Dyson V10 Absolute Review

The V10 Absolute earns top scores, outperforming a long line of other top-ranked stick vacuums. Easy to use, this vacuum is a dirt-removing champ in almost every way. However, it comes at a premium price — typical for Dyson products but unattainable for some folks. This hefty price tag is the only reason the V10 doesn't garner an award. It's undeniably great, but the price keeps us from recommending it when other similarly performing models are available for less.

Performance Comparison

Convenience

Convenience is highly important for a stick vacuum, so this metric was weighted the heaviest in our assessment. We went through and scored the battery life and charge time of each product in our review, how much each one weighs, its skill at cleaning non-floor areas, and how easy each product is to store.

In addition to doing a particularly excellent job at cleaning both hard and soft floors, the V10 is fully capable of cleaning the vast majority of your home. It includes many different attachments that are very easy to attach and detach using a simple single button locking mechanism. Using the V10 in handheld mode is very convenient, as this vacuum isn't very heavy at just 5.9 pounds.

Unfortunately, the V10 doesn't have particularly impressive battery life. It has one of the shortest runtimes of the group when using maximum power, which you may need for more stubborn messes. However, the battery life is significantly extended when running on a reduced power setting, which we found to be more than sufficient for most messes. The V10 can easily cover the floor in a small to a medium-sized house on a single charge if you use this lower setting.

Finally, this model lacks the stability to stand on its own, losing it a few points, as it needs the included wall mount to be easily stored. But the charger can connect through the wall mount and hold a couple of the accessories, so it ends up being a nice way to store everything.

Hard Surface Cleaning

Next, we assessed how proficient each vacuum was at cleaning up messes from hard floors. We used a small section of hardwood laminate for our tests and spread out known amounts of sample messes — oats, flour, rice, cereal, and pet hair. We then rated and scored how well each product picked them up. The Dyson V10 delivered a fantastic showing, putting up one of the best performances that we have seen.

We used the high suction with the hard floor brush for all of these tests. The V10 got off to a great start in our first test, collecting all the rice we spread out easily. It continued its dominance into our flour collection test — one of the more difficult ones of this group. The V10 collected almost all of the flour that we spread out in only two passes, even cleaning in the cracks between boards — something many vacuums can't do.

As expected at this point, the V10 gave another top-notch performance in our Cheerio and oat collection challenges. It easily picked up all of the debris we had spread out in both of these tests. The stellar performances continued in our final assessment for this metric: pet hair collection. Hardly any strands of pet hair failed to make it into the collection bin or got tangled in the extractor head.

Ease of Use

Shifting gears from our cleaning tests, we evaluated how easy it was to use each product. While you may think that this is identical to our prior convenience metric, there are some subtle differences captured by each metric. For this one, worth 20% of the total score, we looked at how easy it is to maneuver each vacuum, clean under furniture, and clean in close to the edges of a room. We also assessed if there were different cleaning modes available and the noise level of each vacuum. The V10 delivered another admirable performance in this set of tests.

This vacuum has three different operating modes — low, medium, and high — allowing you to customize the cleaning power for the mess to be cleaned, maximize battery power, or minimize noise. Speaking of noise, the V10 earned a below-average score — a bit of a rarity for this product, as we found it to be quite noisy on its maximum power.

The V10 does have swivel steering, so it is very maneuverable.

It also cleans in very close to the walls of a room or along other edges.

Lastly, we assessed how easy it was to clean under furniture. The V10 has an impressively long reach but couldn't quite make it underneath our entire simulated sofa, stopping about 4" short. This put the V10 in the second tier of products for this test, as the top models reached the full 37" without issue.

Carpet Cleaning

For the remaining 15% of the total score for each product, we resumed our cleaning tests and scored each stick vacuum on how well it could clean the carpet — both low-pile and medium-pile. We used the same sets of sample debris as in our hard surface testing: rice, oats, flour, cereal, and pet hair. The V10 put down another impressive performance, though it didn't quite get off to a perfect start in our rice collection test. We noticed that it would fling the rice around a bit. The suction is powerful enough that it impedes moving the vacuum around easily when on the maximum setting. However, the V10 redeemed itself in our flour test, easily cleaning up all of the flour and giving one of the best showings we have seen to date. If you require more performance, a different kind of vacuum could be in order.

It delivered another exceptional performance when tasked with picking up oats, doing a fantastic job on fluffier carpet and a solid one on the low-pile carpet. It also did exceptionally well at picking up pet hair, matching the performance of a full-sized upright vacuum. The V10 finished out with a solid showing at collecting cereal, its score only slightly hurt by its tendency to push the Cheerios around for a while before actually collecting them.

Should You Buy the Dyson V10 Absolute?

If you are married to the Dyson brand, and no other brand will do, then the V10 is the one for you. This vacuum is undeniably good at what it does, with better performance in most metrics than the competition. We suspect the performance will not disappoint regardless of your stick vacuum goals. However, it is also one of the most expensive in the group. The V10 has a price on par with the traditional Dyson vacuums but offers powerful suction than the conventional vacuum. We suspect some folks might balk at the higher price or suffer enough sticker shock to skip this vacuum.

What Other Stick Vacuum Should You Consider?