Robot vacuums are great for keeping floors clean on a regular basis, but they don’t catch everything. If you’re looking for a tool to handle the finer details your robovac might miss — room corners, edges, hard stairs, entryways, etc. — Dyson’s PencilVac Fluffycones is one of the lightest, most versatile stick vacuums you can buy. You can get one during Amazon’s Big Spring Sale for $449.99 ($150 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target, marking a new low.
The PencilVac is about as thin as Dyson’s Supersonic hair dryer and weighs under four pounds. Its slim design lets it reach spots that robot vacuums (and even some other stick vacuums) can miss. While it’s not designed to do large-scale vacuuming (or for vacuuming carpet), it can handle dust bunnies on stairs, small tufts of hair, and debris like cereal or dried oatmeal with ease.
The vacuum’s built-in green LED lights shine on the ground, making it surprisingly easy to spot dirt, while its four “fluffy cone” roller bars are designed to suck up long hair without getting tangled up (as long as it’s not too thick). For a deeper clean, Dyson also includes crevice and dusting tools for tackling baseboards and windowsills, as well as reaching into corners and tight spaces possibly overrun by cobwebs, like behind a TV console.
While this is a versatile stick vacuum, it’s not a powerhouse. Its 55 air watts of suction is noticeably weaker than Dyson’s current lowest-end cordless stick vacuum, the V8, which is a better choice for bigger messes. The PencilVac’s battery life tops out at around 20 to 30 minutes depending on the setting, so it’s best suited for quick touch-ups rather than deep cleans. But as a companion to your robot vacuum, it’s a quirky, tiny gadget that might help your space stay a little more tidy. And, as our smart home reviewer Jennifer Pattison Tuohy puts it, it’s “a wildly overengineered device that’s delightful to use — entirely unnecessary, but something you’re probably going to really want anyway.”