Dyson’s PencilVac Fluffycones review: a delightful, entirely unnecessary vacuum

As The Verge’s resident robot vacuum reviewer, I don’t have a lot of time (or space) in my life for stick vacs, and frankly, the ones I have used have largely disappointed me. Top-heavy, bulky, always getting clogged or running out of battery — they’re so… manual. But then I met PencilVac Fluffycones, Dyson’s new $599 cordless stick vacuum, and it was love at first lift.

The name PencilVac Fluffycones perfectly describes this delightfully overengineered broom. If more vacuums had such whimsical names, my life would be much fuller. It’s very thin and light, like a pencil, and it has fluffy, cone-shaped rollers that glide across floors as if they’re flying.

While I do not recommend buying this as a tool to clean your entire home (it doesn’t clean carpets!), with its slim design and easy maneuverability, I’ve found it to be a great complement to a robot vacuum. The robot can do the hard work of vacuuming and mopping your floors, and this lightweight machine, which sits prettily in a magnetic charging dock, can be on hand for touch-ups and when it’s time to tackle stairs and baseboards.

Touted by Dyson as “the world’s slimmest vacuum cleaner,” the PencilVac fits all its components into its 1.5-inch-diameter handle, which runs the length of the vacuum. Packed in here are the electronics, the battery, the dustbin, and a tiny 28mm-diameter motor that spins at 140,000 RPM to generate 55 air watts of suction.

This is the same motor as in Dyson’s Supersonic R hair dryer, and the handle is the same width around, so you’re basically using a reverse hair dryer to clean your floors.

Impressively, the PencilVac weighs less than four pounds and, combined with its maneuverability enabled by four caster rollers that allow it to pivot in multiple directions, it’s as easy to handle as a broom or Swiffer. Even my husband, who just had major shoulder surgery, was able to use it to clean the kitchen floor with no issues.

The PencilVac’s other unique selling point is its fluffycones — four fluffy, cone-shaped roller bars in the vacuum’s head. The idea is that long hair should move down the four cones and out from the edge of the vacuum, then be sucked up with a swipe. In practice, this worked fairly well, unless the aforementioned bundle of hair got too thick — in which case, it couldn’t always suck it up.

While the PencilVac looks and moves like a broom, it also kind of vacuums like one. Its suction power is half that of Dyson’s lowest-end cordless stick vacuum, the V8. It does great on dust, small tufts of hair, and lightweight debris like Cheerios and dried oatmeal. But give it anything thicker to tackle, and you’ll be frustrated.

This is why it works well as an add-on to a robot vacuum that regularly sweeps and mops your floors. Judging by Dyson’s press images, it’s also being marketed as a stylish option for those who live in immaculate apartments that are magically mostly spotless.

Unless you live in one of those apartments, I don’t see the PencilVac working as a primary vacuum for cleaning your house, especially if you have any carpets or rugs. But for quick touch-ups and getting dust bunnies off stairs — two areas robot vacuums don’t really do (one not easily, and the other not at all … yet) — it’s a great, albeit expensive, solution.

Less cumbersome than any stick vac I’ve used, it is super easy to use on stairs, and it was simple to find a space for its small, slim dock in a kitchen or bathroom, areas where you might want a high-powered broom on hand.

It’s more maneuverable than a stick vac, pivoting smoothly to go around furniture legs and lying completely flat to get under sofas and beds.

For deeper cleaning, the PencilVac’s included crevice tool/dusting attachment did a good job on baseboards and windowsills, and could reach up to lights and cobwebby corners. It also easily got into spaces robot vacuums can’t — like the gap behind the TV console.

I’ve only been using it for a couple of days, but I quickly got used to the lack of a handle. It really is just like using a broom.

The biggest problem is suction; it’s not a powerful vacuum, especially compared to Dyson’s stick vacs. It struggles with larger clumps of dirt and anything bigger than a fluffy dust bunny. As mentioned, it just flat-out doesn’t work on carpet.

It also only runs for 30 minutes on low and around 20 minutes on medium, which I found myself using most often. (There is a boost mode for some extra power.) All of which makes it great for a quick touch-up, but not for a whole-house clean.

One other thing to note: this is Dyson’s first stick vacuum to connect to the My Dyson app. This isn’t a plus, at least not yet. Functionally, it’s limited to software updates and filter-cleaning alerts. It also uses Bluetooth, so you have to be near the vacuum to update it, and the app kept insisting that I give it permanent access to my location for no clear reason.

Between the limited suction, short runtime, and inability to handle carpet, the PencilVac Fluffycones isn’t even pretending to be a whole-home cleaner. If you’re looking for a proper house cleaner in this price range, Dyson’s V8 Absolute is a better choice. It’s under six pounds and has twice the suction. While slightly less maneuverable, it will pick up all the dirt and clean your carpets, baseboards, and everything else.

But is it as fun as the PencilVac? Not even close. The PencilVac is Dyson at its best: a wildly overengineered device that’s delightful to use, entirely unnecessary, but something you’re probably going to really want anyway.

Photos by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge