Most Dyson products sell you on being the fanciest and most advanced gadget to ever exist. The company’s R&D process is impressive, and these devices are built to last, with many of them doing things that seemed impossible a decade ago.
The Dyson Car+Boat is not one of those products. It’s not trying to reinvent a category, show how fancy motors can get, or change your entire life. It just wants to do a pretty good job of cleaning your car and/or boat. It’s small, it’s somewhere between a third to a sixth of the price of the fanciest Dyson vacuum cleaner (depending on whether there’s a sale), and it does a pretty okay job.
Table of contents
First impressions
My first impression upon unboxing the Dyson Car+Boat is that it looks like neither a car nor a boat, but in fact a small vacuum cleaner. It doesn’t come with the long stick in the box, like it would for a floor cleaner, but instead three small tools that are designed to clean crevices and surfaces. It made me think back to the Dustbuster my parents had when I was a kid.
The body is significantly smaller than a standard Dyson vacuum cleaner, making it easier to store in a workshop or car. It’s also got a handle that looks a bit different to that of other Dysons, and I found it to be somewhat ergonomic.
Out of the box, it seemed good. Super easy to use.
Dyson Car+Boat specifications and price
| Suction power | 115AW |
| Dimensions | Height: 206mm Length: 331mm Width: 131mm Weight: 1.9 kg |
| Bin volume | 0.54 L |
| Filtration | Whole-machine filtration |
| Battery Runtime | 50 mins |
| Warranty | 2 years |
| Cost | $449 (on sale for $299) |
| Official website | Dyson Australia |
There are a couple of significant things to point out here. The first is that it doesn’t appear to have a HEPA filter. It does have a filter, but not one of the fancy pants ones.
The second key thing is that 115AW number. The air watts measurement is how much suction the machine has. The motor RPM is important, but that only tells you how much the motor is capable of pulling in under ideal conditions. The AW number tells you how much suction you’re actually going to get.
The Car+Boat motor spins at 110,000 rpm, and generates 115AW, which is pretty decent. Comparing that to the top-of-the-range Gen5Detect, which spins at 130,000 rpm and generates 280AW. So if you, like me, already have a Gen5Detect, going to the Car+Boat will take a bit of adjustment.
It’s also important to note that the Dyson Car+Boat is essentially the decade-old V8 vacuum cleaner, just without the extra accessories to work as a regular vacuum cleaner. So, if you already have a V8 or newer and don’t need a specific vacuum cleaner for your car or boat, you probably already have everything you need.
Performance
As soon as you stop viewing the Car+Boat as a full, current Dyson vacuum cleaner, and instead see it as a spot cleaner, the level of performance makes a lot more sense.
Ease of use
While I now generally dislike triggers on handheld vacuum cleaners, and find on/off switches more ergonomic, the trigger on the Car+Boat isn’t too bad. Given it’s more of a spot cleaner, it’s not intended to be in consistent use for long periods, like you’re vacuuming your whole house. You’re able to turn it on for the bit you need to vacuum, and then conserve battery until you get to the next spot.
As far as everything else, it’s exactly as simple to use as any other Dyson vacuum cleaner. It’s quick and easy to switch out the different cleaner heads, and easy to charge. Washing the filters is still a little fiddly, but not too bad.
Cleaning performance
I have to admit that it took me a while to adjust my expectations for this. I am used to a Dyson Gen5 Detect, which is the latest and most powerful Dyson vacuum cleaner. I’m used to pointing the vacuum cleaner in the general direction of a problem, and the problem being instantly solved.
The Dyson Car+Boat is essentially a Dyson V8, a 10-year-old model. It is identical in every way. I’m guessing Dyson just had a whole bunch of these in a warehouse and didn’t know what to do with them? So the expectation has to be different. Larger debris just doesn’t play well with the Car+Boat.
The first major test for the Car+Boat was when my daughter somehow brought down a giant pot plant into her play pen. Chaos. Tanbark, little stones, dirt and plant detritus everywhere: in the Moosical Cow ball pit, all over the plastic play mat, all over the fabric play mat. Her entire baby jail looked like a crime scene.
“Not to worry,” I thought. “I’ll just clean this up with the Car+Boat.” However, it took a lot of laps to get it all cleaned up, repeatedly going over the same parts. Granted, some of the soil and bark was larger than typical household debris, but the Gen5 would have just laughed while it sucked it all up. The Car+Boat really struggled. It was eventually mostly cleaned up, but it took more effort than I expected.
From that experiment, I don’t think this product would be well-suited for gardeners or parents who are looking at using it to pick up cereal debris left in their vehicles. This isn’t designed for that.
What the Car+Boat did excel at was smaller, dried stuff. So, flour on tiles was easy. Crunched-up dried leaves that somehow ended up in the baby jail were simple to pick up on the shiny plastic play mat, but a bit more challenging to get from the fabric play mat.
Vacuuming an actual car was okay at getting out dust and regular debris, but it still took a few passes to get out enough to feel satisfied.
All up, the cleaning performance was average. Very impressive for 10 years ago, and quite good for the price, but it’s nothing to rave about.
I do think it’s weird that the Car+Boat says it’s for boats when it’s not a wet/dry vacuum cleaner. I guess it’s for a dry boat, but still an odd call to sell a non-waterproof product for a water vessel.
Battery life
I’m pretty happy with the battery life. 50 minutes is more than enough to clean a couple of cars and probably a boat, depending on the size of the boat.
Who is the Dyson Car+Boat for?
This is a great question, and I’m not 100% sure of the answer. It’s possibly for people who want to have a spot cleaner vacuum cleaner in the garage so as not to dirty the primary Dyson. While you can use regular Dyson vacuum cleaners as (better) spot cleaners, without buying extra accessories, you can’t use the Car+Boat as a regular floor vacuum cleaner.
If someone wanted to use this in a professional setting, such as a car cleaning business, getting one of the newer, more efficient Dyson models would save time because workers wouldn’t have to do as many passes when cleaning to get the same result.
However, that lower price tag is difficult to go past if you want a good spot cleaner without paying full Dyson prices. It is a good, if somewhat limited, device.
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