Robot vacuums are a great way to automate a chore that needs to get done regularly, but these machines can get expensive quickly. That’s why it’s a wise decision to wait for a shopping event like Amazon Prime Day to buy one, when you can usually save hundreds off the sticker price.
Prime Day deals on vacuums have brought some of the best prices we’ve seen all year to many of our top picks for the best robot vacuums available today, including models from iRobot and Shark. There are even some solid cordless stick vacuums on sale as well as part of the Prime Day deals. We collected all of the best Prime Day deals on vacuums here so you don’t have to go searching for them.
If you're looking for even more Prime Day deals, check out Engadget's Prime Day hub where you'll find all of the best tech deals you can get for the shopping event this year. In addition to Amazon devices, Prime Day is typically a great time to pick up big-ticket items like tablets and laptops, and accessories like power banks, streaming devices, Bluetooth speakers and the like.
Expired Prime Day deals
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-prime-day-vacuum-deals-on-our-favorite-robot-vacuums-for-2024-090015680.html?src=rss
You can never have too many charging cables and adapters, and thankfully Amazon Prime Day is typically a great time to stock up on charging gear. Anker accessories are among the plethora of Prime Day deals this year, and the best ones we curated yesterday are still available during day two of the sale. All kinds of accessories from power banks to USB-C adapters to wireless chargers have been discounted, with many down to all-time lows. Anker sales aren't exactly uncommon — we typically see a few standouts once or twice a month — but these Anker Prime Day deals present a good opportunity to save on the gear you use most.
In addition to some of the best chargers, a bunch of other Anker gadgets have been discounted as well. Key among them are some of our favorite robot vacuums and portable speakers. We've collected the best Anker Prime Day deals below so you don't have to go searching through them.
Let's start with power banks, since a number of our top picks for the best power banks are on sale for Prime Day. The Anker Prime Power Bank 200W has dropped to a great sale price for Prime Day, and this model includes its special charging base (not needed to use the bank, but a nice add-on to have, particularly when you can get it at a discount). It's got a premium design complete with a built-in display that shows how many watts of power are flowing out to each device you're charging, plus the overall charge remaining in the brick itself. The power bank has two USB-C and one USB-A port, and the base includes a few extra connectors as well.
Also on sale is our favorite compact battery pack for Android: this 5K power bank has a flip-out USB-C connector that makes it easy to power up Android phones (and the latest iPhones) while on the go. For those who feel more secure with a plugged-in charger rather than a magnetic or wireless one, this power bank is a good option.
As for standard chargers, there are plenty of solid gadgets to choose from at compelling sale prices. The Anker 313 wireless charging stand is hard to beat in this Prime Day deal if you're just looking for a basic wireless charger at a low price that can reliably power up your phone, be it an iPhone or Android device. While most will put their phone in portrait mode on this stand, it also supports charging in landscape mode as well, in case you want to watch videos while powering up.
You can never have too many good AC chargers, and a few of Anker's higher-wattage models have been discounted. This 67W USB-C charger includes two USB-C and one USB-A port, and the AC prongs fold up when you're not using it. For more simultaneous charging, this 150W USB-C adapter includes three USB-C and one USB-A port and can power most mobile devices at fast speeds, including laptops, tablets and smartphones.
iPhone users will want to check out the MagSafe options on sale today, which include our top MagSafe pick in our guide to the best power banks. Anker's 10K MagGo power bank is Qi-certified and a big improvement on previous versions thanks to that new certification. In our testing, it brought an iPhone 15 back from near dead to half full in 45 minutes, and its 10,000mAh capacity allows it to still have enough juice left for a decent charge after that. The small display on one edge shows the percentage charge left in the bank and the amount of time left before the power bank itself is refilled when you're charging it.
This model also has a strong MagSafe connection, so you won't have to worry about it falling off if you're a little rough with your iPhone while using it. Plus, it has a handy kickstand that lets you more comfortable do things like FaceTime or watch videos while it's working its magic.
Other MagSafe options include a couple of multi-device charging stations: this 3-in-1 station can handle an iPhone, Apple Watch and pair of AirPods simultaneously and the fact that it folds down to about the size of a deck of cards makes it an excellent option for frequent travelers. This cube-shaped model is more stationary, but it handles the same three devices at once and it comes with the necessary 30W AC adapter needed for optimal charging speeds.
When it comes to robot vacuums, Anker makes a number of relatively affordable options. But our top ultra-budget pick in our best budget robot vacuum guide is a steal at this Prime Day price. The Eufy BoostIQ RoboVac 11S Max did a good job cleaning all floor types in our testing, and it's slim profile allows it to more easy get underneath furniture like side tables and couches — something most other robovacs can't do.
The main thing to know about the 11S Max is that it doesn't have Wi-Fi connectivity like our other top picks for the best robot vacuums do. That's not necessarily a bad thing, especially since the 11S Max comes with a remote that lets you do things like change vacuum modes and set cleaning schedules.
