Dyson V10 Konical Review

Design and features

• Charging wall dock
• Revamped controls
• Clever Konical floor head

Prepare to be very confused. Although the Dyson V10 Konical carries the V10 name, it’s not actually an update of the old V10 that we reviewed back in 2018. Instead, the core part of the vacuum cleaner is the same as the recent Dyson V8 Cyclone, but it has the floor head with its dual cones that first appeared on the flagship Dyson V16 Piston Animal.

This new cleaner is compatible with the new Auto-Empty Dock accessory, as is the V8 Cyclone. And you can switch tools between the V10 Konical and V8 Cyclone, too.

The tools and layout of the V10 Konical are the same as the V8 Cyclone. Here, the vacuum cleaner has the traditional purple and grey plastic that I’d associated with Dyson, whereas the V8 Cyclone had bits of green.

Controls are identical on both. It’s good to see Dyson not going back to triggers, with a simple power button on top that turns the cleaner on in its standard power mode. Tap the other button, and the vacuum cycles through its three power modes, which add Boost and Eco to the standard mode.

As you move through the modes, the LED changes colour to visually show which power mode you’re in, although it’s easy enough to tell by how loud the vacuum cleaner is. 

This vacuum cleaner doesn’t have the fancy dust sensor that Dyson’s high-end vacuum cleaners have, so it can’t adjust its power automatically.

These controls are simple enough to use, but there is one thing missing from the vacuum cleaner: a battery meter of any kind. There’s no way to tell how much power is left, until the blue light starts flashing shortly before it runs out. Even a simple power meter, with LEDs that extinguish one at a time would have been appreciated.

Dyson provides its charging wall dock in the box. I really like this accessory. It tilts forward to make it easier to insert or remove the vacuum cleaner.

If you don’t want to use the charging dock, then you can charge the vacuum cleaner directly by plugging the power adaptor into the vacuum cleaner.

Or, more accurately, into the battery itself, as you can remove the battery and charge it outside of the vacuum cleaner if you prefer.

I would use the wall dock, as it also has space to hold the accessories, which in this case consist of a crevice tool and a powered mini pet tool.

It’s handy having the powered tool, as it makes it easy to clean up sofas or stairs, or areas that have a lot of pet hair on them.

For regular cleaning, there’s the Konical floor head. Rather than a straight brush bar, this has two cones that built to let hair wrap, bunch up, slide off the ends and then get sucked up.

Plus, the head also has Dyson’s laser-like green light, which highlights dirt on hard floors. It’s a brilliant bit of tech. I’m still amazed (and disgusted) in how I can look at my hard floors and think they look clean, only for the green light to show how much cat hair there is around. Of course, the flip side is that it makes it easy to see where to aim and where needs to be vacuumed.

At just 2.73kg with the wand and floor head attached, the Dyson V10 Konical is refreshingly light to carry around. This low weight also makes it easy to use in a variety of situations, whether that’s cleaning out the car or sucking up cobwebs around your ceiling.

Similarly, the lightweight design makes this vacuum very easy to use on floors, as it moves effortlessly over carpet and hard floors.

Dirt is sucked into the 0.54L bin, which is big enough to take all the dust from a standard whole-home clean. Ejecting dust is easy. The top of the bin pulls up, which scrapes the dust from the metal filter inside, and then the bottom flap pops open. As long as you can get the base of the vacuum’s bin over your main bin, it’s easy to empty it cleanly.

This vacuum cleaner has two washable filters: one that unclips from the back and one that pulls out from the top.

Performance

• Powerful suction
• Did better on hard floors rather than carpet
• No tangling

I always measure raw suction power in air watts (AW) from the main nozzle. Unsurprisingly, the Dyson V10 Konical scored almost the same as the V8 Cyclone. On its lowest setting, the 42AW is fine for light dusting where you don’t want full power, while the 81AW on standard power should be fine for most jobs. At the high end, the 296AW of power is a lot of suction, only really dwarfed by the Dyson V16 Piston Animal.

With the maximum suction power, I found that the Dyson V10 Konical could collect grains of rice from 2cm away. That means that tough handheld jobs, such as vacuuming out a car or the bottom of a wardrobe, can be done quickly, and dust can be pulled out of cracks and crevices.

I then moved on to my standard floor tests, starting by adding 20g of flour to my test carpet. Moving the vacuum forwards and backwards through the middle of the mess left a nice clean line right to the edges of the floor head.

I finished off cleaning on standard power, and then gave the carpet a quick go over on Boost. Overall, I found that 90.15% of the dust made it into the bin, compared to 94.85% on the V8 Cyclone, or 99.8% on the V16. So, what gives?

Examining the floor head, some of the fine dust had been flicked up behind it, not making it into the bin. That didn’t happen with the V8’s head, and the V16’s automatic suction adjustment clearly makes a difference.

Moving on to the edge test, I ran the Dyson V10 Konical along the skirting board. At the end, the carpet looked very clean, and 94.9% of the dust was collected, compared to 85.9% with the V8 Cyclone. It seems as though the Konical head is better at the edge than the V8 Cyclone’s standard floor head.

Hard floor performance was excellent and 100% of the rice grains were collected with none dropping back out onto the floor.

I then combed cat hair into the test carpet. This was removed easily with just a couple of swipes backwards and forwards. 

I also added human hair to the carpet. I could see this wrap around the cones, but it bunched up and moved to the edges, where it was collected with no hair wrapped around.

I found the Konical head a little louder than the floor head on the V8 Cyclone: 72.1dB on Eco, rising to 77.6dB on Boost.

I think that the Konical floor head must use a bit more power, too. On Boost, the V10 Konical lasted for 6m 25s, over a minute less than the V8 Cyclone lasted for. On standard power, the vacuum cleaner lasted for 21m 28s, again a few minutes less than the V8 Cyclone lasted; I’m assuming that the Konical floor head uses more power. That said, this kind of cleaning time should be enough for most whole-home cleans, or at least a deep clean of an entire floor in a house.

Should you buy it?