Why wet and dry vacuum cleaners are sweeping into action

Tried and Tested: We give the Dyson Submarine V15s a whirl and check the specs on the company's eagerly awaited WashG1 mop

Sun, 02 Jun, 2024 - 17:42

Eve Kelliher

Hard floors are staging a hard takeover in our living spaces. That’s if we’re to believe the hype and the headlines.

The Dyson Global Dust Study (published in 2023), which monitored the cleaning habits of 30,000 people from 39 countries, showed three-quarters of homes in Britain now have some or all hard-floor surfaces. This figure rises to 95% internationally.

Right now, all eyes are on Dyson’s latest superstar, the WashG1 mop.

Priced €699.99, it promises to “reinvent the mop as we know it” with what its maker describes as the company’s first dedicated hard-floor cleaner.

The precise autumn release date is not confirmed but we are told it’s likely to be in September — and home-tech fans eagerly await its performance.

Hard floors might be everywhere, but we still have to factor in carpets and rugs.

In Ireland, even if we’ve ripped up dated swathes of patterned pile to make way for trendy tiles, super slabs or the poured concrete of our fantasies, textiles will always be in vogue.

And our variable weather means we’re always going to weave rugs back into our décor no matter how many miles of marvellous marble hall(way)s we roam.

I got the chance to try out a two-in-one Dyson V15s Detect Submarine™ wet and dry vacuum cleaner, and never did our floors get so much attention — because our living space features a bit of everything underfoot; tiles, carpets, and rugs.

The all-in-one cordless device is engineered with new hydration, absorption and extraction technologies to wash hard floors and promises to combine powerful suction, dust illumination and anti-tangle technologies, alongside the wet roller head.

Here's why I'm watching 'cleanfluencer' videos in my messy house

A comment from one of my in-house fellow testers and partners in crime? “It’s like Lego for people who like cleaning.”

Key question? Is it worth the €899.99 price tag? For sheer ease of use and double-duty practicality, the Dyson V15s Submarine has definitely replaced a vat of even the most luxe Lego on my Santa Claus wish list.

It’s not just a box of colourful tricks (the mop parts are bright turquoise blue, while the vacuum cleaner bits are purple and grey) but a multitasking tool that removes stains, whisks debris from carpets, and polishes tiles.

Considering the amount of work it can power through, it’s not heavy as you pick it up from the charging dock — so fast, furious and frequent runarounds are more a doddle than with most machines.

A cordless vacuum cleaner/bucket-free mop makes for a nimbler, fuss-free tool to whip things into order. This amphibian goes with the flow, without complaint, from the living room to the hallway to the car.

Once the device is charged fully, clip the relevant component in place. Squeeze the activator and away you go.

The hard-floor cleaning aspect is an eye-opener: You’re not supposed to use anything but water. At a pinch, you can put in a non-foaming agent. In our road tests, we used water only, and — like magic — floors came out sparkling.

The attachment has eight jets along the roller and releases a little water at a time — and floors are left relatively dry soon after. When you are using the hard-floor/mopping component, you will find that you feel you are being “pulled along”, as a fellow tester from Dyson described it. I never thought I’d say it in a million lifetimes, but it made cleaning kind of fun.