Two of our top picks for the best portable Bluetooth speakers have dropped in price for Prime Day as well. The Soundcore Motion 300 offers bright, punchy audio in a compact, IPX7-rated design. In addition to support for hi-res audio using the LDAC codec for Android users, this model also works with Anker's Soundcore companion app for EQ customization.
As for the Soundcore Motion+, it has bright, bassy output plus Qualcomm aptX support for hi-res audio. It, too, has IPX7 water resistance, and its design is better suited for those who prefer a bit more heft in their speakers. It has a metal front speaker grille plus a soft-touch, rubberized exterior, and you're getting a 3.5mm aux input for wired connections, too.
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/anker-chargers-accessories-and-speakers-are-still-on-sale-for-amazon-prime-day-080704584.html?src=rss
Amazon Prime Day is basically Black Friday for devices like Echo speakers, Fire TV sticks and Kindles. The Prime Day deals we see on Amazon devices are typically the same as you’ll find on Black Friday later in the year, or even better by a few dollars.
That means it’s the time to stock up — if you’re a Prime member and have wanted another Echo speaker for your office, a Fire tablet for your young child or a new Kindle to replace your aging one, these deals are the ones to snag. As expected, almost all of Amazon’s hardware is on sale for Prime Day; these are the best Prime Day deals on Amazon gear that you can get this year.
If you're looking for even more Prime Day deals, check out Engadget's Prime Day hub where you'll find all of the best tech deals you can get for the shopping event this year. In addition to Amazon devices, Prime Day is typically a great time to pick up big-ticket items like tablets, laptops and robot vacuums, and accessories like power banks, streaming devices, Bluetooth speakers and the like.
Prime Day Echo deals
Prime Day Kindle deals
Prime Day Fire TV deals
Prime Day Fire tablet deals
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-prime-day-deals-on-echo-speakers-kindle-ereaders-and-other-amazon-devices-073858193.html?src=rss
Amazon Prime Day is officially over — but there are still a few legacy deals hanging on. We had previously pulled together this list of worthy under-$25 deals, and we've just updated it to reflect these affordable bargains that are still available as of Thursday morning.
As a reminder (and for the uninitiated): Engadget treats tech deals with the same care as we would “regular” tech news. When we scour the web for deals, we’re looking not only for the best prices possible, but also the best products as well. Our goal with our deals coverage, especially surrounding events like Amazon Prime Day, is to surface only the best deals we can find on the gadgets we’ve tested and rated highly, or that we’ve used and know to be worth your money.
Prime Day deals no longer available
These deals were available earlier but have expired. They may or may not return.
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-prime-day-tech-deals-under-25-that-are-still-available-today-154512947.html?src=rss
Prime Day deals have brought a number of steep discounts to our favorite gadgets, and one of the best is on the Dyson Airwrap. This exclusive bundle for the hair tool is a whopping $125 off for Amazon Prime Day, bringing it down to $550. This is one of the most popular pieces of beauty tech as of late, so much so that it can be hard to get your hands on it because it frequently goes in and out of stock. Now's a good time to grab it if it's been on your wishlist.
In addition to the Airwrap and its storage case, the bundle includes six attachments: two long barrels, three brushes and the Coanda smoothing dryer, plus a filter cleaning brush, a detangling comb and another storage bag. That's enough to achieve a bunch of different hairstyles with one tool, and you get a couple of ways to store the machine when you're not using it or when you need to travel with it.
For the uninitiated, the Dyson Airwrap gained popularity due to the fact that it doesn't use extreme heat to style hair. It instead uses the Coanda effect, which describes airflow's tendency to follow a curved surface, to wrap, dry and style hair all at once. How you do so specific depends on the attachment you're using, be it a barrel or a brush.
The Airwrap does use heat, to be clear, but Dyson claims the device intelligently monitors heat to keep it at the optimal temperature. It should never go above 302 degrees Fahrenheit, and that should be less damaging for your hair as opposed to using standard hot tools.
If history is any indication, the Airwrap could quickly go out of stock during a sale event like Prime Day. While $550 is still a lot to spend on any gadget, now is a good time to buy this bundle if you've had your eye on the beauty tool for a while.
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/prime-day-2024-get-the-dyson-airwrap-for-125-off-123503655.html?src=rss
Now that Prime Day 2024 is here, you can snag Amazon gear at some of the best prices we've seen all year. That includes the Echo Dot, which is down to $25 for the shopping event — that's only about $2 more than its record-low price. Also discounted are the Echo Pop, which you can snag for only $18, and the full-sized Echo, which is down to $55. As to be expected, these are some of the best Prime Day deals on tech — particularly Alexa-toting tech — that you can get this year.
