Dyson 360 Heurist Review

TechRadar found the 360 Heurist to be worthy of replacing a regular vacuum cleaner, providing a deep clean to the edges of a room. It was fiddly and did take quite a bit of time to set up, but once done did an excellent job. It also doesn’t come cheap, costing more than any of its competitors.

Pocket Lint highlighted the price of the 360 Heurist but felt it certainly did a lot to justify it thanks to impressive suction power and cleaning results. The small bin did count against it, it had to return to the dock often to charge and it was too tall to fit under some furniture, but overall was still considered to be an excellent robot vacuum cleaner.

Trusted Reviews praised the methodical cleaning of the 360 Heurist, finding it extremely powerful with a helpful flexible configuration meaning you could create detailed cleaning maps of your home. Set up was a little tricky and finding the right place for the charging dock was crucial, but once done it did a very good job of replacing a regular vacuum. One criticism was that it couldn’t be used to clean a single zone at a time.

I wanted this to be good but unfortunately it isn't good enough
After 10 days of trying I have given up and it will be returned. I have numerous issues with it but the clincher is the vacuuming. We have tiled floor throughout the ground floor and it doesn't matter what setting is used there is regularly something left behind especially adjacent to skirting boards and kitchen plinths. Secondary issues include: it took 4 attempts to map the area and this was very slow. During lockdown I wanted to do it overnight but it took me a while to realise you have to leave the lights on for it otherwise the mapping is not comprehensive enough. We are a busy household of six and again it makes sense for the Dyson to do its job overnight, however only the quiet setting didn't wake family members up but unfortunately this setting is not powerful enough. We have a large dining table that seats 12 and one night I didn't lift all the chairs out of the way and the Dyson got itself lost amongst the chair legs and ran out of battery before it was able to return to base. I could get used its shortcomings and work around them but not when its vacuuming just isn't good enough.

Surprisingly effective
We bought this robot vacuum after completing lots of research - the Dyson Heurist is well-reviewed by independent critics, so we were surprised by the mixed ratings on John Lewis. We have found the robot to be really effective in cleaning up our day-to-day dirt (mainly from the dog coming in/out of the house). The dog navigates itself around the downstairs very well (we haven't tried upstairs yet), and only had one mishap when it partially sucked up a fleece covering a chair. It needs about 1.5 charges to do a full clean, and total cleaning time (including charge) is about 2.5 hours. If only it could manage the stairs... I'm sure Dyson will find a way eventually...

Wasn't sold initially, now I'm consider another
This device isn't going to be for everyone, it has its faults - as do all Robovacs. Around 10 years ago I purchased what was then a top of the range Roomba, probably in a similar price bracket to this Dyson now. The Roomba lasted me 7-8 years, before it finally died. During this time many other (far, far, cheaper) devices came to the market, so I decided to take a chance and purchased a Eufy for about £175. The Eufy probably offered a comparable clean to my old Roomba, but it did still leave various 'bits' scattered around the house. As time went on, I got fed up of having to get the handheld vac out to 'finish off' - and also wanted an additional vac upstairs. So, I purchased another 'China Special' (Neatsvor X500) which offered a more 'intelligent' clean, but to be honest it was not even as good as the cheapy Eufy - absolutely horrendous on hardwood floors, where it would scatter more stuff around than pick up. Both of these devices could easily 'clean' an entire floor on 1 charge, but there would be bits of dirt, leaves brought in by the dogs etc left around the place at the end. These devices could be classed as a 'maintenance clean', which when we had our cleaner coming once a week was acceptable. Fast forward to now, with the current situation, where we're not comfortable having a cleaner in our house, and us liking a clean house, we took the plunge on the Dyson. I think I even ordered it a few times over the space of a week, talked myself out of it and cancelled when I read the terrible reviews, but I'm glad I did in the end order it. To start with, I'm not going to lie, I was going to return it after a few hours use. But, I persisted, and now after 4-5 days I'm completely sold. You do have to change your mindset and exceptions when coming from another robot vac: - This isn't going to clean an entire floor on 1 charge. But, if you compare the quality of the clean with the cheaper robots, if you had to run the cheaper robot 5-6 times to achieve the same result, it's comparable - Yes, it's slower. But the quality of the cleaning compared to others is incomparable - When you map floors initially give the robot a fighting chance, put chairs on tables, basically pick everything up off the floor, other than sofas, dining tables, etc. - If you have visible cables around the place (we don't) use the restrictions feature in the app to turn off the roller in certain areas - Once mapped, you can replace things. But, to be honest, I still put chairs on tablets, pick up dog toys etc - If your house is messy, this isn't going to work for you. Simple as that. Buy a cheap robot, then moan about that instead. Initially I was also horrified at the quoted 6-8 hours to clean the upstairs... 'I don't want this thing wizzing around for 8 hours'. But it doesn't, it runs for 40 minutes, on High on heavy carpets (around 75 minutes on hardwood floors on Quiet), then returns to charge for around 2 hours. Then it picks up where it left off. The time taken also comes down the more it is used. I'm quite happy with this. I also cleaned every room on Max initially, then settled on High for carpets, Quiet for hardwood floors. I'm seriously tempted to order a 2nd, so I can keep 1 upstairs and 1 downstairs and run them at the same time - I did purchase an additional dock, so that providing it is started from the same position in the dock each time, will now clean/charge/resume on both floors. This device absolutely is not perfect, it has it's faults. But from someone who has owned 4-5 robot vacs, they all do. If the quality of the clean is the most important aspect to you, as it was with us, I don't think there is currently a better option - I did consider one of the $lol new Roomba i7/S9 that empties itself, but another friend didn't especially rate the clean... so, we ended up with the Dyson. P.S. I do notice considerably less dust on surfaces since using the Dyson, perhaps adding weight to my suspicions that the filters on the cheapy robots spray out as much dust as they suck in...

Brilliant
Not sure why the average rating for this isn't higher - it's a brilliant bit of kit. Set up was easy, as long as you follow the instructions and give it a bit of space around the dock. I sent it off to do its mapping, which took about two hours and it came back with a floorplan that was better than the estate agent's. Took me 2 minutes to divide the map into rooms and now I can easily send it off to clean whichever room, or I can set up a schedule to do it regularly. All of this is straight forward and works well. For upstairs, I just pick it up and put in on the landing, hit the play button and leave it alone. 50 minutes later it returns to the same spot and pings me to say it's finished and I bring it back downstairs. I've got wooden floors, carpets, tiles, and some pretty big steps and bumps between thresholds (up to around the 16mm that the manufacturer says it can handle) - it tackles all of this with no issues and picks up as much, if not more dirt as my cordless Dyson used to. If you set it off to clean multiple rooms it even gives you a pretty accurate timing estimate, including whether or not it'll need to recharge itself part way through. There are a few negatives but these are all pretty minor: - The app has a couple of limitations, like you can only schedule one clean per day (or at least that's all I could do). So I'm not able to schedule to do the office in the morning and the kitchen in the afternoon for instance. Although I think with the Aexa Routines you could do this. Also sometimes it doesn't seem to record the clean in its history. - The front of the robot gets scratched really easily. Like on first use it looks like it's been in the wars. It appears to just be superficial though as the sensors are inset and appear protected. Overall I'm really impressed and can't think what could be better. p.s. I don't have pets or kids so can't comment on how well it tackles those sorts of wildcards.