You know how I know you just cleaned your apartment? When the entire place smells like a Swiffer wet mop. Nearly everyone in the first world recognizes a Swiffer floral scent within their first few whiffs, but that standard might have to change now that Dyson’s entering the mop market.
As you know, Dyson is known for its line of highly-priced, futuristic Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaners. This year, the company’s hitting up the hard floor market with the unveil of the unfortunately-named Dyson Hard: A mop-vacuum hybrid that can suck up the atrocities on your floor while a wet cloth wipes the surface. The Dyson Hard (yes, I’m giggling immaturely) is basically a combination of the Dyson Digital Slim and a new cleaner head that contains two vacuum edges sandwiching a wet mop holder. This allows you to vacuum the floor, scrub the surface, and let the back edge of the machine suck up any remaining dirt.
Because the vacuum portion of the Dyson Hard bares similarity with the Dyson Digital Slim, it also runs on Root Cyclone technology powered by a digital motor. If you don’t want to mop the floors, the head is detachable so you can use the vacuum to clean your car or smaller spots behind furniture. Dyson boasts that the Hard’s motor can spin at 110,000 rpm, providing extreme power in a compact body. “Because you’ve got to have fantastic suction at the head,” Sir James Dyson of the Dyson empire said on the Today Show. Yep, still snickering.
In our experience with the Digital Slim, we loved how effectively it cleaned carpets in just a few sweeps. However, battery life was minimal at just 20 minutes on regular mode, so we’re hoping Dyson has made an upgrade to this new model. At $330, the Dyson Hard is actually less expensive than the DC44 we reviewed, but if that price point comes with an improved motor, perhaps we can expect greater battery as well. Additionally, we’re hoping Dyson will figure out a way to sell the new vacuum-mop cleaner head as an attachment for those who already own a Digital Slim. Maybe they’ll call it a Dyson Blow-J.
No availability dates announced just yet but if you’re really interested, Dyson’s currently taking contact info for its mailing list.
Update 07/15/2013: Dyson really took to our pun of a headline and provided us with a video of the Dyson Hard “banged 39,154 times” during testing. How we love a company with a sense of humor! Dyson also confirmed that the Hard will be available starting September 3, and the battery life will come at a minimal 15 minutes on regular mode, and 6 minutes on high intensity. An extremely tiny allotment, but hopefully it’ll get the job done so quickly, you won’t need more than 15 minutes.
Watch the new vacuum-mops get gang slammed below.