The Echo Dot is a good way to get Alexa into your home without taking up too much space. It's also a good option for students who have little space to spare in cramped dorms and apartments, or anyone who wants to add a bit more smarts in their home office. It's one of our top picks for the best smart speakers you can get right now thanks to its minimalist, compact design, physical volume adjustment and mic-mute buttons and its general Alexa chops. The latest model is also a much better speaker than previous versions, with louder and clearer audio.
If you're on a tight budget, or you want to give Alexa a try without investing too much money, the Echo Pop is a good alternative now that it's down to $18. If you were to slice the Echo Dot in half, you'd get the Echo Pop. It makes for a decent bedside speaker, and it has built-in eero functionality, meaning you can extend the range of your home's Wi-Fi network with the Pop if you have an eero router already.
But for the best sound quality out of these, you'll want the regular Echo smart speaker. It has the biggest footprint of all three, and the biggest internal speaker along with a 3-inch, built-in woofer. In addition to Alexa chops, it has a temperature sensor and a Zigbee smart home hub inside, which allows you to connect gadgets like smart lights, smart door locks and more without the need for a separate hub.
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-echo-dot-is-on-sale-for-only-25-for-prime-day-2024-155547899.html?src=rss
Amazon made it official this morning: Amazon Prime Day 2024 will be on July 16 and 17 this year. The shopping event will start at 12:01AM PT/3:01AM ET on Tuesday, July 16, and conclude at the end of the day on Wednesday, July 17. As it has been for the past few years, Prime Day will actually last two full days, and it will bring thousands of exclusive, members-only deals on everything from electronics to household goods to fashion. If you can't wait a few more weeks, there are some Prime Day deals you can already shop now.
In addition to spurring a large number of sales in a short period of time, Amazon Prime Day has always been a way for the online retail giant to increase the overall number of Prime subscribers. Prime Day isn’t necessarily a perk of the service like access to Prime Video content or free two-day shipping are, but it certainly helps that most deals you’ll find on Amazon during the two-day event are exclusively available to Prime members. However, it’s worth noting that the cost of Prime has increased significantly since the service debuted in 2005: an annual membership will set you back $139 right now, nearly double the price it was at launch ($79 per year).
Prime Day in July has been the main shopping event for Amazon for a decade now, but that hasn’t stopped the company from expanding the event’s reach. For the past couple of years, we’ve seen a “fall Prime Day” of sorts pop up in October, presumably as Amazon’s official kickoff for the holiday shopping season. There’s no word on if October Prime Day will return for 2024, but since most online retailers have started their holiday sales earlier and earlier since 2020, we think there’s a good chance it’ll return this year as well.
If you do plan on putting that Prime membership to use next month, you can turn to Engadget to find the tech deals worth your month during the two-day event. Unsurprisingly, Amazon Prime Day is one of the best times of the year to get Amazon devices, since most of them will likely be down to all-time-low prices. But we also expect to see worthwhile sales on headphones, robot vacuums, laptops, SSDs and much more. You can also follow Engadget Deals on Twitter for the latest news during Prime Day, and sign up for the new Engadget Deals newsletter to get the best deals delivered right to your inbox.
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-prime-day-2024-dates-announced-shop-the-summer-sale-on-july-16-and-17-050559496.html?src=rss
Yesterday's Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote teased a lot of what users can expect this fall when big iOS, iPadOS, macOS and watchOS updates hit their devices. Changes coming include RCS support in Messages, a new Passwords app, a revamped Calculator app for iPhone and iPad and a bunch of artificial intelligence (AI) infusions across the board with the new "Apple Intelligence" system. The latter will bring some of the biggest updates to Apple devices in years, including generative AI image creation, "Genmoji" custom emojis, text summarization and even some ChatGPT integration as well. If you weren't able to catch the news live, here's a rundown of everything announced at WWDC 2024.
Apple Intelligence
Apple
Apple revealed its plans to incorporate AI into its operating systems at WWDC this year. Dubbed "Apple Intelligence," this new generative AI system will appear in iOS and iPad 18 and macOS Sequoia in the form of (what Apple believes to be) practical tools that most people can use regularly. Those features include new writing tools that can help you rewrite, proofread and summarize things like emails and other messages, original emoji and image creation and more. Going hand-in-hand with original image generation is a new feature called Genmoji, which allows users to create their own unique emojis by typing in descriptions and requirements like "T-rex wearing a tutu on a surfboard."
Siri is getting an AI infusion, now that it will be powered in part by large language models. In addition to asking Siri to delete an email or edit a photo, users will also be able to ask the virtual assistant to summarize articles and webpages in Safari and even extract personal information from a picture of an ID so it can fill out an online form for them. The company emphasized the importance of "personal context" with Apple Intelligence, which will enable things like using natural language to search for photos that contain only specific family members or friends.
