Dyson V15s Detect Submarine review: One vac is all you need

We couldn’t figure out whether to use cold, warm, or hot water, and couldn’t find any guidance in Dyson’s literature. You can apparently use diluted detergent in the head but not bleach. As it was, we went with a warmish water. It was also a bit tricky to slide the cartridge back into the brand-new head at first, until we figured out that a track on the top needs to feed into a thread.     

Using the Submarine head is a bit of a shock at first as it’s self-propelling, so it speeds away from you; it’s a bit like trying to control a small hovercraft. There is a slight weirdness though, in that you’re restricted to a back and forth motion the width of the Submarine head. In conventional mopping, you tend to work in a zigzag across a wide area so the job gets done quicker and you can use very hot water and detergent. That’s not possible here–and the Submarine can’t be used to steam-sterilize your floors, either.

That said, you can see that the Submarine lifts a lot of dirt from your floor. We were surprised at the color of water that came out of the drain trench, and how far a third of a quart of water goes with the wet roller head. Dyson says the Submarine can clean more than 1,000 square feet with one tank of water, and we have to say that we never had to refill it while cleaning.

There’s a slight issue in that when the drain trench gets quite full, you’ll find that it leaks at the side because it’s not a fully sealed compartment. You may might to stop during mopping to empty it.

Fortnunately, emptying the drain trench is easy. You slide the water tank cartridge out and pour the dirty water into the sink. Cleaning the Submarine roller is also simple: The roller slides out of the Submarine head, and you can wash it in the sink.          

Despite some misgivings at the start of the testing process, we found that the Submarine gives your hard-surface floors a really good clean. It’s not going to get rid of deep grime and embedded dirt, but we grew to feel confident about its mopping abilities.

Vacuuming on hard flooring and carpets

• Fluffy Optic carbon-fiber head
• Three power modes
• Washable parts

When vacuuming, you can choose from three suction modes: eco, medium or boost–or you can choose auto, which adapts the suction level based on the level of dust detected, depending on the power and runtime.

The LCD screen also shows you piezo sensor particulate counts, which is novel but we weren’t quite sure what to do with the information; there’s a sense that they included it because they could, rather than because it provides essential information.

But the root cyclone technology that generates forces of up to 100,000g to remove dust, and the Hyperdymium motor that spins at up to 125,000 rpm seem to do the job.

Another bonus is that the filter is washable, so you can remove dust build-up.     

Alex Greenwood / Foundry

The Dyson V15s Detect Submarine is essentially a complete and easy-to-use floor-cleaning system.

For hard-surface floors, there’s the Fluffy Optic head; for carpets, there’s the Digital Motorbar head; for furniture and stairs, there’s the Hair Screw tool.  

The Fluffy Optic head has a carbon-fiber roller and an angled green laser to illuminate your floor–and the dust that you might otherwise miss–as you vacuum. This stripey blue-and-yellow carbon-fiber roller is soft, detachable for easy cleaning, and has a hinged joint between the head and the wand socket that both flexes and tilts a good 40 degrees all round, which means the maneuverability of the head as you vacuum is excellent.   

Vacuuming with this head is somewhat of an alarming experience as it lights up the dust and hair on your hard floors, and often shows the reach line between vacuumed and non-vacuumed floor. It also reveals the imperfections on the floor surface itself, which led us to repeatedly vacuum a portion of floor until we realised the marks weren’t actually dust but scratches.     

The thin 28-inch (70cm) wand and the flexibility of the wand/head joint makes it easy to vacuum under furniture–the reach is excellent in this regard.

The first time we vacuumed using the Fluffy Optic head, the bin filled fairly quickly, the vacuum picked up a lot of corner dust, and we felt the head had a slight polishing effect on tile and hardwood floors. After about 10 minutes, we did start to feel a little strain in the hand holding the vacuum, particularly around the thumb joint.

This is one of the downsides of the V15s Detect Submarine: The operation trigger on the handle–which has been removed from some of Dyson’s other new vacuums–must be kept depressed in use, and the vacuum itself is not a very lightweight appliance. Indeed, with the Submarine head, the vacuum can weigh up to 9 pounds (4kgs), which can be heavy on your thumb and forearm.

Truth be told, our forearms were a bit sore after using the V15s Detect Submarine the first few times. This is not a vacuum you’d want to use to clean your entire house in one go.   

The Digital Motorbar head is much bigger than the Fluffy Optic. The wand/head joint turns almost 360 degrees horizontally and 90 degrees vertically, so there’s extraordinary capacity to maneuver. The roller inside boasts a brush screw that stops hair from getting tangled in the roller, although you can turn it off using the slider on the head. As you vacuum, it buzzes a little.

Pickup, we felt, was excellent although, as with other vacuums, a lot of debris can clog the wand: in our case, we tried to vacuum up a significant pile of pine needles and suffered a wand blockage.

Emptying the dustbin is a matter of pushing down the red lever on the clear barrel: this will push the barrel forward and open the end of the bin, allowing you to tip the waste into your garbage can. To close the barrel, you simply retract the lever.  

Alex Greenwood / Foundry

Other attachments you’ll get are the Hair Screw tool, a crevice tool, and a combination tool with a wide nozzle and a brush. The Hair Screw tool is a short mini vacuum head with an anti-tangle screw roller with a thin embedded brush that you can employ or tilt away using a lever mechanism on the bottom. Dyson suggests you use this head for furniture and stair carpets, and we can see how it would be useful if you have pets.

The crevice tool is a very typical long, thin, angle-cut pipe for edges and poking down the side of sofas, and the combination tool is a kind of all-in-one curtain, baseboard, wall, and spot-vacuum tool.

The Dyson V15s Submarine really does pick up a lot of dust and debris. The difference in bin content between the first and second vacuuming was huge, showing that the vacuum had really got a lot of latent dust up out of the floor.      

After a week, we found the V15s Submarine to be hugely convenient. Vacuuming just becomes easier and more ad hoc with the V15s Detect. It’ll probably change the way you clean, from a big once-over every week to quicker, single-room jobs because it’s just so easy to transport it around your home.

One slightly bizarre thing, however, is that the position and level of the vent can sometimes mean that when you’re vacuuming under low furniture, you get a blast of air in your face, but hey … nothing in life is perfect.    

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