First Impressions of the New Dyson 360 Vis Nav Robotic Vacuum

The first thing I noticed when I unboxed the 360 Vis Nav was Dyson’s iconic purple color and fluffy brush roll. On top of its D-shaped body is a small, round LCD screen and camera.

Cleaning performance: It’s been a month and still I haven’t picked up my upright vacuum to clean my floors once since I started trying the Dyson 360 Vis Nav. Post-dinner kitchen cleanup is so much easier, and the constant barrage of hair in my bathroom after I do my hair in the morning is something I don’t worry about anymore. 

After my first week with this Dyson robotic vacuum, I did a few things that could have affected its performance for the rest of the month I tried it. First, I stopped emptying the dustbin after every cleaning session and instead opted to wait until I received an alert that the bin was full. A full month later I still haven’t received the alert to empty the dustbin. There’s a huge amount of hair and debris in the transparent bin, but the 360 Vis Nav has continued cleaning as usual.

I also adopted a 13-month-old male cat, Frank, who shed so much the first two days that I thought I was never going to be living in a clean space again. Besides scaring the living daylights out of Frank (who is afraid of most things that make noise or move), Eve (yes, I named the robovac after the sleek robot from the movie “Wall-E”) had no trouble picking up every bit of cat hair. And instead of grabbing my broom to sweep up the litter Frank kicked out of the litterbox each time he used it, I sent the Dyson robot to clean it up for me. Every time was a success. Before I sent the robot out to clean the bathroom I removed the silicone litter-trapping mat from the floor to prevent the robotic vac from suctioning the mat as it cleaned.

Fast mapping and easy map changes: The first thing I sent the robot out to do was create a map of my apartment. In my experience, mapping is usually required before a robotic vacuum can start cleaning, but the app let me decide if I wanted to map now or later.

Per the instructions on the app, I picked up any loose items I had lying around my place that could block the robot’s passage through the space, like shoes and my work bag. Thirty-five minutes later, the robot was finished mapping my home and the app asked if I wanted to label any of the rooms. My apartment is just 518 square feet, with standard doorways and no carpets or rugs. (I hate thinking about the dirt that gets stuck in a rug’s fibers.)

I thought I did a good job setting the boundaries of each room in my home. Later, when I sent Eve out for a cleaning of just my living room, I was puzzled when it cleaned only the part farthest away from my bedroom door. Upon closer inspection of my map zones, I realized I had labeled a large chunk of my living room as being part of the bedroom. Oops! But it was an easy fix through the app, and Eve quickly cleaned all of my living room just a few minutes later. During this and all other cleaning sessions during our month together, the robot didn’t require a return to the dock to recharge before it could complete a cleaning task.

Easy troubleshooting: I usually vacuum my kitchen every night after I’m done cleaning up after dinner. Through the MyDyson app, I decided to set a daily schedule for Eve to clean the kitchen floors at 9 p.m. instead of my usual vacuuming routine. One night the robot started its nightly cleaning, and a few minutes later, I started hearing more noise than usual in my kitchen. I figured it was Eve increasing the suction on a particularly messy spot. A few minutes later, I still heard the same noises, so I got up to investigate. What I found was that the robotic vac had suctioned one of the straps of my work bag and dragged it through the entryway into the kitchen. The bag wasn’t heavy—it contained an umbrella, a small toiletry bag with makeup, and some paper, but I was still surprised to find that it had been relocated by the robot.

I was worried that Eve would have to start the cleaning task over again, or worse, that I’d have to cut the bag strap to remove it from the robot’s brush roll. With a click to the onboard LCD screen, I paused the current cleaning task, pulled the strap out of the robot’s brush roll, and then sent the robot back to work. I later checked the MyDyson app and found that I received an alert about the bag getting stuck in the robot, but it didn’t stop the robotic vacuum from trying to work. My bag wasn’t damaged after this incident, and besides this small hiccup, scheduled cleanings went smoothly for me. 