Apple highlighted how most Apple Intelligence actions will be done on-device to make the system as privacy-focused as possible. For queries that cannot be done locally, the work will be sent to Apple's processing centers. The company also created Private Cloud Compute, a feature that's supposed to utilize the cloud for more advanced AI processing while also making sure your data remains secure.
OpenAI's ChatGPT is also integrated into Apple Intelligence, allowing users to give Apple permission to share their queries with ChatGPT "when it might be helpful." Examples provided include asking for menu ideas that incorporate specific ingredients, or asking for decor advice while providing a photo of a space that needs sprucing up. ChatGPT will also work with the AI writing tools coming to iOS and iPadOS 18 in a new Compose feature. ChatGPT integration with iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia will roll out later this year, and apparently Apple intends to add support for other AI models in the future — meaning its partnership with OpenAI isn't a long-term exclusive.
iOS 18 and iPadOS 18
Apple
The next iPhone software update will roll out to users in the fall and, as expected, one of the biggest changes is support for Rich Communication Service, or RCS. The messaging protocol offers many improvements over SMS including end-to-end encryption, better media sharing and support for proper group chats. Apple previously stated it would adopt support for RCS in 2024 to comply with EU regulations, so it's unsurprising to see it mentioned in iOS 18's forthcoming features. Also new to Messages will be the ability to "tapback" reply using emojis and stickers, text formatting and effects and the ability to send messages via satellite.
iPhone users will have more control over their home screens in iOS 18 thanks to the fact that it will not be a locked grid system anymore. Users will be able to move app icons more freely, plus they'll be able to change app icon colors as well use a tint color picker. In terms of design and layout, this is one of the biggest changes to come to the iPhone's home screen in years and it gives iOS users similar features to those Android users have had for a long time. In the same vein, Control Center will be updated in iOS 18 to include more customization options, and will allow users to program quick controls from third-party apps in addition to the native options.
The Photos app is getting a big redesign in iOS 18, putting an emphasis on intelligently organized groups of photos that revolve around memories, trips and other big events. The new design ditches the old tabbed layout and will usher in a one-page design when you can view all of your photos individually, or view them by Collections. Users will also be able to filter out things like screenshots and receipts that would show up in a chronological format, but would otherwise mess up a tightly curated group of vacation photos.
A couple of new privacy features stand out in iOS 18, namely the ability to lock and hide apps. For the former, users can lock an app so sensitive information stays behind a Face-ID or Touch-ID wall, preventing those who you casually hand your iPhone to from seeing that information. Hiding an app, on the other hand, does exactly what you think: hides a program in a special hidden folder that others won't be able to see.
The Calculator app is getting a big overhaul in iOS 18, including improved unit conversions, a sidebar showing recent activity and integration with the Notes app. But what might be even more notable is the fact that the revamped Calculator app will not only be available on iPhones and Macs — it's coming to iPads for the first time as part of the iPadOS 18 update. Embedded within the iPadOS Calculator app is a new feature called Math Notes, which lets users write out math equations with the Apple Pencil and the app will solve many of them instantly.
iPadOS 18 will also feature a new Tab Bar, which looks similar to the Dynamic Island on iPhones. This bar makes it easier to access essential controls even when you're in apps, and depending on what you're doing, it can show up at the top of the screen or as a sidebar of sorts on the left of the display. The Notes app in iPadOS is getting another new feature called Smart Script, which will make users' handwriting more legible automatically.
macOS Sequoia
Apple
The next iteration of Apple's computer software will be called macOS Sequoia. In addition to many of the AI features also coming to iOS and iPadOS 18 as part of Apple Intelligence, the next macOS update will include iPhone mirroring, which lets users see and control their iPhone screen on a Mac screen. They'll be able to use their keyboard and trackpad to intact with the iPhone screen on their laptop, and they can even open iOS apps directly on their computers without picking up their iPhone at all.
A new Passwords app builds upon the technology of iCloud Keychain to save all of users' passwords and login credentials across devices and platforms (it will be available on Windows in addition to iOS and iPadOS). Along with standard passwords, the new app can save passkeys, verification codes and more, and give users the ability to securely share passwords with others.
Other updates coming in macOS Sequoia include a snap window arrangement tool with accompanying keyboard and menu shortcuts, Presenter Preview, which lets you see what you're about to share with call partners before they see it, and gaming upgrades like improved Windows porting capabilities using Gameporting Toolkit 2. Users will also get access to Image Playground in macOS Sequoia, Apple's AI image generator built into Apple Intelligence. It provides the ability to create AI-generated images in different styles, including animation, illustration and sketch.
watchOS 11
Apple
The next software update for the Apple Watch includes two big changes: Training Load and a new Vitals app. Training Load in watchOS 11 essentially uses many of the health and fitness metrics collected during workout tracking to estimate your effort level each time. Each workout will receive a rating from one (easy) to 10 (all out) that estimates how hard the user worked during that particular session.
