Dyson PencilWash review: A slim, lightweight electric mop that has a little problem

Floor cleaning has had a bit of a glow-up over the past few years. What used to be a chore involving a manky mop and a bucket of murky water has turned into a proper category in itself, with cordless wet/dry vacuums from the likes of Shark, Bissell and Tineco trying to make scrubbing the kitchen floors feel almost futuristic.

Dyson, of course, wasn’t going to leave them to it. The brand has already had a crack at the wet/dry vacuum world with its Submarine attachment and the Wash G1, but its latest effort takes a different approach entirely. The new PencilWash is essentially a super-slim electric mop that ditches suction altogether in favour of a self-propelling soft roller, water dispensing along eight points, and a squeegee that scrapes dirty water back into a tank.

It's the partner product to last year's PencilVac, with the same pencil-thin handle and the same Submarine-style floor head used on the V15s Detect Submarine. There's a 30-minute battery life, a 300ml clean water tank, USB-style controls and a quoted weight of just 2.2kg.

I've been testing one for the past few weeks across my hard floors to see whether it really is the future of mopping. Here’s how I got on.

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Dyson PencilWash review: price and availability

The Dyson PencilWash is on sale now globally, listed at £299.99 in the UK direct from Dyson, with regular availability at Amazon, Very and QVC at the same price. In the US, it can be picked up for $349.99, and Australian buyers are looking at AU$549.

That puts it firmly in premium territory, and crucially, at almost exactly the same price as a proper wet/dry vacuum cleaner. The Shark HydroVac Cordless, for example, has a £330 RRP but can be picked up for as little as £200 on the likes of Amazon, and the Bissell CrossWave HydroScrub sits at a similar price, too. Both of those will tackle carpets and hard floors and use actual suction, so the PencilWash needs to work pretty hard to justify its asking price as a hard floors-only device.

Mind you, it’s the most affordable floor cleaner Dyson currently makes, so if you're set on the brand and don't fancy stretching to the Wash G1, it's the entry point.

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Dyson PencilWash review: design and build

This is where the PencilWash really earns its keep. The handle is just 38mm thick, and the whole unit weighs a featherlight 2.2kg, which makes it dramatically easier to handle than pretty much any cordless wet/dry vac I've used. The copper-coloured finish loons and feels high-end, too, looking more like something you'd want to leave on display than shove in an under-stairs cupboard. It absolutely looks the part leant against your kitchen cupboards, that’s for sure.

The floor head is the same Submarine head used on Dyson's vacuum range, with a fluffy microfiber roller, a 300ml clean water tank, a squeegee, and a small dirty water tray that catches the runoff. It's all colour-coded in red where bits come apart, which makes assembly rather straight forward. The articulated head bends almost flat to slip under furniture, and swivels happily around chair legs and toilet bases. There's also a small LED display on the handle showing battery and mode, plus a power button and a boost button that adds extra water for tough spots.

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The charging setup is a bit of an odd one, though. Instead of one neat dock, you get a charging stand for the wand and a separate tray for the floor head, which need to live in different spots. Dyson clearly wanted to keep things slim, but in practice it does mean the PencilWash takes up more space than it first looks.

Nevertheless, there are a couple of design oversights worth flagging. The dirty water tray isn't sealed, so it has to be carried very carefully to the sink unless you fancy dripping mucky water across your freshly cleaned floor. And the roller takes ages to dry properly, well over a day in my case, even with decent airflow. There's no self-cleaning mode or hot air drying like you get on the Wash G1, which you’d kind of expect at this price point.

Dyson PencilWash review: performance and features

On paper, the PencilWash should be brilliant. It's nippy, lightweight, and the self-propelling roller pulls itself along smoothly. What’s more, pushing it around feels almost effortless. For light maintenance cleaning, it does a perfectly decent job, picking up dust, footprints and the general low-level grime that builds up across a week.

The problem is that "perfectly decent" is about as far as it goes. Because there's no suction, the PencilWash relies entirely on the roller and squeegee to lift dirt and water off your floor. For dust and the odd splash, that's fine. For anything more involved, it can struggle.

I tested it on a tomato ketchup spill in the kitchen, and it was a proper mess. Rather than lifting the ketchup, the roller smeared it around, leaving streaks of pink water across the floor that I then had to chase down with a Swiffer. Trying to apply more pressure to scrub the stain out only caused the motorised roller to stall, which was frustrating. I had a similar issue with spilled oat milk, although it handled that slightly better, but again I was left with a wet film that needed wiping up afterwards.

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That brings me to the bigger issue: the PencilWash leaves floors noticeably wetter than I'd expect. Without proper suction, water sits on the surface for a while after you've gone over it, particularly in grout lines on tiled areas. I found myself going back over patches with a dry cloth or, embarrassingly, an actual mop, which feels like it defeats the entire purpose of the device. If you've got young kids or pets running around, you'll need to be aware of that.

Boost mode does help with stickier spots, dispensing extra water for five seconds at a tap or 60 seconds when held. But adding more water to a device that struggles to pick up water in the first place is a slightly odd solution to the problem, in my opinion!

It's also worth saying that the PencilWash uses a remarkably small amount of water overall, which is genuinely impressive. The 300ml tank lasted me through my hard floors twice over before needing a refill, and the 30 minute battery life is more than enough for a typical clean, so you don’t find yourself having to charge it constantly.

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The post-clean routine is where I lost quite a bit of respect for this gadget. You take the floor head to the sink, carefully decant the dirty water out of the unsealed tray (good luck not spilling), then pull the whole thing apart, rinse the roller and squeegee by hand, wipe down the tray, and leave it all to dry for the best part of a day. There's no quick way around any of this by the way - an automatic clean, hot air drying, or something would have been nice. But you don’t get any of that. Compared to a wet/dry vac that runs a self-clean cycle while you have a cup of tea, it feels a bit overly simplified and - dare I say - lacking.

Another annoying trait is that the PencilWash’s roller also doesn't reach right up to the edge of skirting boards, leaving a half-inch gap un-mopped, which is a shame because that's exactly where dust tends to gather. Saying that, it does give floors a decent clean, and you’ll be surprised how much dirt was on your floors before you start cleaning them, so it’s obvious there’s a benefit here. I think the issue is that it just doesn’t perform as well as I was expecting for the price point.

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Dyson PencilWash review: verdict

The Dyson PencilWash is one of those products that nails the bits Dyson is famous for and falls down on the bits it should know better about. The design is top notch, it's wonderfully light, the articulated head reaches into spaces other cleaners can't, and for a quick mid-week tidy of dusty hard floors, it's actually quite enjoyable to use.

But the lack of suction is a real problem. Floors are left wetter than they should be, sticky messes get smeared rather than lifted, unless you go over them lots of times, and the post-clean routine is genuinely grim compared to what rivals are offering at the same price. Options such as the Shark HydroVac and Bissell CrossWave, while they might have their own issues, both cost around the same money and will handle carpets too while also having proper self-cleaning modes.

If you live in a small flat with hard floors throughout, can't manage a heavier cleaner, and only need something for light maintenance, the PencilWash makes sense. But for everyone else, I'd think long and hard before parting with £300 for what is, when you boil it down, a very pretty motorised mop.