Dyson has today launched its latest cordless vacuum, the Gen5detect, which, aside from being the company’s fifth go at a handheld vac, is also its most powerful, by a mile.
While it’s no Dyson Zone, the Dyson Gen5detect still has some impressive new tech features to geek out over, mostly its motor.
Dyson Gen5detect
The Dyson Gen5detect features a new fifth-generation Hyperdymium motor, which delivers 262 air watts of suction. The machine also features a fully sealed, whole-machine HEPA filtration system, which Dyson reckons can capture 99.99 per cent of particles down to 0.1 microns.
To explain this, Dyson showed a super zoomed in image of a hair strand, which took up a very large space on the screen – 0.1 micron at this scale, was even still barely visible.
The Gen5detect comes with a new Fluffy Optic cleaner head (this is the LED) that Dyson said can reveal twice the amount of microscopic dust. Dyson reckons this was a huge design challenge, fitting the optic, printed circuit board and thermal solutions into a tiny space without compromising pick-up. Worth it, Dyson, we love LEDs.
Some new features include 70-minute battery life and a single button for on/off, but, the Gen5detect is quite heavy, at 3.5 kg. A trade-off for the powerful battery. And, each attachment slots into others, so you can take the long stick off and, like magic, the mini one is already there.
Under the hood
Motor technology is super important to Dyson, it’s something they’ve been pumping millions of dollars into. In fact, Dyson has made over 100 million motors, and, at the moment, its factories are producing one motor every two seconds.
The 5th generation motor tech, however, is smaller, faster and more powerful than its predecessor, spinning at up to 135,000 RPM – up to nine times faster than a Formula One engine.
When being briefed on how Dyson reinvents the wheel with its motor tech, it was super interesting to hear about the engineering challenges the company has with making a motor so powerful. Everything has to be considered, especially when the force of the motor wants to push everything out of its casing. For example, as you can see in the pic below, Dyson has made the bobbins a kind of pizza slice shape, which allows the air to be redistributed while keeping the whole thing as compact as possible.
“When the motor is spinning as fast as it does … even something as small as that spinning so fast, it wants to deflect, it wants to deform – it’s actually trying to bend outwards while it’s running,” Dyson head of innovation Archie Henderson explained. “We have to be very careful about the gap between the moving part and the stationary part. In order to get the most performance, we have to get this moving part as close as possible to the stationary part, but if it’s going to deform, then we have to leave a bigger gap.”
As we touched on above, the Gen5detect features Dyson’s most advanced cordless whole-machine HEPA filtration system, with the company saying the machine is fully sealed to ensure only dirty air passes through the filter, expelling cleaner air out.
The TL;DR: big motor, Dyson Gen5detect suck good.
On dust, Dyson has given its dust tech counter an overhaul, with the user interface being a bit more user-friendly on the Gen5detect. A piezo sensor uses acoustic sensing to count and categorise particle sizes, and bars on the LCD screen now rise and fall according to volume of particles being removed in real-time. So you can truly understand how filthy your place is.
In addition to the Gen5detect, Dyson also today launched an app – the My Dyson App. The Dyson Link app has been retired and replaced with the My Dyson App.
Dyson Gen5detect pricing and availability
The Gen5detect handheld vacuum will be available from 13 October, at Dyson online stores and Dyson Demo stores, priced at RRP $1,499.