The new Vitals app will show Apple Watch users how their captured health data, including heart rate, compares to baseline measurements. This will hopefully allow users to better understand when something might be off and outside the "normal" range.
The Activity app on iPhone is also getting an update to accompany watchOS 11, and will allow users to customize the data they see on the homepage so they can put their most important stats front and center. Cycle Tracking will also get an update to include more detailed pregnancy insights, including gestational age and information about the user's health metrics that may related to pregnancy (like heart rate fluctuations).
visionOS 2
Apple
Until now, Apple's Vision Pro headset has only been available in the US. That's changing soon as the company announced the device's rollout in additional countries including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the UK in the coming months. As far as the headset's software (visionOS) goes, Apple announced that visionOS 2 will add spatial photos, which adds depth to images in the Photos app, new UI gesture controls and improved Mac screen mirroring with support for higher resolutions and display sizes.
AirPods Pro audio updates
Apple
Apple briefly mentioned some software updates coming to AirPods Pro, including improved Voice Isolation, which should help the buds better pick up a user’s voice in noise environments. A new Siri Interaction is coming to AirPods Pro as well: a silent head-nod will allow users to answer an incoming call without saying a word out loud to Siri, and contrast, a shake of the head will decline a call. These silent interactions will also be applicable to messages and notifications.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-intelligence-ai-ios-18-and-the-biggest-announcements-at-wwdc-2024-184422501.html?src=rss
Dyson helped pioneer the cordless vacuum space, and now it’s testing the waters of the robot vacuum arena. The Dyson 360 Vis Nav has been available in other parts of the world for a little while, but it recently came stateside to the tune of $1,200. The company claims a 360-degree vision system, complete with cameras and LED lights, along with suction power akin to that of its stick vacuums sets the 360 Vis Nav apart from competitors. But even if that’s true, Dyson is undeniably late to the party. Robot vacuums have gotten a lot better in the past three to five years, and there are dozens on the market — including some that offer much more in the way of features for a similarly exorbitant price. That said, did Dyson pull an Apple and shake up a product category despite its late entry to the stage? I spent some time with the 360 Vis Nav to find out.
Setup and design
Unboxing and setting up the 360 Vis Nav is similar to any other robot vacuum. In addition to the device, the box contains a charging cable and the vacuum’s base, a rectangular, purple unit with two black-and-white checkered spots at either corner. While it’s refreshing to see a gadget that doesn’t wear the typical black or gray uniform, the 360 Vis Nav and its dock stick out like sore thumbs among the other items and furniture in my home. There’s no semblance of “blending into the decor” with this robo-vac.
Once docked for the first time, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav’s small onboard display prompts you to choose a preferred language and get connected via the mobile app. The screen doubles as a button, too, so you can press fully down on it to select options and move forward in the setup process. As I learned while using the machine, the display also shows helpful maintenance tips and accompanying graphics when you need to clean the robot’s sensors. The My Dyson app (on iOS and Android) provides all of the same information and more, and will guide you to connect the machine to your home’s Wi-Fi network, update the firmware if necessary and finish the prerequisites before you get to cleaning. Aside from waiting a few minutes for my review unit to update its firmware, the entire process took me only about 15 minutes.
To get the lay of the land, let’s revisit the few things Dyson claims set the 360 Vis Nav apart from other robot vacuums. The D-shaped design isn’t one of them, but it certainly helps the machine’s side-edge actuator when cleaning room corners. Dyson claims the actuator only opens up when cleaning corners like this, and it uses suction (rather than sweepers like other robo-vacs do) to capture debris from these hard-to-reach places. Along with that, the machine has a 360-degree vision system that helps it map our your home and clean around furniture and other objects, plus a sensor that detects the amount of dust present so it can kick up the suction when necessary and create a heat map of the dirtiest parts of your home. Those are the main differentiators, along with the claim that the 360 Vis Nav essentially has a similar level of suction power as one of Dyson’s cordless stick vacuums.
Performance
So how did all of that come together in practice? Pretty well, as it turns out. For the initial go-around, I had the Dyson 360 Vis Nav clean the main floor of my home, rather than map it out first. I did this mainly because I like chaos, but also because I wanted to see how the machine would navigate around coffee tables, couches and other furniture, plus small things like cat toys left in its path. Dyson states very clearly in the setup process that you should remove all small obstacles out of the way of the 360 Vis Nav before it cleans — I picked up a couple of reusable bags languishing from our last grocery run and the smaller cat toys, but I left some charging cables snaking on the ground because, let’s be real, most people aren’t going to clean before sending the robot they bought to clean for them out to do its job.
