There's finally a new flagship Dyson, and it solves all my biggest problems with stick vacuums

• New flagship Dyson stick vac has been announced: the V16 Piston Animal
• Boasts onboard dust compaction, hands-free attachment swapping, and advanced automation features
• There's also a Submarine version with added mopping floorhead

After three years of waiting, there's a new flagship Dyson stick vacuum in town: the Dyson V16 Piston Animal. Dyson's signature hi-tech flourishes are present and correct, but I'm excited to see some simpler, and perhaps more genuinely useful, usability improvements here too – including plenty of features I predict we'll be seeing copycat versions of from rival brands over the coming year.

The V16 Piston Animal could well be the best Dyson vacuum based on specs alone. It follows the Dyson Gen5detect (launched in 2022) in the flagship line, but in some ways it's more similar to 2021's Dyson V15 Detect. I had a chance to go hands-on with the new arrival at a recent event, and I was impressed – I'm in the process of testing it out properly, so sit tight for a full review.

So what's new? First up, the reason for the 'Piston' in the name: onboard dust compaction via a 'CleanCompaktor' bin. Push the red lever on the dust cup and you can squish the air out of everything that's been sucked up, meaning you can fit far more in the bin, and clean for longer without having to make repeated trips to the trash.

The inside of the bin has been redesigned so there are no crevices for dust to get caught in, and the slider also wipes down the inside of the casing to remove any fine dust that has collected there – which I am told has performance benefits as well as aesthetic ones.

A second handy usability enhancement is that the V16 Piston has been designed so you can swap attachments without having to bend down. Press down on the red cuff at the top of the wand to release the floorhead, then simply slot a new one into place – the docking tube on the cleaner heads sits at an angle that enables you to do this easily while you're standing upright.

In practice this is a nifty bit of engineering and works a treat. I hope it's something other brands will start to adopt going forwards.

Tangle busters

On the subject of floorheads, the main one here looks rather different to what we're all used to. Rather than a single brushroll, the V16 Piston has two cone-shaped rollers. This 'All Floor Cones Sense' floorhead is based on the existing Hair screw tool, and like that attachment, it's meant to prevent hair getting tangled around the rollers. The idea is that the long hair is directed down to the small end of each cone, where it's sucked up into the intake tube.

During my hands-on time, I found this worked well when tackling hair that had been laid out in front of the cleaner head, but tangled strands tended to get stuck in the gap behind the roller, requiring manual unclogging. As a long-haired person, I'm interested to see how well it works in a real-world (rather than demo lab) environment – I'll report back once I've had a chance to put this feature through its paces properly.

Incidentally, the Hair screw tool has also had an upgrade for the new model. A rubber scraper has been added to help dislodge hair from upholstery, so it's loose and ready to be sucked up.

There's no separate, hard floor-specific Fluffy floorhead here. Instead, Dyson has merged the two previous floorhead designs to create something that is apparently equally great on hard floors as on carpet. The All Floor Cones Sense floorhead features two rolls of bristles, cut slightly short so they'll agitate the fibers on a carpet but won't scratch a hard floor, plus a some fluffy material that's designed to sweep hard flooring.

Dyson has also ported over the laser from the Fluffy floorhead. Here it's placed in the middle of the head and low down at an angle, for even better dirt-illuminating benefits. Cleverly, you can activate an 'Auto' mode for the laser so it only comes on when the vacuum senses it's on a hard surface, or you can turn it off entirely, for example if you have pets that don't react well to lasers in the lounge.

If you have only hard floors, you might be better off opting for the Dyson PencilVac and its soft floorhead anyway. Another new launch, the PencilVac is a lightweight and lower-powered vacuum that's geared towards use on hard floors.

Powering up

It almost goes without saying, but there has also been a power boost. The V16 Piston tops out at 315AW, compared to 262AW on the Gen5detect. Dyson has achieved this by flipping the motor 180-degrees compared to previous models, which sounds counter-intuitive but apparently works.

Many of today's best cordless vacuums offer some kind of automatic suction adjustment, but here's a particularly advanced version. Like the Gen5detect and V15 Detect, the V16 can boost or lower suction depending on how much dirt it detects, but it can also intelligently adjust the brushroll speed to suit the kind of floor it's on. So for carpets, it'll use a high flow rate and fast roller speed, whereas on hard floors the roller speed is lower because it's not necessary for efficient dust pickup.

In Eco and Auto mode, half of the cyclones will switch off via a rubber muscle, to help extend filter life. In Boost mode, everything opens up to unleash maximum power.

I'm pleased to see that said power boost isn't accompanied by an increase in weight – my main complaint with the Gen5detect is that it's just too heavy for a cordless stick vacuum. The V16 Piston is actually lighter; it weighs the same as the V15 Detect. In practice, it's still a little weighty, but it's reassuring that things are moving in the right direction.

Like the V15 Detect, the V16 also comes in a Submarine version, which bundles in a mopping floorhead. While the Submarine Floorhead has been tweaked slightly compared to the one that accompanied the V15s Detect Submarine, it looks like our main issues with that floorhead (leaky dirty water compartment, too-small water tanks) haven't been addressed – again, I'll report back once I've had time to try it out properly.

This is also Dyson's first properly app-connected vacuum. The app will provide additional information and lots of fine-tuning control options. It also has a feature that logs cleaning sessions and how long it was used for. However, Dyson is at pains to point out that you can still use the V16 without the app if you want.

Price & availability

In the UK the Dyson V16 Piston Animal has a list price of £749.99, while the Submarine version costs £899.99. Both are available to buy from today at Dyson.co.uk.

I'm awaiting confirmation of pricing and launch dates in the US and Australia and will update this article as soon as I hear more. In the UK, the pricing is roughly the same as the Gen5detect – if that holds true in other territories, expect it to cost around $950 / AU$1,550.

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