V8 Animal

I have golden retrievers and for years have relied upon my Miele vacuum (a truly well-engineered machine) to keep up with the amazing amount of fur that seems to accumulate hourly, no matter how much brushing, vacuuming, cleaning I do. Given the expense of Miele vacuum bags, I have sought other options for the 'quick' pickups of 'fur sagebrush' that rolls across the floors, in between serious vacuum sessions (you know, sometimes the thought of dragging out the corded vacuum for a quick 'once over' just doesn't seem worth it). None have been perfect or particularly convenient (dustmops, Roomba(s), etc.). So.... recently I was considering a carpet sweeper (manual) for area rugs and/or some type of floor sweeper. My aim was to find something efficient and portable that could be quickly 'grabbed' from the utility closet. After a lot of research and weighing my options I came upon the Dyson-animal cordless line of vacuums. To be honest, I have never really liked the 'look' of Dyson products... all that plastic (!) gave me the impression that they were just over priced hype. Anyway, I decided to take the plunge. I settled on the V8, as the price point was easier to justify than the recently released V10, and it appeared to have most everything I needed. All I can say is WOW!!! This device rocks! Easy to use (almost fun!--like a new toy), and it does an amazing job cleaning, exceeding my expectations. All of our dog's fur is instantly removed from carpet, furniture, corners, floors, etc. etc. In addition, the device captures a surprising amount of dirt and dust. It requires less effort that grabbing a broom or dust mop, and one can easily do vacuum 'touch' ups in minutes. The efforts that went into the design of this device is clearly evident. Don't be 'put off' (as I was) by the look of this vacuum. It is an ergonomic wonder--making your vacuum session fast and effective. The storage mount is also very well designed--making the device easily 'grabbed' and put away as it charges for its next assignment. I rewired a light switch in my utility closet adding an outlet which enabled me to store it mounted on the wall out of sight while charging) (though I have to admit it is kinda' cool to look at). I have not yet had any issue with the battery life (I've only had the vacuum for less than a week, but have used it every day)... you really don't need the max suction very often (this setting drains the battery very quickly). So... if you are a dog (or cat) owner, and are looking for an easy and efficient solution to managing the fur that accumulates in your home from day to day, look no further. The Dyson V8 cordless is definitely one of the best (and smartest) purchases I've made in quite a while.

This is a pretty amazing device. It's replacing a trusty twenty-year old regular upright vacuum cleaner that had some serious mileage on it so it had big shoes to fill, but it's made that old device seem like a relic of an earlier age. Dyson machines have a certain mystique around them and I was very skeptical of paying $350 for a bunch of hype, but having used one at my parents house, I was convinced enough to pay the ticket. First impressions: this thing is light, effective and just a whole ton more easy to use than any vacuum cleaner that I've used before. The ‘Stick vacuum’ setup was entirely new to me and seems a little odd: all of the mechanism of the vacuum cleaner (including the dirt container) has been moved into the handpiece/handle thing. When you use it, you're effectively holding the entire vacuum cleaner up in the air and waving the suction wand around. This turns out to be a great solution: the wand is now light and nimble. Anyone who has used a cassette vacuum cleaner (ie. wand-and-box) knows how this feels, but in this case there's no box to heave around either. The other startling difference is NO CABLE. It's battery powered, so you stop battling with the flex, moving sockets, running over the cord, etc, etc. I can't tell you how much simpler it is to pull out the vacuum and clean - as a consequence I have a cleaner floor, because it doesn't take as much mess to make me take it out. There are downsides to these features: mainly battery life and the fact that the hand-piece is pretty heavy - these are linked issues. This model (V8 Animal) has a slightly bigger battery than my parents V7 Motorhead so it runs for 40min on a charge (V7 does 30mins). That's enough to clean 2-3 rooms of our pretty small house, but it just shuts off dead when it's done and charging takes a long while (like, three hours). Consequently, the hand-piece is heavier than my parents and I find my wrist is pretty tired and a little sore after a half-hour: I'm a mid-forties guy, my wrists are in pretty decent shape! I wouldn't think older folk would be happy with the weight and I'd say go for the smaller model or consider a more traditional design. The other worry is battery lifespan: I'm quite sure that this lithium battery isn't going to last 20 years like our last cleaner and you're looking at $50-$100 to replace the battery IF they still sell it when it dies. And while you get there, the battery life will get shorter and shorter. It's a worry. The enduring impression is of something well-built and well-designed. Everything clicks together positively and all the attachments are sturdy. I'm an ex-engineer and I get the impression that they haven't skimped on material quality and things like the thickness of plastic walls, so I'm expecting it to last ok. The bagless design seems like a huge win (no need to buy and toss bags, no decrease in suction) but it comes with two big inherent compromises: 1. There's nothing to contain the dust and dirt when you decide to empty it (naturally). So as it clunks open (it's a fairly dramatic mechanism) I find it creates a pretty disgusting cloud of airborne dust and grossness. You shouldn't do it indoors as it undoes the good work you just did. Even outdoors I find myself breathing in nasty-tasting mystery particles. 2. Be very careful around water. When you suck a bit of water, the cyclone thing smears the water all over the inside of the transparent cartridge, and dust starts sticking and clumping. Again, if there was a bag - no problem - but now, if (when) you let it dry, you'll have to manually scrape the stuck-on residue from the cartridge. And because it's transparent the pretty clean sci-fi looking cartridge now has yucky brown crud stuck to the inside. It’s impossible to completely clean it. This cleaner isn't the most powerful vacuum cleaner you ever used, but it's obvious that they've tried to balance the issues of weight and power to make it work well enough. We have a dog, so it's not an easy job cleaning our family room and it does just fine. On balance, the pluses easily outweigh the negatives. Our house is cleaner and vacuuming has gone from sweaty, fussy work to a grab-the-Dyson-and-swish kind of vibe. --- Happy that people found my review helpful: just thought I'd give a perspective after 4 years: the battery is still running surprisingly strong. I can't say I've noticed a big decline so far, but when Lithium Ion batteries go, they go, so - still a worry. It's weathered a decent amount of usage, still battling dog fur without anything breaking so far. On my recommendation, a friend of mine bought the same and the power 'trigger' broke after approx 3 years, which wasn't great. I think they had trouble repairing it, but that could happen with any device, I guess.

