Dyson V15s Detect Submarine review: One vac is all you need

Best Prices Today: Dyson V15s Detect Submarine

The V15s Detect Submarine is pretty much the V15 Detect with a Submarine head and adaptive wet/dry programming. When we reviewed the V15 Detect, we found it to be an excellent cordless stick vacuum cleaner, so what happens when you add a wet mop head?  

There’s one thing to bear in mind at the start. You won’t be able to buy a Submarine head for your existing V15 Detect cordless vacuum: although the V15s Detect shares all the same features, the electronic parts are not compatible.   

What you get when you buy

• Six cleaning attachments
• 0.2 gallon/0.76 liter dustbin
• 60 mins max runtime

In the box, you’ll get the V15s Detect Submarine, which boasts a 27.6-inch/70cm long wand, a 0.2-gallon/0.76-litre dustbin, a click-in battery, and an LCD screen that displays performance in real time, with a second-by-second run-time display, maintenance alerts, power modes and battery-life status.

There’s also the Submarine Wet Roller head in aqua-green, the Digital Motorbar cleaner head for carpets, the Fluffy Optic cleaner head for hard-surface floors, the Hair Screw tool, a crevice tool, a combination tool with a wide nozzle and a brush, a transparent wand clip, a drip tray, the charger, and a docking station. The V15s Detect Submarine is the entire cleaning package, with a tool for every floor type and situation.       

You’ll also get two quick-start guides: one for the V15 Detect and one for the Submarine head itself.

Once you’ve unpacked it, you might feel a touch overwhelmed. There’s a lot going on with this wet/dry vacuum, and you might need some time to familiarize yourself with it.

The V15s Detect Submarine is the entire cleaning package, with a tool for every floor type and situation

First up, you need to charge the battery. You can charge the battery solo or clip it into place in the vacuum and charge it there. The jack plugs into the bottom of the battery, and it will take roughly 4.5 hours to fully charge. From a single charge, you’ll get about 60 minutes of use–in the lowest power mode. The fact that you can remove the battery means that you can swap it out for a second one to double your cleaning time between charges. You’ll need to buy that second battery separately.

To store the vacuum in an accessible, low-stress manner, you’ll probably need to fit the docking station to a wall near an outlet point for charging convenience. You can prop the V15s Detect Submarine up against a wall or in a broom closet, but it’s not ideal and often means the fitted vacuum head skates across your floor if the balance skews. So, you’ll need to consider where to put your docking station as it should be fixed on a wall about 40 inches high.            

Submarine mopping

• Easy to clean roller head
• Heavy when tank full
• Can use mild detergent

To mop, use the Submarine head. To fill it, depress the red level on top and slide out the water tank cartridge. This will expose the red water tank top, which you unscrew and then fill with roughly 1/3 quart (300ml) of water. Then replace the top and slide the cartridge back into the head.

We couldn’t figure out whether to use cold, warm, or hot water, and couldn’t find any guidance in Dyson’s literature. You can apparently use diluted detergent in the head but not bleach. As it was, we went with a warmish water. It was also a bit tricky to slide the cartridge back into the brand-new head at first, until we figured out that a track on the top needs to feed into a thread.     

You can see that the Submarine lifts a lot of dirt from your floor

Using the Submarine head is a bit of a shock at first as it’s self-propelling, so it speeds away from you; it’s a bit like trying to control a small hovercraft. There is a slight weirdness though, in that you’re restricted to a back and forth motion the width of the Submarine head. In conventional mopping, you tend to work in a zigzag across a wide area so the job gets done quicker and you can use very hot water and detergent. That’s not possible here–and the Submarine can’t be used to steam-sterilize your floors, either.

That said, you can see that the Submarine lifts a lot of dirt from your floor. We were surprised at the color of water that came out of the drain trench, and how far a third of a quart of water goes with the wet roller head. Dyson says the Submarine can clean more than 1,000 square feet with one tank of water, and we have to say that we never had to refill it while cleaning.

There’s a slight issue in that when the drain trench gets quite full, you’ll find that it leaks at the side because it’s not a fully sealed compartment. You may might to stop during mopping to empty it.

Fortnunately, emptying the drain trench is easy. You slide the water tank cartridge out and pour the dirty water into the sink. Cleaning the Submarine roller is also simple: The roller slides out of the Submarine head, and you can wash it in the sink.          

Despite some misgivings at the start of the testing process, we found that the Submarine gives your hard-surface floors a really good clean. It’s not going to get rid of deep grime and embedded dirt, but we grew to feel confident about its mopping abilities.

Vacuuming on hard flooring and carpets

• Fluffy Optic carbon-fiber head
• Three power modes
• Washable parts

When vacuuming, you can choose from three suction modes: eco, medium or boost–or you can choose auto, which adapts the suction level based on the level of dust detected, depending on the power and runtime.

The LCD screen also shows you piezo sensor particulate counts, which is novel but we weren’t quite sure what to do with the information; there’s a sense that they included it because they could, rather than because it provides essential information.

But the root cyclone technology that generates forces of up to 100,000g to remove dust, and the Hyperdymium motor that spins at up to 125,000 rpm seem to do the job.

Another bonus is that the filter is washable, so you can remove dust build-up.     

