to-reach debris on in your car is sucked away.

While Dyson newbies may recoil at the “no-touch emptying” of the dust cylinder (which in practice has me reaching into it, grabbing tufts of pet hair to pull out), it’s not a big deal and so much easier than fiddling with bags. And every month or so, the device’s digital screen lets me know I need to clean the filter, a two-minute disassembly job requiring rinsing the golden filter and letting it air dry overnight, which can seem a pain. But overall, this Dyson is my favorite vacuum I’ve ever owned and well worth its cost.