When we put the Dyson V7 Motorhead cordless vacuum cleaner through the wringer with our challenges, we mercilessly revealed its strengths and weaknesses. One thing to keep in mind when cleaning kitchen accidents off hard floors is that the direct drive brush tends to fling grains away as you move the appliance back and forth. User-friendliness is one of the most important criteria for new products for me and my reviews should also be user-friendly. There’s enough power here to suck up hair, sand and pebbles, although a 30-minute battery life on the standard power setting means you may not be able to get your entire home cleaned in one go.

In terms of functionality, though, all Dyson V7 models are exactly the same – they share the same motor, battery, power and bin. And the best part: the easy conversion to a cordless hand vacuum increases the range of applications extremely. Given there’s no more than 30 minutes of battery life, the V7 cannot handle large spaces… unless you’re willing to let it fully recharge and then resume where you left off. Even on standard power, however, the V7 is more than capable of gobbling up dust, sand, pebbles and small debris from pretty much every surface.If you're interested in understanding how we test our products, check out our detailed cordless vacuum testing procedure. It has a smaller suction channel, a slightly smaller brush roll and the motorhead itself doesn’t have an extra layer of fabric to pick up dust. Crank the cordless vacuum cleaners to “Max” mode and the V7 will last you a mere 6mins, the same as the V6 and a little behind the V8, which lasts a minute longer at seven minutes. It’s not just hair and dust the V7 can suck up – if you’ve spilt cereal in the kitchen, got mud, small pebbles, or dried grass and straw in the car, the V7 can manage it all.

What we found slightly uncomfortable was holding down the trigger to keep the power on during the entire duration of a cleaning session. The difference between the models becomes even more confusing when comparing their suction power, where the V7 is the weakest of the lot.The only differences between the various V7 versions are the number of tools they ship with and the filters. We will take a closer look at the new emptying function, as Dyson’s main idea behind this development was to achieve a smoother emptying of the container with less dirt creeping back into the apartment. As we mentioned above, the Dyson V7 won’t be able to handle anything more than a small one-bedroom apartment on a single charge.