Even though most families use uprights and canisters for the majority of their heavy cleaning jobs, handheld vacuums and robotic vacuums are rapidly gaining market share, because sometimes, convenience trumps power. Companies like Dyson have studied the market long enough to realize that while most homeowners are going to buy an upright like the Ball Animal 2, they’re also going to make a lot of sales from some of their ultralights and handhelds, and we’re pretty sure this is the direction the market’s heading.
The other day we reviewed one of their new handhelds, the Dyson V7 Car+Boat and found it did a solid job. Today we’re going to compare it to its previous generation sibling, the Dyson V6 Car+Boat Handheld Vacuum, and see which offers the better value for the average homeowner. If we had to summarize our review in ten seconds, we’d suggest buying the newer V7 for additional battery life and buying the older V6 if reliability is a priority. Scroll down for the full review, or if you’re ready, you can buy the V6 here.
Pros, Cons, and Key Features of the Dyson V6 Car+Boat Handheld Vacuum
The Dyson V6 Car+Boat is one of far too many handheld vacuums released by Dyson in recent years. While we’re fans of the company, we’re not entirely sure it was necessary to produce a V6 Car+Boat, Baby+Child, Top Dog, and Mattress, especially when they each clean in more or less the same way with slight variations in accessories. However, we’re not running a multi-billion dollar cleaning company, so clearly whatever they’re doing is working marvelously for them.
At any rate, the V6 Car+Boat’s key features include a 20 minute runtime, constant suction (the battery is designed to maintain peak power levels until the very end), six accessories including a motorized brush, a hygienic dirt ejector, and Dyson’s famous 2 year limited warranty. The V6 Car+Boat weighs 3.4 pounds on our scale and can generate up to 100 airwatts of suction. Its dust bin has a .11 gallon capacity and the Lithium-ion battery takes 3.5 hours to recharge.
Upon arrival, you’ll find the V6 and a range of tools–a mini motorized tool, which is the most useful, an extension hose, a mini soft dusting brush and stiff bristle brush, a combination tool, and a crevice tool. An AC charger is also included.
What’s the difference between the Dyson V6 Car+Boat and the V7 Car+Boat?
The V6 Car+Boat preceded the V7, which means that while both machines do essentially the same tasks, there are a few differences between them significant enough to warrant an upgrade (or bypassing the V6 completely for the V7 if you haven’t bought either).
The biggest difference is battery life: you get 20 minutes with the V6 and 30 minutes, or 50% more, with the V7. The difference stands out when cleaning, as we often found ourselves in the middle of a flow when we noticed power drop dramatically, which was a sign that the battery was about to die. The V7 also includes a car charger (which will also work in a boat, RV, or anything else with a 12 volt outlet) that allows you to charge without searching for an AC outlet, giving you infinite battery life as long as you’re willing to take a break from using the V7 for a few minutes at a time. This makes as much of a difference in usability over the V6 as the extra battery, frankly.
Beyond the battery and charger upgrades in the V7, it also comes with a larger dust bin at .15 gallons vs the .11 gallon tank in the V6. In cups, this is a difference of 2.4 cups in the V7 vs 1.8 in the V6, and while it might not sound like much, it did allow us to get significantly more pet hair and dirt sucked away in the V7 than in the V6 before we needed to find a wastebin. It’s worth noting that this extra capacity in battery life and dust collection comes at a slight cost in weight; the V7 weighs 3.8 pounds while the V6 weighs 3.4. Practically speaking, this is unlikely to make a difference in your ability to hold either for extended periods of time, but we wanted you to be aware of it.
In terms of accessories, apart from the extra charger, the rest of what’s in the box is identical. However, the V7 does include quick release connectors on all of its cleaning tools, which slightly reduces the time necessary to swap them out when cleaning on the go. The bad news is that you can’t switch tools across both vacuums; Dyson made them incompatible. Fortunately, as both vacuums come with the same set of accessories, if you buy either, you aren’t missing what’s in the other.
It’s worth noting that despite Dyson’s marketing, we didn’t see any difference in cleaning power between the V6 and the V7. This makes sense when you consider the fact that both have the same maximum airwatt rating of 100; we’re not sure why Dyson went to the trouble of calling the V7 their strongest vacuum yet aside from out of a desire to get people to upgrade from the V6.
How useful is the Dyson V6 Car+Boat for cleaning vehicle interiors as well as around the house?
When you order a handheld vacuum, you need to know that you’re not going to get the same amount of power from it as you would from a quality upright or canister. The V6 Car+Boat isn’t as strong as the Multi Floor 2, to use a Dyson-based example, and it definitely doesn’t compare to something like a Miele Electro+. What you will get, ideally, is a lightweight, easy to carry, and decently powerful machine that’ll suck away dirt, crumbs, pet hair, dust, and other tiny and disgusting things that hide away in car seats, behind your toilets, on your stairs, in shoe cabinets, beneath your fridge, beside your knick knacks, throughout your counter tops, and pretty much anywhere else in your life where dirt accumulates. This is what you’ll get with the V6 Car+Boat.
As we’d hoped, we were able to use it in a range of areas beyond what we’d expected to, and with so many attachments, there was one we could put to work in virtually any situation. The crevice tool was handy behind chests and cabinetry, as well as along the length of baseboards. The mini motorized tool worked when churning through stains on sofas, loveseats, and other upholstery. The extension hose gave us those critical extra inches when they were most necessary, an we put the dusting brush to use whenever we needed to clean a keyboard or other surface with lots of little holes for crumbs to fall into.
While we would have liked the extra 10 minutes of battery life available in the V7, we eventually got used to the 20 minutes available in the V6, and it’s quite likely that had we not known about the 30 minutes in the V7, we wouldn’t have missed them. That said, we found 3.5 hours rather boorish for charging time, and we’d like to see a charge time cut down to 3 hours or less in the future. Even cheap (and reliable!) robotic vacuums (e.g., the Shark Robot 750 or Roomba 690) were fully charged in 2-3 hours, and they were polite enough to return to their chargers on their own without any help from us.
Why buy the Dyson V6 Car+Boat?
Overall, we like the V6 Car+Boat as a perfectly respectable handheld vacuum. It’s as powerful as the V7 and comes with just as many accessories. More importantly, it’s lightweight, intelligently designed, and comes with a 2 year warranty from a company you know is going to honor it if anything is going wrong. That said, we’d recommend getting the V7 over the V6 simply due to the additional battery life and charger, both of which make a significant difference in your ability to stay in the zone and get cleaning done before life gets back in the way. At any rate, both are great values for the money in our books.
You can buy the Dyson V6 Car+Boat here on Amazon. If you want the upgraded features, buy the Dyson V7 Car+Boat vacuum here instead.
Canadians can buy the Dyson V6 Car+Boat here on Amazon. If you want more battery life, buy the V7 Car+Boat vacuum here instead.
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