I tried the Dyson PencilVac, and its emptying system was my favourite feature

The upcoming Dyson PencilVac actually got me excited to clean – but my favourite feature of the new vacuum certainly surprised me.

The Dyson PencilVac was announced in May 2025, the brand’s slimmest vacuum cleaner yet. Featuring a new motor and a smaller size overall, the Dyson PencilVac marked a number of firsts for Dyson, and while a launch date is still being kept quiet, I recently got to visit the Dyson Offices to try the new vacuum myself.

Despite being told it was the slimmest vacuum cleaner Dyson has developed, I was still surprised by how slim and small it was. The Dyson PencilVac differs in many ways from other best Dyson vacuum cleaners, as it doesn’t actually have a handle. I found the lack of handle a little odd but it was actually comfortable to hold and move across floors.

Measuring just 38mm in diameter, the Dyson PencilVac was nicely lightweight and it didn’t feel like I was pushing or pulling too hard to move the cordless vacuum cleaner around. In fact, it glided over hardwood floors which is what the Dyson PencilVac is specifically designed to do, as it’s dubbed as a hardwood floor vacuum.

As mentioned, Dyson has given the Dyson PencilVac plenty of new additions, including its motor. The redesigned Dyson Hyperdymium 140k motor is incredibly small and measures just 28mm in diameter. It fits within the handle of the Dyson PencilVac, and is the brand’s fastest vacuum motor yet.

The motor was definitely a surprise as it fit easily in the palm of my hand. Despite its size, the Dyson PencilVac offers up to 14,000 RPM of suction power and it can run for up to 60 minutes on one charge.

Another new or first from Dyson is its first conical brush bar cleaner head. I got to see the brush head of the Dyson PencilVac up close, and the four fluffy cones are extremely clever as they work to eject hair and other debris so they don’t tangle.

When the brush head cleans the floors, hair and other bits fall off the side of the brushes and go into the vacuum’s bin rather than be spat back out the vacuum, or obstructing the head. The cones themselves were extremely fluffy to the touch, and easy to detach and reattach from the head to clean them.

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But the feature I loved the most while trying the Dyson PencilVac was its emptying system. As the Dyson PencilVac is quite slim, it can only get so much into the bin – or so I thought. The bin has a dust compression system which uses air to squash dust and dirt to maximise the bin’s space.

The most impressive part of the bin is once it gets full, you can empty it like you would depress a syringe. This allows for easier emptying and less mess, but if you do leave dirt in it for a while, the Dyson PencilVac does have a filtration system that ensures dust and dirt isn’t released back into the air in your home.

While cleaning the Dyson Offices floors using the Dyson PencilVac, I loved how it moved so smoothly around the floor. The head swiveled every which way and had lights from all angles so it still illuminated the floor without the head having to be facing straight ahead.

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I enjoyed seeing the Dyson PencilVac in action, and think it’d be a great additional vacuum in my house. My home has a mixture of hardwood floors and carpet, so the Dyson PencilVac would be a good extra cleaning device to tackle those floor types. Its slim size and battery is also geared towards smaller homes and flats so it definitely fills a gap in the market – although carpet owners won’t get to take advantage of its cleaning power.

Pricing and availability is still under wraps, although there is talk that the Dyson PencilVac will officially launch in 2026 – and I can’t wait until it happens.