Fifteen years is a long time to work on any product and it’s like a century when it comes to technology. Which is why I find it a little surprising that Dyson seems comfortable characterizing the Dyson 360 Eye autonomous robotic vacuum as well-over a decade in the making.
This occurred to me as one of the marketing managers recently explained to how Dyson made the bold decision to include a camera in the vacuum way back in 2001. Would they have made the same decision if they started development in, say, 2014?
I became further concerned about Dyson being a little out of step when I realized that the robotic vacuum could not connect to 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks. If this were 2007 or even 2009, I could understand that, but 2016?
I’m not saying the Dyson 360 Eye is not a good vacuum or expertly-designed product. It certainly is, but the product, which was actually launched in Japan almost a year ago, lacks the tech polish of, say, an iRobot Roomba, which has actually had robotic vacuums in consumer hands since 2002.
Suck it up
Dyson’s second consumer robotic vacuum (in 2004, Dyson built a much larger robot, the DC06, that proved too heavy to bring to market), is, at 9 inches in diameter, considerably smaller than iRobot’s comparable 13.9-inch Roomba 980 (both cost around $1,000). However, the Dyson 360 Eye is, at 4.7 inches, over an inch taller than the Roomba so it can accommodate Dyson’s trademark radial root cyclone, a miniaturized version of the same vacuum technology found in Dyson’s upright, non-robotic vacuums.
Under its gleaming, gray plastic body is a pair of tank-like treads that help the Dyson 360 Eye ride up and down obstacles up to 20 millimeters high (I once saw it take on a thick extension cord and survive). The cleaning system is backed by Dyson’s digital motor which spins at 72,000 rpm, generating a reported 20 air watts of suction. There’s a mostly clear bin (which also houses the cyclone). It breaks the near perfectly round Dyson 30 Eye profile with a little extra bump. A little button adjacent to the bin lets you remove it for cleaning.
On the top is the eponymous eye. It’s a black and white, relatively low-resolution 360-degree camera pointed at a roughly 45-degree angle that gives the robot a live, panoramic view of its environment.
The Dyson 30 Eye vacuum ships with a charging station that features a base with connectors and, at a right angle, an A4-sized white plastic back with two black targets on it. The robot vacuum uses the symbols to find its charging station (it cleans for 45 minutes and then will return to the base before heading back out to finish the job). The charging base has a port on each side for the charging cable – a nice touch that gives you more flexibility on placement. It also folds up for easy storage.
Cleaning time
I installed the accompanying Dyson Link app with the hope that I could launch, schedule it and track the Dyson 360 Eye’s work from there, but, as I noted above, the robot vacuum didn’t like my Wi-Fi network (I have both a 2.4 Ghz and a 5 Ghz available; it didn't like either one). Fortunately, you do not have to use the app to use the robot or enjoy its cleaning intelligence.
I simply pressed the power button, which sits on the top in front of the camera, to turn it on and then pressed it again and the Dyson 360 Eye took off from its charging base and started cleaning my floors. That button also serves as a status indicator, showing you with LED lights when it's powered on, cleaning, paused and running low on battery power.
My first-floor layout is pretty open and it includes tile, wood and rug-covered floors. The Dyson 360 Eye uses its camera, obstacle sensors and SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) to read the room as it goes. The Roomba 980 also uses a form of SLAM for navigation.
In the Dyson 360 Eye's case, it looks for corners and straight lines to triangulate its position in the room, slowly building a map and ensuring that it doesn’t clean any area twice. Dyson reps explained that the vacuum generally cleans in 5 x 5 meter sections and approaches the overall cleaning space as a grid. That said, it may not clean all of one room before moving onto another, especially as it follows an unbroken wall into another room.
In my experience, the robot’s cleaning process looked a little haphazard. It’s such a large space that it had to charge two or three times to finish all of it (charging can take up to 2 hours and 45 minutes, though it can be less if the robot is in the middle of a job).
After its first big pass, the Dyson 360 Eye’s cleaning motor, which is pretty loud, turned off and then the vacuum quietly glided around in search of it charging base. Because the robot knows the room layout, it has an idea of where to find it. Unfortunately, the Dyson 360 Eye could not find the unobstructed charging base in my home. It rolled near it and then started banging gently into the wall next to it. Eventually it gave up. The instructions advise keeping a 20-inch perimeter clear of objects around the docking station. I believe I did that.
