The Dyson V12 Detect Slim Absolute cordless vacuum cleaner might just persuade you to ditch your corded model. It has up to 60 minute of run time in Eco mode, adaptive suction power based on a piezo sensor that counts and displays a graph of what’s been sucked up on the colour LCD display and a generous assortment of accessories including a super efficient motorised head with a laser beam to help you find dirt.
I’ll run through all its features and fully test its performance to see if it’s the right cordless vacuum for you. Let’s take a closer look.
Overview
It’s not so straightforward covering what comes with a Dyson vacuum since it varies considerably depending not only on the range of models available, but in what region you purchase the vacuum. Here in the UK, the V12 currently comes in two variants: the Absolute and Absolute + – the only difference being an additional mattress tool with the + model. But in the US there’s a standard model not available in the UK and an Absolute model but no + model. But the Absolute model is better equipped than the + model in the UK and comes with the mattress tool, soft dusting brush and the up-top adapter. And if you look at other countries like France they get different accessories again. All these accessories are on top of the standard accessories I’ll discuss shortly, that appear to come with all V12 vacuums.
To add to the confusion I purchased my V12 from Dyson’s outlet store on eBay, and it didn’t come with the low reach adapter, but with a soft dusting brush instead.
Although this version is meant to be refurbished everything about it looks brand new, so I’d definitely take a look at their outlet store if you want to save some money.
Everything comes neatly packaged as you’d expect. In the box I got the soft roller head with a built in laser for hard floors, the motorised cleaner head for carpets and general use, a crevice tool, the soft dusting brush, the general purpose combination tool, the hair screw tool for upholstery and pet hair, the charger, the docking station, the wand, the handy wand clip for attaching two accessories to the wand, the V12 itself, and a quick start guide.
You don’t need to install the docking station – you can just charge the vacuum with the supplied charger directly, and you can even remove the battery and charge just that if you purchase a second battery.
But the dock is a handy way to store the vacuum and keep it charged. And there are two storage slots for accessories or the complete wand with floor attachment.
You install the rear section of the dock to your wall with the provided screws and wall plugs, route the charger cable and then the main section snaps into place and. I wasn’t overly impressed with the dock – it really felt like something was going to snap even just putting it together. And sliding the vacuum in and out of the dock everything does feel a little flimsy considering its price, but it does do the job.
Two blue LEDs on the battery flash whilst it’s charging and the LCD display on the back of the unit shows the exact battery percentage.
The V12 comes with a replaceable 25.2V 2500mAh or 63Wh battery which takes 4.5 hours for a full charge with the supplied charger. The blue LEDs turn off when the vacuum is fully charged – and a single press of the button underneath the LCD display will show 100%.
All the attachments can connect directly to the vacuum or via the wand. That includes the 3 powered heads – the soft roller laser head, the direct drive cleaner head and the hair screw tool.
These accessories have two pins that draw power from the vacuum and aren’t necessarily interchangeable between all Dyson cordless models even if they physically fit, since they may have different power requirements. So you’ll need to check before trying to attach any other powered accessories you may have.
The vacuum and accessories are mostly made of plastic, but the build quality is good overall and it keeps the weight down. It weighs 1.5 kg with no attachments, 2.1 kg with the wand and soft roller attachment, and just under 2.4 kg swapping the soft roller for the motorised cleaner head. This is significantly lighter than the more powerful V15 and a big selling point for this vacuum. Together with its smaller size, it’s more suitable for tasks like cleaning the car.
Even with the two storage slots underneath the dock and the wand clip, you’ll still have various attachments without a home. I 3D printed a nifty wall mounted storage rack for these loose accessories.
The V12 has an on / off power button. Most of the other cordless models in Dyson’s range have a trigger button that you have to hold depressed. It makes the V12 easier and less tiring to use but you do need to remember to turn it off to save battery as you move around furniture etc. This power button is on the front of the vacuum which does seem an odd choice, since you need your second hand to operate it.
You can use the button underneath the LCD display to choose the vacuum’s power level. The default setting is medium or Auto if you have a motorised head attached. The auto mode will automatically adjust suction depending on dust levels. Then there’s the most powerful boost mode for maximum suction for stubborn dirt and Eco mode for the longest run time.
In operation the LCD display shows the remaining battery life as a countdown timer which adjusts dynamically depending on the level of suction. The display also shows a graph of the number of dust particles captured according to their size. This uses a piezo sensor inside the vacuum that can measure particles from 10 microns to 500 microns in size. It’s very clever and an interesting way to use the LCD screen, but I couldn’t really see any practical use for it while I was vacuuming. Perhaps if the Dyson’s Link app worked with their cordless vacuums, Dyson could provide some useful historical analysis from all this data.