The Dyson V15s Detect Submarine is essentially a complete and easy-to-use floor-cleaning system.

For hard-surface floors, there’s the Fluffy Optic head; for carpets, there’s the Digital Motorbar head; for furniture and stairs, there’s the Hair Screw tool.  

The Fluffy Optic head has a carbon-fiber roller and an angled green laser to illuminate your floor–and the dust that you might otherwise miss–as you vacuum. This stripey blue-and-yellow carbon-fiber roller is soft, detachable for easy cleaning, and has a hinged joint between the head and the wand socket that both flexes and tilts a good 40 degrees all round, which means the maneuverability of the head as you vacuum is excellent.   

The V15s Detect Submarine picks up a lot of dust and debris. The difference in bin content between the first and second vacuuming was huge

Vacuuming with this head is somewhat of an alarming experience as it lights up the dust and hair on your hard floors, and often shows the reach line between vacuumed and non-vacuumed floor. It also reveals the imperfections on the floor surface itself, which led us to repeatedly vacuum a portion of floor until we realised the marks weren’t actually dust but scratches.     

The thin 28-inch (70cm) wand and the flexibility of the wand/head joint makes it easy to vacuum under furniture–the reach is excellent in this regard.

The first time we vacuumed using the Fluffy Optic head, the bin filled fairly quickly, the vacuum picked up a lot of corner dust, and we felt the head had a slight polishing effect on tile and hardwood floors. After about 10 minutes, we did start to feel a little strain in the hand holding the vacuum, particularly around the thumb joint.

This is one of the downsides of the V15s Detect Submarine: The operation trigger on the handle–which has been removed from some of Dyson’s other new vacuums–must be kept depressed in use, and the vacuum itself is not a very lightweight appliance. Indeed, with the Submarine head, the vacuum can weigh up to 9 pounds (4kgs), which can be heavy on your thumb and forearm.

Truth be told, our forearms were a bit sore after using the V15s Detect Submarine the first few times. This is not a vacuum you’d want to use to clean your entire house in one go.   

The Digital Motorbar head is much bigger than the Fluffy Optic. The wand/head joint turns almost 360 degrees horizontally and 90 degrees vertically, so there’s extraordinary capacity to maneuver. The roller inside boasts a brush screw that stops hair from getting tangled in the roller, although you can turn it off using the slider on the head. As you vacuum, it buzzes a little.

Pickup, we felt, was excellent although, as with other vacuums, a lot of debris can clog the wand: in our case, we tried to vacuum up a significant pile of pine needles and suffered a wand blockage.

Vacuuming just becomes easier and more ad hoc with the V15s Detect

Emptying the dustbin is a matter of pushing down the red lever on the clear barrel: this will push the barrel forward and open the end of the bin, allowing you to tip the waste into your garbage can. To close the barrel, you simply retract the lever.  

Other attachments you’ll get are the Hair Screw tool, a crevice tool, and a combination tool with a wide nozzle and a brush. The Hair Screw tool is a short mini vacuum head with an anti-tangle screw roller with a thin embedded brush that you can employ or tilt away using a lever mechanism on the bottom. Dyson suggests you use this head for furniture and stair carpets, and we can see how it would be useful if you have pets.

The crevice tool is a very typical long, thin, angle-cut pipe for edges and poking down the side of sofas, and the combination tool is a kind of all-in-one curtain, baseboard, wall, and spot-vacuum tool.

The Dyson V15s Submarine really does pick up a lot of dust and debris. The difference in bin content between the first and second vacuuming was huge, showing that the vacuum had really got a lot of latent dust up out of the floor.      

After a week, we found the V15s Submarine to be hugely convenient. Vacuuming just becomes easier and more ad hoc with the V15s Detect. It’ll probably change the way you clean, from a big once-over every week to quicker, single-room jobs because it’s just so easy to transport it around your home.

One slightly bizarre thing, however, is that the position and level of the vent can sometimes mean that when you’re vacuuming under low furniture, you get a blast of air in your face, but hey … nothing in life is perfect.    

Price & availability

In the U.S., you can buy the V15s Detect Submarine from Dyson online for $949.99. There are two functionally identical models, differing only in color: The V15s Detect Submarine Absolute is gold, while the V15s Detect Submarine is yellow and nickel.

If you’re just looking for a wet vacuum, there are much cheaper models available. Check out Tech Advisor’s round-up of the best wet and dry vacuums for more budget-friendly options. But the fact remains that there’s nothing like the V15s Detect on the market. Buy it if you want an easy-to-use, complete floor-cleaning system.

It comes with a two-year warranty. Another thing in its favour is Dyson’s excellent customer service. The brand is easy to get in touch with and very efficient when it comes to replacing faulty parts or devices.

Should you buy the Dyson V15s Detect Submarine?

The Dyson V15s Detect Submarine is a great vacuum cleaner with good mopping capabilities. Some people might find it a bit heavy to use comfortably, the dreaded trigger is back, and it’s not the right tool for deeply grimy surfaces. But if you tend to clean regularly, it will do an incredible job of keeping your floors spotless.

Editors’ note: This review was originally published by TechHive’s sibling site, Tech Advisor.

Best Prices Today: Dyson V15s Detect Submarine