Dyson just announced the PencilWash, a motorized wet floor cleaner that’s about the same size as a regular manual mop. This isn’t the first time Dyson has shrunk a traditionally bulky device: the PencilWash is a sister product to the Dyson PencilVac FluffyCones, an almost impossibly compact cordless vacuum.
The downsizing trend began in a less immediately visible way, in Dyson’s hair care department. The brand had already disrupted the hair care market with its original Supersonic hairdryer, but for its professional-only Supersonic r, it has redesigned its inner workings to be much more streamlined and “powerful.”
Dyson then decided that if it could make a hair dryer 1.5 inches/3.8 cm in diameter, surely it could also make a vacuum cleaner 1.5 inches/3.8 cm in diameter. Incredibly, it was a success: all the internal components of the PencilVac have been grouped into a handle the same width as the Supersonic r. To achieve this, the brand had to design a Hyperdymium 140k motor with a tiny width of 1.1 inches / 2.8 cm.
The same technology powers the PencilWash. And who knows where it will happen next – Dyson is clearly on a shrinking spree, and it would be foolish to stop there.
“We want to make machines smaller and lighter while significantly improving their performance,” says John Churchill, Dyson’s technical director. “The PencilWash… combines the simplicity of a broom with the precision and power of Dyson engineering.”
Small size; big victory
The benefits of downsizing a floor care machine are obvious. This makes it more maneuverable, more comfortable to use for long periods of time and able to access tighter spaces. However, some might dispute the “improved performance” claim, as there are knock-on effects that cannot be entirely ignored.
One is battery life. The PencilVac can only manage 30 minutes of cleaning per charge, whereas the best flagship Dyson vacuums can run for over an hour before needing to refuel.
Another is absolute power. Here, there’s an even bigger gap between the PencilVac and the rest of the range: even the decade-old V8 has twice the suction power of the PencilVac (115AW versus 55AW).
Finally, there is the inevitable lack of space. The PencilVac should have a small dust bin that should be emptied regularly, and the PencilWash should have small reservoirs for clean and dirty water.
For me, however, to focus on these things is to miss the point. The PencilVac and PencilWash aren’t meant to be the perfect choice for everyone, but they will be for some people. Plus, they offer something you can’t currently find anywhere else.
For example, the cordless vacuum cleaner market is full of vacuum cleaners offering considerable power and increasingly long battery life, but which are therefore heavy and bulky. If you have mostly hard floors, a small house, and hard-to-reach corners, super suction and endless battery won’t do you any good. What you need is a small, nimble, compact vacuum cleaner with just enough power to remove dust from your floor. This is exactly what the PencilVac offers.
Likewise, the PencilWash won’t swallow up massive spills like a suction wet-dry vacuum, but many homeowners rarely have to deal with that kind of mess and just want something that will clean their hard floors efficiently and hygienically.
What Dyson is doing is expanding the market to cater to a wider range of customers – and I can’t wait to see what gets the discount treatment next.
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