I thought I cleaned well until I tried the Gen5detect, Dyson’s latest stick vacuum cleaner

According to statistics, 40% of people only clean the floor when there is visible dust and dirt. However, perception is quite relative: dirtiness does not look the same on all materials or colors, in the sunlight or under artificial light. And my latest experience with a stick vacuum cleaner has shown me that even when we think a surface is clean, we are probably wrong.

At home, we clean the floors regularly: the robot vacuum passes every day through the entrance hall and the kitchen, and every other day throughout the entire house. In addition, once a week we do a deep clean with a stick vacuum and a mop, too. With all this, my feeling has always been that the floors in our house were reasonably clean at any given time. Hence my surprise when I tested the Gen5detect vacuum cleaner, Dyson’s most powerful stick vacuum to date, and saw everything that was actually on the floor.

The key lies in one of its cleaner heads: the Fluffy Optic, which has a soft velvet brush and includes a green light on one of its sides, which makes even the tiniest particle visible.

This is not the first vacuum cleaner that uses light to facilitate cleaning. In fact, multiple models on the market already incorporate LEDs in their heads (Conga RockStar 2700 Advance, Philips SpeedPro Max or Rowenta X-Force Flex 8.60, to name a few). It is not even the first Dyson model to bet on this technology. Still, the evolution of the Gen5detect is vast.

On a technical level, there is not much information: the company explains that it is a redesign of previous versions, twice as bright and capable of covering a larger area, and that the main idea was to place it as low as possible so that it only casts its light on the dirt. In practice, all we see is that one of the sides is somewhat different from the other, and that there is a small light in the lower area. Nothing particularly noteworthy if you don’t know what it is. That is, until you press the button and the action starts: then it turns on like a green laser, covering the entire floor in front of it.

The light that reveals everything

The fact that it is not located in the center or distributed throughout the head means that the light is more powerful on the left side (looking from the front), although the visibility in front of the entire vacuum is clear. The first time you try it, it will be hard to hide your astonishment: suddenly you see every hair, dust particle, lint or food residue — even footprints that until that moment were completely invisible.

That, combined with huge suction power (262 air watts), three modes and close to an hour of cleaning time — depending on the mode and the cleaner head that you use — made me feel that this is one of the vacuum cleaners with which I have achieved the most cleanliness, ever, both on ceramic and wooden floors, and even in the car. It is also one of the most expensive I have ever tried: its price is close to $1,000 for the model that includes more brushes and accessories.

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