is a senior reviewer with over twenty years of experience. She covers smart home, IoT, and connected tech, and has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
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As The Verge’s resident robot vacuum reviewer, I don’t have a lot of time (or space) in my life for stick vacs, and frankly, the ones I have used have largely disappointed me. Top-heavy, bulky, always getting clogged or running out of battery — they’re so… manual. But then I met PencilVac Fluffycones, Dyson’s new $599 cordless stick vacuum, and it was love at first lift.
The name PencilVac Fluffycones perfectly describes this delightfully overengineered broom. If more vacuums had such whimsical names, my life would be much fuller. It’s very thin and light, like a pencil, and it has fluffy, cone-shaped rollers that glide across floors as if they’re flying.
While I do not recommend buying this as a tool to clean your entire home (it doesn’t clean carpets!), with its slim design and easy maneuverability, I’ve found it to be a great complement to a robot vacuum. The robot can do the hard work of vacuuming and mopping your floors, and this lightweight machine, which sits prettily in a magnetic charging dock, can be on hand for touch-ups and when it’s time to tackle stairs and baseboards.
PencilVac Fluffycones $ 600 $ 600 A superskinny stick vac, Dyson’s PencilVac is an engineering marvel. While it won’t clean your whole house, it’s a simple. stylish option for quick touchups and other small tasks. Read More $600 at Dyson
Touted by Dyson as “the world’s slimmest vacuum cleaner,” the PencilVac fits all its components into its 1.5-inch-diameter handle, which runs the length of the vacuum. Packed in here are the electronics, the battery, the dustbin, and a tiny 28mm-diameter motor that spins at 140,000 RPM to generate 55 air watts of suction.
This is the same motor as in Dyson’s Supersonic R hair dryer, and the handle is the same width around, so you’re basically using a reverse hair dryer to clean your floors.
Impressively, the PencilVac weighs less than four pounds and, combined with its maneuverability enabled by four caster rollers that allow it to pivot in multiple directions, it’s as easy to handle as a broom or Swiffer. Even my husband, who just had major shoulder surgery, was able to use it to clean the kitchen floor with no issues.
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