Take 2
I returned the Dyson 360 to the office and, this time, it had no trouble connecting to the Wi-Fi network or finding its charging base. To connect to Wi-Fi, you first have to identify your Wi-Fi network for the app and then briefly connect directly to the vacuum via its built-in Wi-Fi and enter a password for the robot, which is hidden behind the bin. It’s a little convoluted, but it works.
The benefits of the app connection were immediately clear. In addition to letting you name your vacuum (mine is Blinky), I could track the Dyson 360 Eye’s activity (not in real time) and look back at the activity log to see how it had cleaned my house. A map showed all the areas it had cleaned in blue and an outline of the somewhat insane-looking path it took to do so. It looked like it had gotten it all. In the future, though, I’d like to see some virtual wall accessories so I can stop it from rolling straight from the dining room to the den.
The app also let me use a virtual button to start a cleaning cycle, stop it and even have it immediately stop and return to its starting position (usually the charging base). There’s also a scheduling feature in the app that lets you set daily or every day schedules, but it never worked properly for me. Also, I didn’t appreciate that it only offered a 24-hour military clock with no option to switch it to 12-hour time.
While the app can show you virtually all of the Dyson 360 Eye’s activity, the robot itself will not remember the layout of a room it has previously cleaned. This is on purpose because people move chairs and other furniture with some regularity.
Doing the job
Watching the Dyson 360 clean and navigate its environment, one is immediately impressed by its intelligence and problem-solving skills. I watched over and over again as it encountered rugs, chairs, uneven surfaces and obstacles and could almost see it working out possible navigation and cleaning solutions. In my home, it did get stuck under my futon at one point, though. I suspect the lower-profile Roomba would have handled that situation with ease.
On the vacuum front, the robot did an excellent job of cleaning all surfaces (it has a carbon-fiber blade for breaking the static electric bond often generated between dirt and hard, shiny surfaces) and even handled some cereal I threw in its path. Despite being smaller than the Roomba, the cleaning brush is virtually the full-width of the robot, making it almost as efficient a cleaner as the larger robot vacuum where the brush sits between the wheel, making it considerably narrower than the full width of the vacuum.
Each time I emptied the bin, I was impressed by how much dirt and debris the Dyson 360 Eye picked up. It certainly looked as if it was doing the job.
Cleanup is easy. You detach the plastic bin, remove the top and dump. A number of parts and filters are hand-washable under water, but you need to let them dry completely before putting the robot back together.
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Robot vacuums like the Dyson 360 Eye can be tremendously convenient for busy home and apartment dwellers, but they are not exactly like regular vacuums. First of all, they’re diminutive size means they can’t hold that much dirt and you’ll want to empty the bin more frequently. The Dyson 360 Eye’s bin is noticeably smaller than that of the Roomba 980. Robot vacuums like the Dyson 360 Eye work slowly and methodically and can be maddening to watch -- they know what they are doing, but you do not. Plus, as battery powered devices, they can only do so much of the job at once. The Dyson 360 Eye’s 45-minute cleaning cycle is a bit short for my tastes (the Roomba 980, by contrast, will clean for a solid 2 hours). Between cleaning and recharging, the loud little bot was rolling around my house on and off for hours. Dyson should adjust the speed or battery life.
I do like the size and weight (there’s no handle, but there's an indent on each side that make the Dyson 360 Eye easy enough to lift) and was impressed with the intelligence and cleaning power. If Dyson can fix the Wi-Fi issue, update the app for the U.S. market and maybe get the cleaning cycle to 1 hour and 15 minutes per charge, iRobot could have a robo-fight on its hands.
Dyson 360 Eye
The Good
Small, might get to some spots wider vacuums could miss
Wheel design helps it handle tougher terrains
It's smart and sees the whole room
It’s a good vacuum
The Bad
Needs more forward-leaning Wi-Fi support
Battery life and cleaning cycles are too short
App seems geared toward an international market
The Bottom Line
Dyson's late entry in the U.S. robotic vacuum market is an impressively intelligent cleaner, but could use a bit of tech polish.
