Dyson DC40 Animal Lightweight Dyson Ball Upright Vacuum Cleaner

Product Information

The second crevice tool is longer still and has a rubber section that telescopes out. This section is flexible, allowing you to bend the tool around corners and under low objects. Two smaller tools are for use on the end of this part. A small dusting brush is ideal for delicate jobs, and you get an obscure-looking flat tool with suction nozzles all over it. Go for the Ball Animal Complete and you get two more attachments. The first is a mattress tool, which is essentially a 188mm wide version of the 118mm stair tool. Lastly, there’s the reach-under tool, which is a slimmer, bendy crevice tool. It comes with its own slim dusting brush, for really reaching into hard-to-clean spaces, such as behind radiators or furniture. In fact, Dyson’s cleaners have never been mains power-hungry monsters. They’ve often consumed much less energy than rivals anyway. With a 900W power limit to with which to comply, you might think an 899W motor would be the way forward. Not so – the Light Ball has a 700W motor and an annual estimated consumption of just 28kWh. That’s a solid A-rating for efficiency and less than a fiver of electricity per year.

One of the filters is housed in the middle of the Root Cyclone gubbins at the top of the bin. This is much like the main filter on the V-series cordless models, only bigger. The second filter is hidden in one half of the ball. Unscrew the purple plastic ‘nut’ at the wheel hub, remove a half-wheel and rotate the filter to remove. We struggled with this, though. Removing the bin from the cleaner is via a simple button press. Emptying then involves pushing the same button again to release the flap at the bottom of the bin. This has a chunky rubber seal and is an unusual shape to accommodate some pipework near the ball. The upshot being that the flap needed a little extra help to pull open. This isn’t onerous, but these are unusual design hiccups for Dyson.Yet getting down close and personal with the carpet pile revealed some heavier grains of powder left behind. Not at the edge, where you might expect, but the few inches into the room. Odd. Much crawling around examining the floor head in action ensued. Both suction and the level of airflow are very good. That translates directly into excellent cleaning on both floor types and when using the tools. At its heart is Dyson’s proven Radial Root Cyclone bagless technology. Multiple cyclones claim to optimise airflow and capture dust and allergens in the bin, rather than jettisoning them into your room. This eases the strain on the cleaner’s filter system, allowing Dyson to fit just two washable lifetime filters. That is top-spec, A-rated dust emission. On a straight staircases, getting all the way to the top is even easier. The only caveat to the Light Ball’s usability on stairs is the long wand. You do end up holding the wand a long way from the business end of the cleaning. This simply isn’t as easy as using a handheld cordless cleaner, for example. On hard floor it missed about 1g, collecting 25g. Most of this seemed to fall out when I moved the vacuum away from the cleaning zone, so had perhaps got trapped somewhere before making it to the collection bin when I thought the clean was finished. However, it’s still almost perfect, and cleared easily with a second pass.

Issues come when using the detail tools. With no mini-motorised tool, grafting hairs from our stair carpet took a fair bit of elbow grease using the upholstery tool. You had to go over patches a few times to clear the area completely. They did clear though – which is more than some cleaner’s hand tools manage. Anyone looking for Dyson vacuuming power in a large house with hairy pets is going to find the consistent, heavy-duty cleaning prowess of the Dyson Ball Animal a real boon. However, it doesn’t come without its caveats. READ NEXT: The best handheld vacuum cleaners to buy Dyson Ball Animal Complete review: Should I buy it?Dyson engineers must have something of a personal issue with crevices. The Light Ball comes with three individual tools for getting into nooks, crannies and other awkward spots. The main crevice tool is ported from other models in the range, is suitably long and has a slide-down soft dusting brush. Flour is a tougher customer, and we test with a 50g spillage. Here the Dyson did particularly well, collecting 49g from hard floor and 48g from carpet. Usually we see some dust residue in these tests but I really couldn’t see the missing flour on the floor in either of these tests. I suspect it was probably trapped in nooks and crannies around the vacuum’s various parts, though it’s nothing that wouldn’t get dislodged by fluff if you went on to give a carpet a good clean afterwards.