The Dyson 360 Vis Nav Is Way Too Simple for the High Price
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The Good
- Small footprint, the charging dock takes up no space at all
- Comes in a very small box, easier to install
- High level of suction power
- Effectively cleared debris from the edges of walls
The Bad- Has to be manually emptied, no auto empty dock
- No mop
- Doesn't capture large debris
- Clunky design
- Obnoxiously loud
Table of Contents
Dyson has established a reputation for top of the line but expensive vacuums, and in my experience, that usually holds true. However, in its first venture into robot vacuums, Dyson kept the price tag but forgot the features. The 360 Vis Nav is a stripped down robot vacuum, and it lacks any of the basic features premium robots generally do. In fact, all the 360 Vis Nav offers is vacuuming, meaning you'll need to empty the vacuum yourself manually (there's no tower to auto empty it for you), and if you'd like the floor mopped, you'll need a different robot to do that for you. You also can't decide what order to vacuum your rooms in, or use the app to locate the robot if it gets lost. To be frank, even if the 360 Vis Nav worked exceptionally well, I'd still have a hard time justifying the $1,199 price tag when more fully featured, premium robot vacuum & mops can be had for that price. And while I thought the 360 Vis Nav did a decent job, it didn't do a great job.
The simplicity starts at unpacking
Before I get into more details, I want to celebrate one highly welcome aspect of the Dyson 360 Vis Nav that most people probably won't think about: it's very portable. The Vis Nav arrives in a blessedly small box, about the same size that a laptop might arrive in, and an average person could haul the box up stairs without any physical risk. As someone who tests robots, the vast majority of robovacs arrive in gigantic boxes that routinely weigh forty to fifty pounds, and I'm grateful that I didn't need to throw my back out to start testing this. But even if you're not a reviewer, this actually perfectly foreshadows who the Vis Nav is for: people who want a simpler device more than they do a fully-featured one, and who are willing to go to pay extra to get it from a brand name.
Once you open that box, whether you'll actually like the Vis Nav's design will be up to personal taste. Robovacs are generally black, white, or gray, and almost always seem to be striving to be sleeker and less noticeable. Dyson has gone the other way. The Vis Nav is purple, grey, black and a reddish orange, keeping the same general look as the robot's manual siblings. The dock also doesn't have a full tower, since it doesn't need to empty the vacuum or house a water tank, but it does have a small slot for the robot to charge in. The whole overall aesthetic was a little garish to me, but I was able to keep it from bothering me too much by hiding the dock away in my bathroom.
The Vis Nav is made for a different kind of owner
What the Vis Nav offers that you don't see on any other robot is a usable interface on the robot itself. You can actually operate the robot by pressing a button on top of it and then scrolling through options and selecting what you want. It's not a touchscreen, but instead a very basic interface with one button with a satisfying clicking sound. While rudimentary, it could be charming to someone who doesn't want to bother with an app. Again, simple.
With so few parts, I had the entire robot unboxed and up and running within minutes—the only assembly I had to do was snap two parts of the dock together. Like many people with Dyson products, I have had the Dyson app installed for a while, but I can't remember the last time I opened it. Most products urge you to register them in the app, but the app doesn't offer any functionality for those products, so I ignore it. I was surprised that the same app would be used for the Vis Nav, but it really shouldn't have been.
As stated above, this robot is for people who don't care about advanced features. While you can view and edit a floor map much like you would in dedicated robot vacuum apps, complete with options for dividing and merging rooms, naming those rooms, and creating zones for cleaning, you can't differentiate floor types or designate furniture for the vacuum to navigate around. Other premium robot models, like Dreame, Roborock, Narwal, and Ecovacs, all allow you to do this, so it's a pretty big loss. Unfortunately, the only other thing you can do with the app is make a schedule for your robot, so it doesn't make up for it elsewhere. Honestly, I'd at least have expected for Dyson to offer data on my robot's parts, as most robovac apps do now (all the above brands offer this), telling you how much life is left in a roller or brush before it needs replacement. At least the app is easy to navigate, which might be enough for some.
Suction power doesn't translate to performance
The real issue is, how does the Vis Nav perform? At launch, much was made of the Vis Nav's 22,000 Pa suction power, which Dyson said was twice that of any other vacuum currently on the market. That's simply not true these days, even if it might have been when the Vis Nav was released, and even if it's still on all the marketing. But even if it were true, pure suction power isn't everything.
