Dyson V8 Absolute Review

Bringing the cyclonic separator technology from its line of upright vacuums, Dyson has made an excellent cordless stick vacuum with notable prowess at cleaning carpets. This compact vacuum can clean everywhere from your floor to your ceiling — provide you can finish before the battery dies.

Performance Comparison

Convenience

Comprising the most weight of any rating metric, convenience is king for these products. To test this, we compared how well each vacuum did at cleaning non-floor areas of the home, its weight, battery life or maximum reach, and its storage method — whether or not it could stand upright or mount to a wall.

The V8 is excellent at cleaning non-floor surfaces, with tons of attachments and accessories to reach all of those tricky places around your home.

Additionally, it is effortless to switch between attachments, with simple locking buttons holding them securely in place until depressed. This vacuum is decently light, weighing 5.6 pounds, and is a cordless model with a wall mount. Unfortunately, battery life is relatively short, particularly when using the max power mode. It takes about four hours to recharge the battery, so this model isn't suited for particularly long or deep cleans. It is much more suited for cleaning up a single, small mess or cleaning a small amount of space.

Hard Surface Cleaning

We used a section of hardwood laminate floor as our test surface for this metric, conducting tests with oats, rice, flour, pet hair, and cereal.

For the first test — rice collection — the V8 delivered an unremarkable performance. This vacuum did a decent job, taking about 1.5 passes to clean the test area, but it flung some grains of rice around, especially when the grain was piled up. We used the hard floor brush at the normal speed and suction setting. In contrast to its mediocre performance collecting rice, the V8 did a fantastic job collecting flour from the hardwood floor, even removing flour trapped in the cracks between boards.

The V8 carried its excellent performance over to our cereal collection challenge, being one of the first Dyson vacuums that we have tested that did not become clogged when tasked with collecting Cheerios. Usually, the crushed cereal dust would prove an impossible challenge, but the V8 did a great job overall, similar to that of other vacuum types. It continued its solid performance into our oat collection challenge, only taking a single pass to clean the floor with no oats flung about the floor. Tufts of pet hair were also easily sucked away.

Ease of Use

For ease of use testing, we looked at the vacuum's noise level, its ability to clean under furniture and close to edges, as well as the different cleaning power levels.

The V8 has both a high and low power cleaning mode, with the low power mode being a great option for lighter messes or when you want to conserve battery life. This model can't turn off the rotating brush; instead, you switch brush heads, and there is a switch on top of the brush head to adjust the amount of suction.

The V8 did great collecting rice along the edge of a wall and cleaning underneath furniture, earning one of the group's top scores. For testing, we crafted a sofa out of boxes and measured how far each model could reach under — for the V8, an astonishing 37".

This model has swivel steering, making it very maneuverable and agile, and it is on the quieter side. The wall mount is easy to use and can store two of the included attachments.

Carpet Cleaning

For our fourth and final metric, we compared the skills of each stick vacuum at cleaning carpets. We again used pet hair, oats, cereal, flour, and rice as our sample messes, using both low-pile and medium-pile carpets as our test floors. The Dyson V8 delivered a fantastic performance.

This model did exceptionally well in our rice collection test, earning top marks in the flat and fluffy carpet versions. For the flat carpet test, the V8 picked up most of our spilled rice in two passes. It also did a fantastic job on the medium-pile carpet, leaving almost no rice behind. The V8 also distinguished itself in the flour test, performing among the best of all our tested models.

This vacuum also did very well at collecting Cheerios, once again breaking the trend of crushing up the cereal and becoming clogged, like other Dyson models we tested were prone to doing. It took minimal effort to clean the low-pile carpet, and while it did begin to pile up the cereal, it sucked all of the Cheerios up with only a slight delay.

The V8 left only trace amounts of crumbs behind when tasked with oats. In fact, it looked comparable to the performance of some of the better upright models in the fluffy carpet test. Finally, this model continued to show its carpet cleaning prowess in our final test, pet hair collection, collecting the vast majority of the hair we laid out.

Should You Buy the Dyson V8 Absolute?

There is nothing wrong with the V8 vacuum, and Dyson lovers will likely be pleased with its performance and attributes. However, it has a very high price for a secondary cleaning device, and it isn't without its faults. While every product has flaws, the premium price makes us feel like the V8 should be flaw-free. The shorter battery life is a bummer if your cleaning surfaces are vast, and we think this could be frustrating as the price tag is similar to a standard Dyson.

What Other Stick Vacuum Should You Consider?

If Dyson is a brand you choose over all others, then the Dyson V10 Absolute is the best Dyson in the bunch with a high ranking overall score and one of the best performances in our tests for cleaning on hard surfaces. It is also easy to use and works well on carpets. If you want to save some money without sacrificing performance or features, then the Shark Rocket Pet Pro earned the same overall score as the V10 but costs about two hundred dollars less.