Dyson’s latest device for tackling dirt in the home is a mechanical mop. Unlike the British engineering company’s flagship fans, blowers and vacuum cleaners, the new Dyson WashG1 scrubber does not use a precision-engineered fan or fine-tuned Hyperdymium motor. Instead, mops rely on mechanical agitation to clean up wet spills, remove dirt and debris, and provide your hard floors with a good clean.
The WashG1 Wet Floor Cleaner (also known as a mop), priced at $699.99, is the company’s first dedicated mopping device. The cordless, battery-powered mop is expected to be released this fall, and you can sign up to be notified when the world’s most beautiful mop arrives on Dyson’s website.
While it’s certainly fancy, this isn’t a smart mop — there’s no robotics or app connectivity involved. While there are plenty of companies that will sell you robot vacuums and mops to clean your floors for you, Dyson relies on you to drive this product. Dyson does sell an upright vacuum/mop combo — the Dyson Submarine — but the WashG1 has only one purpose: mopping floors.
However, since this is a Dyson, it has been engineered to be the best product in the world. the best mop. Tom Moody, president of Dyson Home Furnishings, said one of the big problems its engineers have to solve is that most mops spill dirty water on the floor as they mop — you know, when you put the mop in a bucket full of dirt bucket of water and then throw it back onto the floor while “cleaning”?
Dyson thinks it solves this problem by continuously spraying clean water into two rolling microfiber mop heads as it works. Instead of the back-and-forth physical labor of pushing a mop back and forth, the Dyson uses mechanical agitation with counter-rotating rollers to scrub dry stains, meaning you just have to guide it as it does its hard work. The built-in bristle brush scrapes away any larger pieces you scrape off, like Cheerios, and pops them into a separate chip tray.
You’ll still need to empty the dirty water and manually clean the chip tray (it and other components are dishwasher safe). But the WashG1 cleans its rollers automatically, so it’s ready to go the next time you need to clean your floors.
While there is a small pump, and the brushes have motors to drive them, the lack of a large vacuum motor means there are no filters to clog. According to Dyson, this is one of the reasons why the WashG1 is so much lighter than the Dyson upright vacuum. It’s battery powered, but again, since there’s no powerful motor, they can use smaller, lighter batteries. The battery lasts for up to 35 minutes, and its 27-ounce water tank can mop up to 3,100 square feet in one go, said Ketan Patel, Dyson floor care engineering manager.
To be fair, today’s mop isn’t very good. The fact that the Swiffer is the best product for manual mopping in the last decade…says a lot. Dyson’s very expensive mops do have a unique approach, and I was interested to see how well this $700 floor scrubber worked.
