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It’s the most frenzied time of the year. You know, the scramble to scrub up your home before a Christmas onslaught of relatives, in-laws and twice-removed cousins cram into the place. Sure, the whole process might have been a whole lot easier if you’d bothered to sponge behind the bathroom sink once in the last nine months, but that’s why they call it spring cleaning, right? So imagine my delight to have Dyson’s latest WashG1 to hand for my own rendition of this panicked annual tradition.
As the vacuum and hair care company’s first-ever electric mop, the WashG1 is exactly what it claims to be. It’s a wireless mop that you can scoot around hard-flooring so that you might avoid getting on your hands and knees to buff up the same surfaces. As home appliances go, this one doesn’t need a lengthy sales pitch. Not least because the Dyson WashG1 features a one-litre clean water tank that provides enough liquid to cover almost five times the size of an average London flat, as well as some handy design tricks to separate between wet and dry debris to avoid any gross buildups of gunk. The real question, does it actually work?
Made for modern homes
The idea behind the WashG1 is a solid one. Since we’re not in the ‘70s anymore, a lot of people have ditched the tired home decor of deep-pile carpets for wood-panelled and tiled flooring. Although the best vacuum cleaners will do a lot to keep these surfaces clean, they won’t necessarily allow them to look as resplendent as you’d like. This is why you might already have a mop and bucket tucked away in a storage cupboard to get the same job done. Priced at £599, Dyson’s solution to the problem isn’t exactly cheap but it is as well-engineered as you’d hope it to be.
If you’ve seen the recent Dyson V15 Detect Submarine in action – which allows you to swap between wet and dry vacuum heads – the idea behind the WashG1 is broadly similar if specialised to mopping. Fill up its tank with water, make sure it’s charged for a maximum of 35 minutes runtime and just roll the thing across your kitchen as it applies a thin layer of water via its dual microfibre rollers. I first saw the WashG1 in action back in May during a trip to Dyson’s London HQ and while my own home is in reasonably good nick, this place had cereal, ketchup and all manner of grime sprawled all over the place for testing purposes.
As was the case back then, the WashG1 tends to make light work of any problem spots, so long as you pay due attention to them and consider upping the machine’s ‘hydration’ intensity as necessary – either way you’ll find the sheen of water applied quickly dries off without any streaks or weird spots. While this mop isn’t as lithe as most Dyson vacuums these days – a 300mm wide head will do that to any machine – its ergonomics are well constructed. Pushing around its 4.9kg weight isn’t much trouble at all, while the arm of this machine is more flexible than your average hot yoga instructor allowing you to divert the WashG1 under chairs, tables and most tight spaces you can find. As for the results themselves? The floors of my London one-bed look as good as they’ve ever done, and the required effort to maintain this sheen is mercifully low.
Debris avoidance
Since the WashG1 is a first-generation product, it inevitably comes with a few rough edges. Perhaps most the obvious of which is Dyson’s claim of ‘no-touch disposal’ for the dirty water and gunk you’ll inevitably collate when using this machine. This statement is true, much in the same way that fourth-placed Nottingham Forest could technically win the Premier League this year.
In fairness to Dyson, the WashG1 goes to great lengths to avoid a situation where you’ll have to get hands-on with the detritus it collates. Its dirty water tanker is elegantly separated from the clean one, easily detached and can be swiftly poured down the nearest sink without much of a fuss. This electric mop’s self-cleaning process can also be engaged at the touch of a button and helps avoid too much in the way of product maintenance for the technophobic. That said, you will inevitably find some dog hair, stray bits of mince pie, plastic wrapping or other nonsense that will cling to the WashG1’s removable debris tray. In those scenarios, you’re going to need to dig out the stuff by hand into the nearest bin. It’ll take a few seconds, it’ll be pretty gross and then it’ll be done.
Aside from this occasional unpleasantness, the other thing worth mentioning about the WashG1 is that it is not a vacuum. Hopefully, you’ve gathered this knowledge already in the past few minutes but it bears repeating since mopping up any carpets or rugs you do own at home is not a smart idea. Also, this will require you to own a separate vacuum and if that vacuum is made by Dyson then it’ll likely cost you another couple of hundred pounds. None of this makes the WashG1 a bad product, but it does render it a luxury.
Dyson WashG1 verdict
The hackneyed thing to say about any first-gen product is that you can’t quite believe it took so long to come into existence. With Dyson’s WashG1, that kind of statement seems even more trite. Making an electric mop is a fundamentally different challenge to that of a vacuum cleaner – especially since water and electronics famously do not mix well. Despite the obstacles involved in its creation, the WashG1 is a remarkably accomplished device. Not a perfect one, but it does exactly what you would hope it to. That means mopping effectively, even in most awkward spaces, without demanding too much labour when you have to clean up afterwards. It’s more than a £599 proof of concept, it’s a great Dyson in its own right.
