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Dyson shrank its latest vacuum cleaner down to a broom handle

By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
May 22, 2025
Dyson shrank its latest vacuum cleaner down to a broom handle
The PencilVac is basically a slim tube less than 1.5 inches in diameter, which should make it easier to use than top-heavy cordless cleaners of the past
The PencilVac is basically a slim tube less than 1.5 inches in diameter, which should make it easier to use than top-heavy cordless cleaners of the past
View 6 Images
The PencilVac is basically a slim tube less than 1.5 inches in diameter, which should make it easier to use than top-heavy cordless cleaners of the past
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The PencilVac is basically a slim tube less than 1.5 inches in diameter, which should make it easier to use than top-heavy cordless cleaners of the past
Dyson says it's designed the PencilVac to eject vacuumed dirt into a bin without sitrring up too much dust
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Dyson says it's designed the PencilVac to eject vacuumed dirt into a bin without sitrring up too much dust
Dyson says this is the smallest and most powerful motor it's every made
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Dyson says this is the smallest and most powerful motor it's every made
The conical brush bars rotate in opposite directions, avoid hair tangling up around them, and have lasers on either side to help you spot dust
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The conical brush bars rotate in opposite directions, avoid hair tangling up around them, and have lasers on either side to help you spot dust
The PencilVac is the slimmest cordless vacuum cleaner on the market today
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The PencilVac is the slimmest cordless vacuum cleaner on the market today
Sophisticated tech filters fine dust from debris, keeps the filters clean, and compresses the waste into the compact bin for greater carrying capacity than you'd expect
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Sophisticated tech filters fine dust from debris, keeps the filters clean, and compresses the waste into the compact bin for greater carrying capacity than you'd expect
View gallery - 6 images

Dyson says that its new PencilVac is the slimmest cordless vacuum cleaner in the world, and by the looks of it, that sounds about right. It's also the company's most powerful model to date.

The PencilVac has a diameter of less than 1.5 in (3.8 cm), about the same as its Supersonic hair dryer. There's no large dustbin at the top of the handle like the company's other models. And the miniaturized motor fits in that slender pipe, and rotates at 140,000 RPM for powerful suction.

There's some clever tech at work in here. Unlike Dyson's heftier cordless cleaners that separate dust and debris using centrifugal force while allowing clean air through to the filters, Wired notes that the PencilVac funnels air and dust into a narrow tube at a high velocity through a two-stage filtration system. The airflow pushes fine particles through the mesh and onto a second filter, while larger bits go into the bin.

Sophisticated tech filters fine dust from debris, keeps the filters clean, and compresses the waste into the compact bin for greater carrying capacity than you'd expect
Sophisticated tech filters fine dust from debris, keeps the filters clean, and compresses the waste into the compact bin for greater carrying capacity than you'd expect

As the debris is forced up through the tube to the top of the dust chamber, it's compressed by that strong air flow, maximizing carrying capacity. That allows the compact bin to hold five times more dust and debris than its 0.08 liter capacity might indicate. This compressed waste is also easy to dispose of with minimal dust blooming out when you empty it into a trash can.

Dyson says it's designed the PencilVac to eject vacuumed dirt into a bin without sitrring up too much dust
Dyson says it's designed the PencilVac to eject vacuumed dirt into a bin without sitrring up too much dust

The PencilVac features two sets of conical brush bars with an assembly that can rotate 360 degrees, making for great maneuverability around furniture. The brush bars' conical shape prevents hair tangling around them, and actually encourages hair to roll off the bars and onto the floor in a ball that can be easily picked up.

The conical brush bars rotate in opposite directions, avoid hair tangling up around them, and have lasers on either side to help you spot dust
The conical brush bars rotate in opposite directions, avoid hair tangling up around them, and have lasers on either side to help you spot dust

This cleaner head also features dual lasers to make it easy to spot debris on the floor, and it magnetically attaches to a flat charging dock on the floor. You can expect a maximum of 30 minutes of use with the built-in battery in Eco mode; two higher-powered modes will go through more juice quickly. However, an accessory battery pack can keep you going for longer.

Dyson says this is the smallest and most powerful motor it's every made
Dyson says this is the smallest and most powerful motor it's every made

Given its capacity and battery life, the PencilVac will likely find more fans in smaller homes without wall-to-wall carpeting. It's currently available in Japan only, where it's priced at ¥84,920, which works out to US$590 (similar to the Dyson V15 Detect Absolute). It will arrive in Korea later on, and land in the US next year.

Sources: PR Times, Dyson Japan

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2 comments
Abhimanyu Ghoshal
Abhimanyu Ghoshal
Abhimanyu has been a trusted voice in the science, technology, transport innovations, startup and AI spaces for more than a decade at several global outlets, including three and a half years as the managing editor at TNW. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, Psychology and Sociology. When he's not writing about breakthroughs in science and tech, he's usually out motorcycling around South India.

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2 comments
jsopr
Pity about the price. Hopefully the tariffs will be down by the time the $150 knock-offs are ready.
Marco McClean
In 1986 or '87 my friend Kay gave me a cheap GE vacuum cleaner that was already thirty or thirty-five years old. It has cloth bag on a metal ring. You flip two clips to take the top off, empty the bag into the trash, put the bag back and clip the top back on, as fast as it take me to tell you how to do it. I used it as an air blower, with a long thrift-store hose, to force air from the cold room at the back of the house through the sleeve around my woodstove, to level the temperature throughout the house; it ran all night all winter for years before I moved from there, and when I needed to vacuum, I get it out and use it and put it back.
Now it's at my wife's apartment. We're still using it. Every five or ten years the cord wears through at the grommet. I take it apart, strip the cord back to good wire, reattach it, put it back together (every part of the machine comes off easily with a normal screwdriver), and it's good as new, but with the very long cord three or four inches shorter, which might become a problem by the year 2050. The vacuum cleaner can is a little bigger than a basketball, on wheels, so the handle and feel of using it is probably lighter than this Dyson stick. When you reach the end of the hose you give it a yank and the can rolls after you. If you need to blow the dust out of a computer or off plants or books or whatever, you pull the hose out, stick it in the blow hole, and /voila/, it blows, hard.
I have a hard time imagining the Dyson vacuum cleaner in the above advertisement, or really any appliance made lately, lasting even five or ten years without failing utterly, much less lasting 75 years like mine. Also the GE never needs recharging; if you're really in the mood, you could vacuum forever. They don't build things like they used to; that's really true.