I was quickly struck by how many times the Dyson 360 Vis Nav came to a complete stop, “looked” around and kept moving during the first cleaning. It did a decent job avoiding large pieces of furniture like chairs and couches because — when it did get close to pieces like that — it seemed to sense it a few inches before hitting it, so it could then stop and redirect itself. It was most confused by a coffee table with a supporting beam that runs on the floor in between two legs. The 360 Vis Nav has adjustable wheels that allow it to “climb” on top of things like thicker rugs when it’s cleaning, and I think it confused this roughly 0.5-inch supporting beam for a piece of decor. The robo-vac tried so hard to climb over it; it was borderline concerning, but I was rooting for it the whole way. It actually did manage to climb over the beam, get back down onto the floor and keep cleaning, so kudos to the little guy for never giving up.
After that thrilling show, I left the 360 Vis Nav to its own devices. It proceeded to clean the main floor of my home for almost an hour, audibly notching up the suction when it detected a messier area. Notably, it seemed better at avoiding furniture than other robot vacuum cleaners I’ved tried. Yes, it did knock into a few things, but the number of times that happened was slim to none. The first run I did was in Auto mode, the default cleaning setting and one of four you have to choose from, and while the machine was a tad loud, it’s nothing that will drive pets or young children from a room. It’s loudest when the machine automatically kicks the motor into high gear upon detecting a high-dust area, which it did a few times in the highest trafficked areas of my kitchen and on top of a few area rugs. Like any other robot vacuum worth its salt, the 360 Vis Nav automatically returned to its dock to recharge when the battery got low.
I deemed that first cleaning job a success, and the case was the same when I did the first mapping run. The 360 Vis Nav is much quieter when it’s puttering around your home not sucking up dirt, but rather just using its vision system to create a map of your home and all its furniture and obstacles. The map it created of my main floor was accurate, and the Dyson app makes it simple to add boundaries and create rooms that you can label. Once you do this, you can create no-go zones and other restrictions like cleaning without the brush bar. And like most other vacuums with smart mapping, you can tell the 360 Vis Nav to only clean certain rooms with each job if you please.
Like most other robot vacuums, the companion app experience focuses on home maps, schedules and basic on-off controls. Dyson lets you choose from Auto, Quick, Quiet and Boost cleaning modes before you start a job, and if you have rooms designated on your map, you can customize cleaning modes for each room every time. For example, I could tell the machine to clean my kitchen in Auto mode and then the den in Quiet mode. The app presents a heat map of your home after every job that highlights the areas with the most dust, which is interesting to look at but didn’t provide me with a ton of groundbreaking information. I was not surprised that the dirtiest spots on my main floor were almost always next to the front door and my deck door.
Ultimately, the two things that impressed me the most about the Dyson 360 Vis Nav were its suction power and its obstacle avoidance capabilities. I live in a one-cat household, but if you saw how much cat hair my cordless stick vacuum sucks up every time I use it, you’d think I live with a few more felines. There’s always more fur in the bin after I clean the upper floor of my home, since it’s carpeted. After leaving the 360 Vis Nav on my upper floor to clean for almost an hour, I was surprised to see that the contents of its bin looked nearly identical to that of my cordless stick vac after cleaning up there. Even the best robot vacuum cleaners I’ve used in the past never sucked up this much pet fur in one go-around on carpeted floors — it’s impressive.
As for obstacle avoidance, I didn’t expect much from the 360 Vis Nav in this department because the instructions tell you, more than once, to clear your floors of any obstructions before cleaning. Most of the time, I had at least a few pairs of shoes, a couple of charging cables and other small objects on the floor while the machine was cleaning, but I never once got an alert that it was stuck. Some robot vacuums I’ve tested have sent me close to a half dozen alerts during a cleaning job, and I’d have to remove an object they were choking on before they could start up again. That never happened with Dyson’s machine.
The competition
With the Dyson 360 Vis Nav coming in at an eye-watering $1,200, the competition squarely within that price range is pretty slim. The $1,400 iRobot Roomba Combo j9+ is arguably its most direct competitor and it offers quite a bit more for that extra $200. (We’ve seen the Combo j9+ drop to as low as $1,000 in the past, so you might be able to pick it up for even less than Dyon’s machine.) As a “combo” device, the j9+ vacuums and mops without the help of a human (mostly) and it’s smart enough to know when it needs to switch from sucking up dirt to mopping floors using its built-in scrubbing pad and water reservoir. It also comes with a self-emptying base that can hold up to 60 days worth of dry debris and refill the water reservoir with clean supply. While auto-mopping is more of a nice-to-have than a requirement on a robot vacuum, it’s painful that Dyon’s $1,000+ machine doesn’t come with a clean base — a piece of hardware included in some models half of its price.