Before I made the purchase I read several reviews.....mostly postive. The biggest negative that I came accross was the short battery life when on Max suction. The instructions tell you exactly what the battery life will be so it is not a surprise. On Max it is 7 minutes. Regular it is more like 35 to 40. You don't need max suction all the time and if you want to clean a room at a time just charge it. Once you get the max all over you will rarely need it on max anymore. I had a 12 year old Dyson upright that I replaced. I can see why Dyson is only going to make the cordless Vacs from now on. There is not reason for not having a cordless. It will replace most of your Vacs. It is so easy to use and put on new parts for different cleaning. The Max suction is really hard to believe. The first clean produced enough dust and dirt that my house was not nearly as clean as I thought. I also have a Roomba which I love but this could easily replace. No cards make it easy to pull out and clean real quick. I have only had for a week but at this point I can't say enough positive things about it. If you are on the fence go ahead and buy it. It is worth the price and really does a good job on rugs as well as tile floors.

UPDATE 11/9/17: I failed to mention that we have hard-wood floors throughout our entire house with a couple of large area rugs, when sweeping the area rugs I notice that my hand hurts a bit between my thumb and pointer finger, I mention this because another reviewer said that her hand hurts while using this vacuum so if you have a lot of carpet I could see this happening. But, I still love this vacuum! LOVE this vacuum! I'm going to start the review with the length of time of charge because that was important to me prior to buying, I have yet to run the battery out. That being said, I never use it on max suction because it picks up the hair and dirt very well on the regular setting. I have used it upstairs and downstairs as well as the stairs without loosing the charge, those days I always have 1 bar left before I plug it back in. Most days I use it on the lower level only and usually have 2 bars left. We are not a family that obsesses about cleanliness, we wear our shoes in the house, we live on a farm with two dogs and we still do not have grass (a new build), so you can imagine the amount of dirt we track in. I originally bought this vacuum to help maintain the dust and dog hair in between major house cleanings but found that I use it along with my corded vacuum as well. It has capabilities that a normal vacuum just doesn't have. I'm able to sweep under all the beds because it lays completely flat, I run it over the dog beds and around the toilets and under cabinets. I have used all the parts that came with it, I especially love the fabric tool, we have a heavy duty cover on our leather couch and I simply use the fabric tool to completely sweep off all dirt and dog hair, very good on upholstery and underneath cushions. It is very easy to empty the canister, I usually empty it once during my cleanings and at the end, it's also easier to empty if you detach the wand while emptying. The roll bar is very easy to clean if anything winds around it, which doesn't happen that often most things go right in to the canister. We are a Dyson loving family, I started with a DC07 animal 15 years ago until it started to lose suction, I then used the DC33 for a bit but bought another DC07 refurbished just recently because they just work better in my opinion. After talking with a local vacuum shop, I found out that the motors are the same whether you buy the animal or the regular/all floor model, at least that's the case with my DC07, they said the only difference is the colors and attachments. They also said that I probably could have fixed my first DC07 at little cost (mad at myself about that) and that regular maintenance is a really good idea. You better believe I'll maintain these two from now on, they aren't cheap but so worth the price! Good luck!