While suction power is important, I've found that it's much less relevant than robovac companies make it out to be. Suction only matters if the debris can make it to the rollers, which depends on how effective the sweeping mechanism is, how likely the rollers are to get tangled, and how low the robot rides to the ground. The Vis Nav rides very low to the ground and has a completely different design than most of the competition, in that there is no traditional sweeping brush. All of this meant that, during testing, the Vis Nav did great on small and medium debris like dust and dirt, but it couldn't handle medium large-large debris at all. I watched the vacuum push around a relatively small piece of dog toy floof for thirty minutes, and the design of the robot wouldn't allow the floof to slip under it to give the rollers access. This is especially odd, because unlike most robot vacuums, where the roller is located underneath the robot towards the back, the Dyson has the roller right up front, and it's twice the size of most robots. You would think it could overcome this very simple task, but no. Halfway through my testing period (a few weeks) I realized that as much as I liked my Dyson Detect 5 stick vacuum, it has the same roller and the same problem. But at least there, I can manually work around it.
There's also a downside to all that suction, too. I have a relatively healthy amount of tolerance for robot noise, more than most. I don't expect to have a Zoom call while my robot is running, for instance. But the Dyson is absolutely the loudest robot I've heard in years. Loud enough that I would have to leave whatever room it was in. So loud that even on "quiet" mode, I would stare at it, as if by doing so, I could shame it into being quieter. There is no amount of suction worth that noise, if you ask me.
There's another design deviation on the Vis Nav that I'm more mixed about, though. Instead of the rotating side brushes that most robots have, Dyson has an extending "side-duct" that opens up and can get close to walls. While every other robot has rolled out longer and farther extending sweepers and arms, like the Roborock Saros and Dreame x50, the side-duct was surprisingly effective in some scenarios, even if it can't reach as far as other brands might. In a room where no furniture or toe kick is preventing the robot from getting near the wall, the side-duct does a great job getting the floor clean wall-to-wall. But when there's a toe kick the Dyson can't get under (I have one in my house that's almost four-inches tall and thirteen-inches across at the front) or floor furniture to navigate around, it performs worse than a more traditional sweeper. For instance, in my bathroom, the Dyson couldn't get close enough to the area in between my toilet and sink to pick up the dust there, while other robots have fit in that space just fine.
No self emptying tower is a huge bummer
If you're vacuuming a large, open space and pet hair is your biggest debris issue, the Dyson is going to be a great solution. It does the job admirably, using a series of cameras for navigation, and in my case, didn't miss any medium or small debris while simply navigating around anything larger. Even when it got caught on some large floof, it didn't stop the Dyson, and didn't affect the vacuum. Again, the Dyson simply pushed the floof around for a while. Also, I believe Dyson's data on how the onboard HEPA captures and contains dust and dander. My only issue with that premise is that, at some point, you will have to empty your Dyson. And the process of manually emptying a vacuum still sucks, even when it's a Dyson. All the dust you worked so hard to contain goes flying around the room as you try to dislodge it from the container. Dyson has gone to some length to try and make this more palatable, by creating a very cute container with a handle, like a purse. you push a button on the top of the purse and the dust is shot into the trash can at high speed. This still created dust blowback, but was easier than most vacuums. Still, call me elitist, but the labor of having to manually empty a vacuum is absurd given the price tag. Many vacuums at half the price, like the Switchbot K10+ Pro, offer this service for less than half the price.
The Vis Nav, despite appearances, doesn't feel modern
What my experience with the Vis Nav taught me, more than anything, is that the greatest advantage to modern robot vacuums and mop combos is that, instead of simply aiming to zoom around with high suction, they now see and treat floor mess as a general problem to be solved, from which they can pull whichever tool is more appropriate, whether that's the mop or vacuum. For a few weeks, I put the Dyson through the same tests I do all my other robots, exposing it to kitchen debris, the muddy pawprints and my dog pulls in through the pet door, and the dust and dog hair the design of my house pulls into the hallway. While it did a fine job on dry dirt, the reality is that most floor messes require both the vacuum and mop. A vacuum alone can only do so much, and even then, this one is missing some key features.
There are better options than the Vis Nav 360
There's probably a certain segment of people who are both Dyson loyalists, and love the idea of accessing robot technology with less fuss. For them, having the interface on the robot itself rather than buried away in an app is probably something they'd enjoy. For this group, simplicity is the point. And they simply might not know or care that there are vacuums out there that'll sweep your place and empty the vacuum for you, too. I could see shipping a Vis Nav to my nana, and bonus: given the color scheme, there is no chance of her tripping on the Vis Nav: you can spot it from a mile away, and you'd certainly hear it.
For everyone else, though, I simply can't justify spending the money on the Vis Nav, which has not lowered in price since it was released, especially when the same money can get you a fully operational robot vacuum and mop, with self emptying features. The Roborock MaxV Ultra is only $999 and performs better. If you truly only want a vacuum, I'd still generally steer you towards the Switchbot K10+ Pro instead, which at full price is still only half the price of the Vis Nav. It does a better job vacuuming and gets into smaller spaces, all while emptying your vacuum for you.
Amanda Blum is a freelancer who writes about smart home technology, gardening, and food preservation.
