The broom-like handle and the glide of the cleaning head make the PencilVac Fluffycones relatively breezy to use. Dual green lights illuminate spots to tackle next, forward and back. Evan Dent/NYT WirecutterIt’s the most ergonomic stick vacuum I’ve tested. Weighing about 4 pounds at its heaviest, the PencilVac Fluffycones is more than a pound lighter than Dyson’s V12 Detect Slim (which we recommend for its nearly best-in-class weight). The PencilVac’s cleaning brush head rolls across floors with some assistance from its bottom wheels, creating a gliding sensation; with one hand, I could easily use the vacuum to reach far and wide. It can lie flat to get under most furniture, and the cleaning head swivels side to side, so you can lead with the tapered end of the cleaning head and wedge it into previously inaccessible areas.With both its motor and its dustbin situated right by the handle, the V12 Detect Slim is notably top-heavy, which can strain your wrist. The PencilVac, though, puts no weight on your hand at all. That said, it creates a different feeling, the kind of grip strain that I typically experience when, say, holding a frying pan (not cast iron heavy, but maybe stainless steel). Ultimately, I preferred the feeling of the PencilVac to that of the V12 Detect Slim, but a couple of people on our paid tester panel said the PencilVac’s brush-head assist and lack of a handle were a bridge too far, as if the PencilVac were “going to run away from them.”It excels at cleaning hard-to-reach spaces. If you swap the cleaning head for the included combination crevice tool, which drops the total weight to less than 2 pounds, you can wield the PencilVac like a pool cue, easily reaching tricky spots such as cabinets, ceiling lights and fans, or the slot canyons between couch cushions. The crevice tool’s brush, meanwhile, can tip up or down to cover the surface of any far-off place you’ve thrust the PencilVac into (for instance, tipping down to cover the dusty tops of upper cabinets). In contrast to clanking around with the chunkier V12 Detect Slim, using the PencilVac is akin to wielding just the wand of a canister vacuum (no hose or cord attached).It’s not all perfection, though. The PencilVac’s length can cause some issues in close quarters. Whereas many cordless sticks, including the V12, adapt into short hand vacuums, the PencilVac is always a touch over 4 feet long with its crevice tool attached. That makes vacuuming at close range a little awkward. The Fluffycones — four conical soft brush rolls — counterrotate to prevent hair tangling, and the tapered sides of the cleaning head are open to handle corners and edges. Evan Dent/NYT WirecutterIt’s a good cleaner, especially on edges. Dyson’s newest brush head ditches the company’s traditional cylindrical brush rolls for a conical version. (This kind of tapered brush — both fluffy and plastic — will soon roll out to some of Dyson’s newest vacuums.) I found that the Fluffycones head and its added depth covered ground a bit more efficiently than the V12’s and that the cleaning head’s open, tapered sides allowed it to pick up more dust along baseboards and in tight spaces with just a few passes.I tested this with some dry oatmeal flakes along my own baseboards, and I consistently got quicker total pickup with the PencilVac than with the V12 Detect Slim. And I am yet to find a hair — human or otherwise — that can snarl the Fluffycones, which counterrotate to prevent tangles and funnel strands to the bin. By contrast, the V12 Detect Slim’s plastic bar requires some trimming of wrapped hair every once in a while.Like many V12 owners, I’m fond of its green light at the front of its cleaning head, which spotlights otherwise overlooked dusty areas on your floor. But the PencilVac also one-ups the V12 in this regard, sporting two lights, front and back; I found them helpful for noting areas that needed another pass or two. The PencilVac’s dust-compression system starts to look like layers of the Earth as you clean. I picked up some oatmeal and black pepper in between a lot of hair and dust. Evan Dent/NYT WirecutterThe dustbin is small but compacting, and it’s easy to empty. The PencilVac’s transparent dustbin, which holds a little less than a tenth of a liter, is built into the wand. In comparison, the V12 Detect Slim holds a third of a liter (small among our stick-vac picks). The PencilVac uses a compression system to pack every inch of its bin, and it does so well enough that I didn’t have to empty its bin much more often than that of the V12. I needed to empty the PencilVac after pretty much every full clean, but with the V12, it’s more like every two or three cleans.You empty the PencilVac bin by pumping it so that a small scraper pushes out the compressed dust and hair. I appreciated the ability to clear the bin without having dust plume out or needing to tackle the icky task of grabbing lingering hair or dust balls. All that squished debris also makes for a satisfying visual as you clean; one of our paid testers likened it to a real-time (and, to some people, a real gross) progress bar.
Source link