Dyson's Big Ball cylinder vacuum cleaners CANNOT be knocked over

Say goodbye to 'dragging around fallen-over vacuum cleaner' misery with new Dyson Cinetic Big Ball

With the new-and-improved Dyson V8, the company seems to have nailed the last few problems that remained in the Dyson V6 Absolute. But there's another Dyson vacuum out that corrects an issue that has caused arguably more heartache whilst doing the cleaning than blisters and having to look at the top of your kitchen wall units put together: vacuum cleaner toppling.

We've all been there: trying to get the vacuuming done in a hurry; sharp tug on the cylinder; over it goes, like a footballer in the box after the centre back has so much as breathed on him. Then you can't be bothered to put it upright so you carry on vaccing, but now it's like you're pulling a dead body around. Oh, and now it's got caught behind the edge of the sofa.

It's worst of all if you use a Henry vacuum cleaner, because the little bastard just keeps smiling at you after it's fallen over for the 15th time. What a great idea it is to put a constantly, smugly smiling face on something that causes so much irritation. Like a bright red Piers Morgan.

You can say goodbye to all that now though, thanks to Dyson. Its squat new cylinder vac glides pretty smoothly on its spherical wheel, and is reasonably hard to knock over anyway.

However the REALLY clever bit is that when it does, it immediately rights itself. We've seen it for ourselves, having been invited to Dyson's HQ to repeatedly kick it over then watch it ping back up, Weeble-like. That was a fun morning, let me tell you.

There are, of course, numerous other feats of engineering cleverness secreted within the Cinetic cylinder, which took two and a half years to develop according to Dyson.

Our second favourite is that as the bin,which is "33% bigger than previous Dysons,"is emptied, a silicone ejector scrapes trapped dirt and debris off.

As well as Big Balls, the new Dyson also boasts "a longer wand", which is articulated handle torotate in three directions for cleaning with even less effort.

The filter, despite being able to take out particles down to 0.3 microns in size "never" needs to be washed or replaced.

The Musclehead floor tool self-adjusts to clean every floor type, with the cleaner head height raising for carpets and lowering for hard floors, for maximum suckage.

Oh, and the tools now come on and off quicker, although to be honest, the tools on the last one seemed plenty quick to us.

Dyson Cinetic Big Ball cylinder is available now from £399. Dyson Big Ball vacs with self-righting tech start at £349.

Duncan Bell

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years. 

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."