Wrap-up
When you understand the lay of the robot-vacuum landscape, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav seems almost quaint — and a bit confusing. Robot vacuums aren’t new, they’ve been around for a long time — long enough where you can get a pretty decent one for less than $300. For Dyson’s machine, spending $1,200 gets you a damn good robot vacuum with possibly the best suction power I’ve experienced on one, impressive obstacle avoidance, good home mapping and a clean app experience. But none of those features are unique to the 360 Vis Nav. Its suction power and obstacle avoidance may be superior, but is that enough to justify the cost? If you’re already willing to spend $1,000 or more on a robot vacuum, you have other options that will give you similar features and more, including mopping and self-emptying capabilities. That said, there are two groups of people who I’d recommend the 360 Vis Nav to: those who are willing to give up advanced features in exchange for the most suction power possible (and have cash to burn), and Dyson diehards.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dyson-360-vis-nav-review-superior-suction-at-a-steep-price-130010791.html?src=rss
Dyson helped pioneer the cordless vacuum space, and now it’s testing the waters of the robot vacuum arena. The Dyson 360 Vis Nav has been available in other parts of the world for a little while, but it recently came stateside to the tune of $1,200. The company claims a 360-degree vision system, complete with cameras and LED lights, along with suction power akin to that of its stick vacuums sets the 360 Vis Nav apart from competitors. But even if that’s true, Dyson is undeniably late to the party. Robot vacuums have gotten a lot better in the past three to five years, and there are dozens on the market — including some that offer much more in the way of features for a similarly exorbitant price. That said, did Dyson pull an Apple and shake up a product category despite its late entry to the stage? I spent some time with the 360 Vis Nav to find out.
Setup and design
Unboxing and setting up the 360 Vis Nav is similar to any other robot vacuum. In addition to the device, the box contains a charging cable and the vacuum’s base, a rectangular, purple unit with two black-and-white checkered spots at either corner. While it’s refreshing to see a gadget that doesn’t wear the typical black or gray uniform, the 360 Vis Nav and its dock stick out like sore thumbs among the other items and furniture in my home. There’s no semblance of “blending into the decor” with this robo-vac.
Once docked for the first time, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav’s small onboard display prompts you to choose a preferred language and get connected via the mobile app. The screen doubles as a button, too, so you can press fully down on it to select options and move forward in the setup process. As I learned while using the machine, the display also shows helpful maintenance tips and accompanying graphics when you need to clean the robot’s sensors. The My Dyson app (on iOS and Android) provides all of the same information and more, and will guide you to connect the machine to your home’s Wi-Fi network, update the firmware if necessary and finish the prerequisites before you get to cleaning. Aside from waiting a few minutes for my review unit to update its firmware, the entire process took me only about 15 minutes.
To get the lay of the land, let’s revisit the few things Dyson claims set the 360 Vis Nav apart from other robot vacuums. The D-shaped design isn’t one of them, but it certainly helps the machine’s side-edge actuator when cleaning room corners. Dyson claims the actuator only opens up when cleaning corners like this, and it uses suction (rather than sweepers like other robo-vacs do) to capture debris from these hard-to-reach places. Along with that, the machine has a 360-degree vision system that helps it map our your home and clean around furniture and other objects, plus a sensor that detects the amount of dust present so it can kick up the suction when necessary and create a heat map of the dirtiest parts of your home. Those are the main differentiators, along with the claim that the 360 Vis Nav essentially has a similar level of suction power as one of Dyson’s cordless stick vacuums.
Performance
So how did all of that come together in practice? Pretty well, as it turns out. For the initial go-around, I had the Dyson 360 Vis Nav clean the main floor of my home, rather than map it out first. I did this mainly because I like chaos, but also because I wanted to see how the machine would navigate around coffee tables, couches and other furniture, plus small things like cat toys left in its path. Dyson states very clearly in the setup process that you should remove all small obstacles out of the way of the 360 Vis Nav before it cleans — I picked up a couple of reusable bags languishing from our last grocery run and the smaller cat toys, but I left some charging cables snaking on the ground because, let’s be real, most people aren’t going to clean before sending the robot they bought to clean for them out to do its job.
I was quickly struck by how many times the Dyson 360 Vis Nav came to a complete stop, “looked” around and kept moving during the first cleaning. It did a decent job avoiding large pieces of furniture like chairs and couches because — when it did get close to pieces like that — it seemed to sense it a few inches before hitting it, so it could then stop and redirect itself. It was most confused by a coffee table with a supporting beam that runs on the floor in between two legs. The 360 Vis Nav has adjustable wheels that allow it to “climb” on top of things like thicker rugs when it’s cleaning, and I think it confused this roughly 0.5-inch supporting beam for a piece of decor. The robo-vac tried so hard to climb over it; it was borderline concerning, but I was rooting for it the whole way. It actually did manage to climb over the beam, get back down onto the floor and keep cleaning, so kudos to the little guy for never giving up.
