Dyson DC35 Vacuum Cleaner Review

(Image from Dyson Australia)

As I’ve mentioned previously, my kids (ok, my husband) bought me a vacuum cleaner for Mother’s Day. Normally, I’d be annoyed to receive such a practical and boring gift, but this wasn’t any old vacuum cleaner. It was the Dyson DC35 cordless Digital Slim vacuum cleaner. Now that I’ve used it for more than a month, it’s time for a full review.

Firstly, it looks like a handheld vacuum cleaner on steroids. The chemical engineer in me loves looking at the little cyclones. It’s really light and easy to take upstairs (vacuuming the stairs as I go) or to quickly grab it after a messy meal with the kids. Then it’s so easy to just keep whipping around the house since you don’t have to worry about a cord or changing power outlets.

It comes with a full-size hose attachment with a medium floor attachment, as well as a crevice  attachment and brush that converts into a straight nozzle. The attachments click into a clip and are released by pressing a button and pulling them off.

It feels nice and sturdy when clicked on and you can’t push them on too far and not be able to remove them. However, it is a little annoying to have to bend down to unclick the floor attachment (rather than just pulling it off with your foot) when you want to quickly clean a crevice.

The floor attachment has a rotary brush inside, which I’m sure does wonders for picking up extra dirt, but my long blonde hair just gets wrapped around it. Another thing for me to clean! It is easy enough to detach the brush for cleaning though.

It also comes with a storage bracket, that I’m not using. It lives on a shelf in my laundry, with a power cord that easily plugs in for charging. It’s a smart charger, so you can leave it plugged in without over-charging the battery.

There are two modes for vacuuming – normal and max. Normal is great for hard surfaces (floorboards, tiles etc) and max is for carpet. The battery gives you about 15 minutes vacuuming on normal and 7.5 minutes on Max. When operating, it sounds like a hairdryer and is not as loud as a full-size vacuum cleaner (drat, I can still hear the toddler’s incessant whingeing!). 15 minutes doesn’t sound like long, but it’s perfect for a quick whip around my floorboard-covered house and I’m amazed how much I can get done before the battery conks out. Actually, most times I’ve lost interest before the battery dies.

The vacuum is operated by a trigger and you can’t lock the trigger on, so you have to continuously squeeze the trigger. For the first week or so, this caused a bit of strain on my hand and wrist, but after using it most days for a month, my muscles have built up!

So how well does it clean? It easily picks up the crumbs under the high chair and Little Man’s dining chair (and scattered through the house).  Larger and softer pieces of food (such as sultanas, small pieces of pasta) get pushed around and are harder to vacuum up (and not being able to pull the floor attachment off with my foot makes it a little more hassle to try to suck stuff up with just the hose).

You may have noticed this foam play mat as the backdrop to a lot of photos with my kids (in our playroom). I love that the DC-35 picks up any dirt and crumbs, but the play mat itself doesn’t stick to the vacuum. So much easier to clean!

It’s a bagless cyclonic vacuum, so no bags to pay for, but  I have to get a bit closer than I’d like to the spiders and bugs I vacuum up (yep, no problems vacuuming up creepy-crawlies) when emptying it. There is a slider to open the waste barrel (the red clip in the photo above), so my hand doesn’t have to get too close (but once again, my long hair gets caught so I have to reach in to get things moving!)

Overall, I love the Dyson DC35 vacuum cleaner. It is so quick and easy to do a quick vacuum and I’m staying on top of the crumbs and other dirt that comes with having a toddler. I still need a normal vacuum cleaner for a full deep-clean of your house though.

Note: My husband paid for this vacuum cleaner. This is an unsolicited review.