I was hesitant to buy this because it’s quite expensive, but I’m so glad I did as I’m in love with this vacuum! It’s everything I’ve been looking for, with the exception of the battery life, which definitely only lasts about 20 minutes and not the 40 that’s advertised. However, even that’s mostly manageable since I live on the second floor of a house and can vacuum most of it within that time frame—once I have my own house I will definitely have to break cleaning up across multiple days as the battery wouldn’t be able to keep up, but I will worry about that when it happens. Prior to this one, I bought a different stick vacuum that was cheaper but it couldn’t handle all of the fur my two cats create so I returned it (and it didn’t have a wall mount which made storing it difficult). I also have a corded vacuum that works well enough, but it’s a hassle to get around my mostly hardwood house; I could only talk myself into getting it out about once a month, which meant I was spending WAY too much time hand sweeping up fur and way too little time de-furring my limited carpeted areas (and now that I have experienced this cordless vacuum, I feel like I’m the person struggling in an infomercial every time I pull out my corded one). This one is so convenient that I’m cleaning more often *and* spending less time overall. If I notice a clump of fur on the floor on my way out the door in the morning, it takes two seconds to grab this vacuum and suck it up. It successfully picks litter up out of the 2' x 3' area of tight loop carpet (like found in office buildings) that my landlord insisted upon installing in my entry way that my corded vacuum doesn’t do anything on. I have 6 dining room chairs with black fabric seats that my white/light grey cats love to sit on and now instead of spending an hour trying to get the fur off with various tools (rubber gloves, rubber squeegee, lint roller, a handheld tool that’s supposed to vacuum fur up but doesn’t actually work, etc...) I switch the attachment and get the fur off in less than 10 minutes. The crevice tool easily fits under my couch and cabinets, as well as into corners and other tight spaces I could never satisfactorily clean before. Tl;dr: Pros: * Easy to use/lightweight * Comes with a wall mount * Can handle the fur and stray litter from two cats * Works on my hardwood floors, carpets and rugs of varying pile length, and microfiber furniture Cons: * Battery life * I’m told I have to clean the filter once a month and I’m not looking forward to that

I just opened this today and used it for the first time. We live in a small house (just under 1000sf) with hard floors and various area rugs (one is a Moroccan rug with thick pile). I was impressed with the suction power (the amount of dust I pulled up from the Moroccan rug was disgusting but in a good way when you're talking in vacuum terms), it is really lightweight for me (I'm a 5'6" 125 lb woman in her mid 30's), and it's pretty quiet for a vacuum this small and mighty. Plus I love that it's cordless! For me, the 40 minutes of time is fine bc we have a smaller house, but I could see how that might be a problem for those with bigger jobs. I will provide an update after a few months, but my first impression is how did I ever do without this thing? I had a Miele stick vacuum which was soooo heavy and, according to my housekeeper, didn't work well. I feel like this product is perfect for me and my use and it's so light and easy to use it makes me want to vacuum daily...is that weird ;) it is pricey, so maybe try going for an older model as I don't think there is necessarily a huge difference. For me, this was worth the investment because of ease of use, weight, cord free, works really well, I'm getting a dog soon too so this model I've heard is great for pet hair. I'm impressed and if it reallly does it's job for many years, I will not hesitate to buy another Dyson in the future. It's not cheap, but I do believe in this case you get what you pay for. I'm a stickler for things like good design and ease of use, and this fits the bill perfectly. I don't even mind that you have to hold the on button to activate it because it probably saves the battery and it's not really a hard/sticky button to keep pushed down. Buy it, you won't regret it, and you'll save because you won't have to replace your vacuum that may have been cheaper but broke a year later...