With the display on, if you press and hold the display button you enter the settings menu. You can change the language, turn alerts off, turn off the particle count display and adjust the motor sensitivity. Press and hold this button to select a setting.
Even if you turn off Alerts, you’ll still get graphical information on any issues like a blockage or problem with the filter, but you won’t get the motor pulsing to alert you. If you turn off the particle count display, the machine will no longer automatically adjust suction power. I left all these settings at their defaults including the medium motor sensitivity which seemed to be just right.
The V12 has a pretty small 0.35 litre bin volume which helps keep its size down. When you reach the max markings on the bin, you’ll need to remove any attachments and press the red bin release button over your dustbin to eject the contents. You generally need to pull the lever back and forth a few times to ensure the entire contents are cleared. If you depress the red tab beside the open bin, you can fully remove the bin for easier cleaning.
You can also unscrew the rear filter for cleaning which Dyson recommends doing once a month. This filter can be cleaned under a tap and then left to dry completely for 24 hours before refitting. Ideally I’d purchase a spare so I can use the vacuum again straight away but I can’t find any stock currently in the UK.
Performance
The V12 uses 11 cyclones to generate 150 air watts in Boost mode according to Dyson. Air Watts are a combined measure of air flow and suction. Power in Watts in electronic circuits is Current (I) multiplied by Voltage (V) (P= IV). Think of air flow as current and voltage as suction to get air watts.
In comparison their more powerful and expensive V15 uses 14 cyclones to generate 230 air watts. But I was interested to see how this vacuum compares to a mains corded vacuum cleaner – specifically the popular Numatic Henry. Rather than measuring the raw suction power I wanted to measure the real suction power at the head using the Henry’s included head and both the soft roller head and general purpose motorised head with the Dyson.
Inspired by the “useful suction test” that Lupe uses to demonstrate their Lupe Pure Cordless Vacuum I built a sealed box that attaches to a digital manometer. Vacuum Wars covered this in more detail in this video.
I ran the cleaner heads over a small hole in the box to get a measurement for suction in kPa. I’m not sure of the absolute accuracy of the test, but it does give a pretty accurate and useful relative measurement to compare the two vacuums and their different head designs.
I disabled the auto-suction on the Dyson and measured the suction in Eco, Medium and Boost mode – moving the head all over the hole to measure the maximum suction. With the Henry I made sure the head was in hard floor mode with the gates closed for maximum suction. The Dyson general purpose head doesn’t have any gates to close so doesn’t perform particularly well in this test.
But with the better seal of the soft roller head it’s pretty close between the Dyson in Boost mode and the Henry with its 1100W motor which is very impressive.
You can see how the other modes compare in the above table.
In real use I found the Dyson even more impressive. I started off testing the soft roller head with the laser which is intended for hard floors. I expected the laser to be a gimmick, but it’s very effective. According to Dyson the laser shines a blade of light 7.3mm above the floor angled down 1.5°. You can turn this light off I guess to save a bit of battery, but I’m confident you won’t.
The light is genuinely useful for highlighting areas you might have missed, and works on both light and dark floors and you can even vacuum in the dark – in fact it’s even more effective with the lights off as you’d expect. And in the default Auto mode, you can hear the motor increase the suction when it encounters dirt and then ease off automatically when the vacuum has done its job. You can hear for yourselves in the accompanying video.
Like all the motorised heads, the dust roller spins independently which makes pick up more effective. It can’t quite pick up to the floor edge – but gets within one centimetre. This head is also effective with even larger dirt. Spreading 100g of rice it managed to pick up all of it quite easily.
I tried the general purpose motorised head on with the same test and it managed to pick up 99.2% of the rice. Unlike the V15 model this head included with the V12 doesn’t have gates that you can adjust depending on the floor surface as I alluded to earlier and generally isn’t as effective with hard floors, but you could use it if you don’t want to have to switch heads. This doesn’t apply the other way around – the dust roller is just for hard surfaces.
This motorised cleaner head is more intended for carpets, where it can beat the carpet with its rotating head that has a combination of hard and soft bristles. Just like with the soft roller it’s effortless using this vacuum compared to the Henry for example.
Partly because it’s not tethered to a cord, but it also just moves across even thick carpet more easily. And I found it performed much better than the Henry on thick and thin carpets, that looked spotless even just using the middle Auto setting. I really didn’t find it necessary to use the Boost mode most of the time with any of the motorised heads .
It picked up 100% of the rice on both the thick and thin carpet in Auto mode.
It did collect long hair from my wife and daughter at the edges of the roller, but it was fairly easy to clean out.