After that thrilling show, I left the 360 Vis Nav to its own devices. It proceeded to clean the main floor of my home for almost an hour, audibly notching up the suction when it detected a messier area. Notably, it seemed better at avoiding furniture than other robot vacuum cleaners I’ved tried. Yes, it did knock into a few things, but the number of times that happened was slim to none. The first run I did was in Auto mode, the default cleaning setting and one of four you have to choose from, and while the machine was a tad loud, it’s nothing that will drive pets or young children from a room. It’s loudest when the machine automatically kicks the motor into high gear upon detecting a high-dust area, which it did a few times in the highest trafficked areas of my kitchen and on top of a few area rugs. Like any other robot vacuum worth its salt, the 360 Vis Nav automatically returned to its dock to recharge when the battery got low.
I deemed that first cleaning job a success, and the case was the same when I did the first mapping run. The 360 Vis Nav is much quieter when it’s puttering around your home not sucking up dirt, but rather just using its vision system to create a map of your home and all its furniture and obstacles. The map it created of my main floor was accurate, and the Dyson app makes it simple to add boundaries and create rooms that you can label. Once you do this, you can create no-go zones and other restrictions like cleaning without the brush bar. And like most other vacuums with smart mapping, you can tell the 360 Vis Nav to only clean certain rooms with each job if you please.
Like most other robot vacuums, the companion app experience focuses on home maps, schedules and basic on-off controls. Dyson lets you choose from Auto, Quick, Quiet and Boost cleaning modes before you start a job, and if you have rooms designated on your map, you can customize cleaning modes for each room every time. For example, I could tell the machine to clean my kitchen in Auto mode and then the den in Quiet mode. The app presents a heat map of your home after every job that highlights the areas with the most dust, which is interesting to look at but didn’t provide me with a ton of groundbreaking information. I was not surprised that the dirtiest spots on my main floor were almost always next to the front door and my deck door.
Ultimately, the two things that impressed me the most about the Dyson 360 Vis Nav were its suction power and its obstacle avoidance capabilities. I live in a one-cat household, but if you saw how much cat hair my cordless stick vacuum sucks up every time I use it, you’d think I live with a few more felines. There’s always more fur in the bin after I clean the upper floor of my home, since it’s carpeted. After leaving the 360 Vis Nav on my upper floor to clean for almost an hour, I was surprised to see that the contents of its bin looked nearly identical to that of my cordless stick vac after cleaning up there. Even the best robot vacuum cleaners I’ve used in the past never sucked up this much pet fur in one go-around on carpeted floors — it’s impressive.
As for obstacle avoidance, I didn’t expect much from the 360 Vis Nav in this department because the instructions tell you, more than once, to clear your floors of any obstructions before cleaning. Most of the time, I had at least a few pairs of shoes, a couple of charging cables and other small objects on the floor while the machine was cleaning, but I never once got an alert that it was stuck. Some robot vacuums I’ve tested have sent me close to a half dozen alerts during a cleaning job, and I’d have to remove an object they were choking on before they could start up again. That never happened with Dyson’s machine.
The competition
With the Dyson 360 Vis Nav coming in at an eye-watering $1,200, the competition squarely within that price range is pretty slim. The $1,400 iRobot Roomba Combo j9+ is arguably its most direct competitor and it offers quite a bit more for that extra $200. (We’ve seen the Combo j9+ drop to as low as $1,000 in the past, so you might be able to pick it up for even less than Dyon’s machine.) As a “combo” device, the j9+ vacuums and mops without the help of a human (mostly) and it’s smart enough to know when it needs to switch from sucking up dirt to mopping floors using its built-in scrubbing pad and water reservoir. It also comes with a self-emptying base that can hold up to 60 days worth of dry debris and refill the water reservoir with clean supply. While auto-mopping is more of a nice-to-have than a requirement on a robot vacuum, it’s painful that Dyon’s $1,000+ machine doesn’t come with a clean base — a piece of hardware included in some models half of its price.
Wrap-up
When you understand the lay of the robot-vacuum landscape, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav seems almost quaint — and a bit confusing. Robot vacuums aren’t new, they’ve been around for a long time — long enough where you can get a pretty decent one for less than $300. For Dyson’s machine, spending $1,200 gets you a damn good robot vacuum with possibly the best suction power I’ve experienced on one, impressive obstacle avoidance, good home mapping and a clean app experience. But none of those features are unique to the 360 Vis Nav. Its suction power and obstacle avoidance may be superior, but is that enough to justify the cost? If you’re already willing to spend $1,000 or more on a robot vacuum, you have other options that will give you similar features and more, including mopping and self-emptying capabilities. That said, there are two groups of people who I’d recommend the 360 Vis Nav to: those who are willing to give up advanced features in exchange for the most suction power possible (and have cash to burn), and Dyson diehards.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dyson-360-vis-nav-review-superior-suction-at-a-steep-price-130010791.html?src=rss