Instinctive lighting: I was sitting on my couch watching TV when I first noticed a bright light coming from my previously dark bedroom. Eve was cleaning under my bed, and to make sure it got a good look at all the dust bunnies I’d been pretending not to see for the last couple of weeks, it turned on a bright light at the top of its body to illuminate the area. When it was finished, it turned the light off as it moved into the brightly lit living room. 

Innovative edge cleaning: After the Dyson was finished cleaning the center of any room, it went back to clean along the edges. To do so, the 360 Vis Nav has a neat retractable edge cleaning feature that activates only when the robot senses there are edges in the room that need to be cleaned. After the robot finished, it quietly retracted the “side-actuator.” If I hadn’t been watching the vacuum closely, I wouldn’t even notice it. 

Furniture bumping: I started to notice a pattern when the robot was making its way from my kitchen to the living room. In the small space between these two areas, I have a turntable stand that the vacuum seemed to have a hard time seeing. Almost every time it passed through this area, Eve bumped into the stand, sometimes more than once in a single cleaning session. The stand has a small space between the bottom and the floor that I think Eve is trying to get under, but when it finds that it doesn’t fit, it tries a few more times before it finally gives up and drives away. 

This robotic vacuum has some pretty serious wheels (think rough terrain tires on an ATV), making it great for climbing over high thresholds as it moves. But I find that it also tries to climb things that it shouldn’t be cleaning.

The storage ottoman in the center of my living room is one example. The robovac tried (and failed) to climb the 4-inch-tall base of it every time it passed by. While it didn’t cause any damage and gave up pretty quickly once it realized it couldn’t climb the thing, it was a bit annoying to hear the telltale sound of the robot once again stuck on something that it had already encountered numerous times before. It’s like it had no memory of ever having traversed my home. 

To stop the 360 Vis Nav from trying to climb my ottoman, I set a no-climb restriction for all of my living room. This meant that whenever the robot was cleaning this space, it would not try to climb over any obstacles it came across. Eve still bumped the ottoman but no longer tried to climb it, instead backing up and turning in a new direction. When it reached another side, it repeated the process—bumping, backing up, and turning. I’d call this fix a success. Two other restrictions—avoid area and no brush bar—are also available through the app, but I didn’t try those features.

Getting lost: The robot got lost twice when it tried to make its way back to the charging dock. The first time was when Eve was completing the mapping of my apartment. I chalked this up to first-day jitters—maybe it was having trouble getting acquainted with the new space. It kept trying to go through a wall instead of around it to get to its dock. After about 7 minutes of bumping, reversing, and rebumping into the wall, I decided I would just lift the poor thing and place it on the other side of the wall, where it quickly parked itself into its small parking space.

The second time this happened was exactly one week into our living together. Through the app, I instructed the robot to return to the dock after cleaning my living room, kitchen, and bedroom. Instead of heading toward the bathroom hall, where I set up the dock, the robot turned in the direction of my dining table. There, it spent the next 5 minutes moving forward and backward under the table but never making any move in the direction of the dock. Again, I lifted the robot, placed it closer to the dock, and watched it finally make its way home. 

After watching my unboxing video, the Dyson team asked if I had noticed any issues with the robot’s ability to navigate back to its charging dock. Because I had, they suggested I move the dock a few inches to the left, farther away from the edge of the hallway wall I had set it up on. I remapped my apartment and have run the Dyson twice since making the change. Since then, it hasn’t gotten lost again.

High price and lack of features: The Dyson 360 Vis Nav Robot costs a whopping $1,199. Considering there are plenty of other robotic vacuums that come equipped with additional features—like a self-emptying base and mopping features—for comparable prices, it’s a bit steeper than I expected (even for a Dyson). iRobot’s highly rated s9+ includes a self-emptying base and costs a little less ($1,000) than the Dyson. Roborock’s S8 Pro Ultra costs $400 more but mops and self-empties too.

Living with the Dyson 360 Vis Nav for a month has been pretty great. If I’m honest, I’m not looking forward to going back to my upright vacuum. Who doesn’t love a more automated way of keeping their home clean? Even so, it’s hard to defend the price. It isn’t the best robotic vacuum our team has tested and is lacking some features that are important to me, like a self-emptying base and mopping capabilities, but it still gets the job done.