A big selling point with these cordless vacuums is their ability to quickly and easily transform into a portable vacuum for cleaning the stairs, upholstery and most importantly for me – the car. Simply detach the wand and install any of your preferred accessories directly into the vacuum. I even measured around 7% more useful suction at the head using the vacuum like this in Boost mode.
I cleaned the car using the soft roller for the boot and the hard floors and the crevice tool for the edges.
I also bought the stuff bristle brush for the carpets and used the powered hair screw tool for the seats.
This is a great tool for upholstery and if you have lots of hair to clean up its design should prevent it getting tangled in the head.
The V12 did a good job cleaning the car and it’s one area where its smaller size and weight versus the V15 is most useful. I also found it handy to clean around my computer with the soft dusting brush. Sometimes you will need Boost mode with some attachments like the crevice tool to pick up larger dirt, but that’s where the countdown timer proves very useful to see remaining battery life.
Battery life always raises most concerns with these cordless vacuums. The V12 manages just under one hour in Eco mode, around 35 minutes in Auto or Medium mode, and just over 6 minutes in Boost mode. I found in Auto mode that was enough to clean a 2 floor 3 bedroom house with a combination of hard floors and carpets.
The 0.35L bin is very small but typically I could get away emptying the bin after cleaning the whole house, although that will of course vary considerably in different homes. You do need to ensure the V12’s bin is submerged in your dustbin before ejecting its contents to avoid a cloud of dust. Something you do need to be careful with with bagless vacuums.
Although the quoted charge time of 4.5 hours seems a lot, I found I very rarely returned it the charger completely empty, and topping it up generally took less than 2 hours. The battery is only guaranteed for 2 years like the rest of the machine, in the UK at least, but I’ll have to report back on how it fares long term.
Speaking of the guarantee, the first thing I vacuumed up was fine dust from drilling holes in the wall for the dock. If you look online there are many comments mentioning this will void your warranty and that using the vacuum for DIY is not advised. I couldn’t find anything in the manual or online in the terms of the warranty mentioning this. But I did eventually find a section in the manual of the older V8 model that stated you shouldn’t use the vacuum for rubble, ash or plaster. In their marketing materials Dyson quote the V12’s cyclone technology can filter particles down to 0.3 microns.
That’s finer than my workshop Festool Midi vacuum cleaner intended for all sorts of DIY dust, so I imagine it’s ok using the V12 for occasional DIY use, but check with Dyson if you’re concerned.
Finally I measured the noise from the vacuum one metre away with a dB metre. In Eco mode it measured just 67 dB, 71 dB in Auto mode on average and only really sounds loud at 79 db in Boost mode. The Henry measured 77 dB in comparison.
Conclusions
Years ago I bought the Dyson DC34 cordless handheld vacuum. I was quite disappointed with this purchase at the time but 10 years on the V12 is a huge improvement. It’s 3 times more powerful, has far superior battery life, and the powered heads puts a lot of corded models to shame. Unless I had to pick up a lot of dirt, I would choose this cordless over the Henry most of the time.
You do still need to be mindful of battery life, but with the incredibly efficient powered heads I found 35 minutes in Auto mode more than enough to clean the house top to bottom. Its light weight and proper on off switch makes it pretty effortless to use too. I just wish the vacuum could stand self supported. With its mostly plastic build and thin aluminium wand it doesn’t feel particularly robust, which means you do have to be a little careful where you rest it when you have to move stuff around.
It’s not difficult switching heads, but I’d prefer a combined motorised head that was equally proficient vacuuming both hard floors and carpets. The motorised head does a decent job on hard floors, but it’s not as effective as the soft roller and I’m not sure why Dyson can’t include its useful laser technology or some other illumination on this head too.
If you’re choosing between this model and the more powerful V15, there are few things to consider. The V15 is almost 1kg heavier and together with its bigger size it’s less practical using it for jobs like cleaning the car. It’s also around £100 more expensive here in the UK. But you do get a more powerful machine with a dust bin that’s over twice the size.
These vacuums are a huge investment – the V12 starts at £530 in the UK. If you want to save some money, first check out the Dyson outlet store as I mentioned earlier. But also consider the V10 still available directly from Dyson, which doesn’t have the laser head, auto suction or flashy LCD display, but has almost exactly the same suction power and will do a similar cleaning job. And it has a bin over twice the size of the V12 – the same size as the V15’s.
Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!
Dyson V12 Detect Slim Absolute: https://ebay.us/44Xal9 (this is where I bought mine)
Dyson V12 Detect Slim Absolute: https://amzn.to/3cDiDck
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