This Dyson has truly impressed us -- there are many pros and very, very few cons. We have rescued herding dogs for nearly 20 years and have been through a number of battery-operated vacuums for quick cleaning. Our house floors can look like those in the barn pretty quickly if we don't stay on top of it. We stopped purchasing battery/hand vacuums for many years because of such poor experience with their suction and longevity so we've been using a broom instead, but it misses smaller dust particles and strands of fur will take flight. But, WOW, the Animal is also excellent for getting under low furniture profiles. The pivot ball on the big vac head turns 90-deg, allowing you to run along the back wall under a dresser or similar, where fur likes to find a resting spot. Overall, my house is and feels so much cleaner because this was, hands-down, one of our best Amazon purchases of the year. The V8 Animal shines in its engineering of balancing weight, "bag" capacity, suction, duration, ease of use. It easily picks up long fur, sand, little rocks, small torn toy pieces, firewood bits, etc. We have hardwood floors but have used it on waterhog door mats with decent success on "Max Suction." Some fir needles remain in the grooves/valleys -- our "wired" main vac gets most stubborn ones but not all. 1) SIZE & WEIGHT: Well-balanced all around. It only started to feel a little heavy after vacuuming cushions on the sofas, which was more about handling/turning large cushions with one hand and the vac with the other. 2) DURABILITY: As some reviews mentioned, the plastic seems a little thin but thicker would only add to the weight and certainly overall size. I was worried, at first, given how much it cost, but the plastic appears to be plenty strong and thick on the vacuum itself and the brush heads. We take a little care when inserting and removing it from the wall charger just because of connections and moving parts, but it's not delicate by any means. The wall unit is perhaps where thicker plastic would have been good. I wouldn't change the design of the hand vac and accessories at all. 3) DIRT CYLINDER: The capacity of the cylinder is plenty. It may look small, but everything gets whirled tightly. Also, it was so easy to hold the unit over the trash bin and let the dirt fall out of the cylinder from below. I didn't notice that the dirt capacity as being a problem. This part of the hand unit is so well designed that emptying it is a cinch. We are a tad careful when closing the bottom flap. Again, we are cognizant of moving parts and small joints/connections. (I'm pretty heavy-handed with stuff overall.) 4) SUCTION & RUN TIME: The lighter suction option allows the unit to run longer. As I said, I used the max suction for the doormats, but it is not necessary for the hardwood floors. The suction may seem light only because the unit runs quietly. I have experienced the suction power as plenty sufficient and the max power to be most excellent. I want to say that the battery lasts longer than I expected but haven't timed it (without releasing the trigger for the whole time). The duration has been just fine. I run it until the battery is dead, and then charge it up again. I'm ready to move on to something else anyway. This vac is intended for smaller/quicker jobs. 4) BRUSH HEADS: Relative to the suction gap at the baseboards when coming head-on with the large vac head, it has been nearly negligible on hard floors and simple to address with the head making a right angle. Most vacuums have corner/side suction anyway. Plus, the engineering put in the accessory connections is wonderful. There is no pulling-pushing on the brush with a friction connection; instead, there is a button to click them on/off. A small detail but it makes using this vacuum so appealing and allows more energy for cleaning efforts. I have come to like the little brush tool that is oblong. It works great as a duster.

Forever I’ve been looking for a lightweight vacuum to clean my partial tile / carpet house of dog hair and soil debris from the little guy running in and out of the doggie door. If this is your concern, this is the vacuum for you. I haven’t tested all the vacuums in this category nor do I have the time. I think I just lucked out. It is superb on tile floors and works great on the carpet. I have a 2500 square foot house and it cleans the downstairs in one charge with no problem. Having said that...there is no way it will clean all 2500 in one charge. But who vacuums the entire house in one sitting (so to speak)? I’d need at least a whole bottle of wine for that. So, having said that, it is a wonderful vacuum for what it’s designed for. I bring out my Bissle wet vac about once a month after buying this vac. Saves a ton of time. Suction does not take place of my upright but I only have to use the upright an eighth of the time. Very lightweight, suction is great and saves me hours per week cleaning up after the pup. This does not replace an upright but if you are like me and just need a quick tidy up for guests, this sill save you hours and you can concentrate on the important things like what kind of wine you will be serving. Buy it...$200 won’t break the bank and you will have those few extra hours per week to concentrate on the important things in life and not killing you dog. Cheers bitches!

J'ai bcp apprécié sa qualité d'aspiration et sa maniabilité

I really like the fact that the vacuum really deep cleans, removing all dust particles and pet hair from the carpets and also dust and debris from the floor. The vacuum is light weight and easy to move around. The battery life is long enough for me to complete my household cleaning. An excellent machine!

Non dovrebbe esser difficile per un'azienda come Dyson capire che se si spedisce un prodotto da UK in Italia ci vuole la presa di corrente italiana, non quella inglese! Consiglio a chi comprerà questi prodotti di assicurarsi che il fornitore sia localizzato in Italia e se del caso assicurarsi che la spina elettrica sua quella giusta.

Klasse

Llegó antes de lo esperado. Es la segunda vez que la pido (una fue para mí y otra para un familiar) Ambas llegaron en perfecto estado y antes de lo previsto. La aspiradora es una maravilla, vale cada centavo que cuesta. Es muy fácil de usar, se mueve sin dificultad, viene con todos los aditamentos necesarios y aspirar con ella es súper sencillo. Recoge pelusa, polvo y pelo de gato sin problema. La usamos para superficies de madera, loza, alfombra, tapete de hilo corto y tapices. Se carga rápido y la batería en succión normal dura un buen rato, vivimos en casa y con que esté cargada al 100% podemos aspirar la salsa, el comedor, la cocina, el family room, el baño, el pasillo de entrada y el patio (con todo y esquinero y aspirar los tapices)