Getting a #CleanSleep with the Dyson V6 Mattress Vacuum

How often do you vacuum your mattresses? For me the answer to that question was, “Wait, what? I’m supposed to vacuum the mattress??” But apparently I’m in good company — Dyson recently surveyed Canadians and found 61% of us neglect to vacuum our mattresses.

Seriously, vacuuming beds was something I’ve never even thought about until I got an email from Dyson talking about their new V6 Mattress Vacuum and explaining how the average bed contains anywhere from ten thousand to two million dust mites, which feed off the dead skin we shed. These dust mites then produce droppings, which many people are allergic to and can cause reactions, including asthma, eczema and allergic rhinitis.

On average we shed 28g of skin cells per month – the equivalent weight of a bag of potato chips. As you sleep, many of these skin cells become entrenched in your mattress. Squirming already? The dust mites that feed on your skin can lay up to 40 million droppings a day, which we then breathe in.

Ugh, okay, that does make me squirm. So I was easily convinced that my mattress should be vacuumed… but I was left wondering why I would want the Dyson V6 Mattress vacuum specifically, as opposed to any other Dyson handheld. The DC61 Animal has been at the top of my wishlist for a while now. Why wouldn’t I just get an Animal and use that to vacuum my mattresses?

I asked some questions, did some research, and here’s what I discovered:

Both the V6 Mattress and the DC 61 Animal have the following features:
* 2 Tier Radial™ cyclones – work in parallel to increase airflow and capture fine dust
* Dyson digital motor – provides two times the suction power of any other cordless
* Lightweight and ergonomic
* Hygienic bin emptying
* Fade free-battery

And here’s what makes the V6 Mattress better for this job than the DC 61 Animal:
* The V6 has a motorized mattress tool which is designed to agitate the mattress as you vacuum.
* It’s the first handheld to have a HEPA filter — it expels air cleaner than the air you breathe.
* It’s been engineered for reduced noise levels and is quite a bit quieter than the DC61.

My next thought was — Is the V6 good for anything aside from mattresses? Is it strictly a one use tool, or could I use it say to vacuum my couch or the car upholstery?

The answer:
You can absolutely use your V6 Mattress on other surfaces, such as your car upholstery and your sofa or recliner. It was definitely designed to be a multi-use tool. It even comes with different ends you can swap out, such as a crevice tool, perfect for couches, not so necessary, at least in my experience, for mattresses.

So how did the Dyson V6 Mattress Vacuum perform?

I used it on my daughter’s twin bed, and I was shocked by how much dirt and dust it removed from such a small surface. It was quick and easy to use. The V6 is a cordless handheld unit. According to the instruction manual, it takes about three and a half hours to charge and the charge lasts about 7 minutes at MAX setting (or up to 20 minutes at the regular setting). That doesn’t sound like much time, but I was able to thoroughly do my youngest daughter’s bed, and then move on to my queen size mattress, all on one charge (at MAX).

My daughter’s twin sized bed has a regular mattress. The mattress in my room is a pillow top. I sort of wondered how the V6 would perform on the mushy up and down contours of the pillow top vs the smooth firm regular mattress, but it just slid along easily, doing the exact same job on both beds. I felt like I could have been more thorough on the Queen sized bed though, so once it was charged back up I did my bed a second time and was surprised by how much yuck it still sucked up on the second go.

Then it was time to test it out on the couch and on our car upholstery. Again, these are different shapes and textures than a bed mattress, so I wondered how this vacuum which was designed specifically to tackle mattresses would make out. Again, it did well on all the various types of surfaces I tested it on. Sucking up all the dirt and crud, but not catching at the fabric, and the crevice tool came in handy for getting into hard to reach corners and cracks. (Forget the beds, I was disturbed at how much dirt this machine was able to suck out of my couch. YUCK.)

Overall I’m sort of shocked by how they’ve managed to shrink down all the awesomeness of my full-sized Dyson vacuum into this portable machine. It’s relatively light and it’s relatively quiet. It sucks up wee tiny particles, and it keeps them all in there until I am ready to empty the bin portion. The stuff that I dumped out was like a fine grey powder. This is going to sound morbid, but what it reminded me most of was ash from a cremation, which I suppose makes sense given that much of that fine dusty dirt was likely made up of shed skin cells.

The point to note here is, when I was doing the vacuuming none of that grey powder was getting blown back towards me. I was seriously impressed with how all that fine dust and dirt stayed in the machine. There was no noticeable smell, nothing coming out of the little filter/fan portion other than clean air.

It would be fantastic if a charge lasted a little longer, but then again it’s not going to be too often that I’m going to want to use this vacuum for over 20 minutes all in one go. Now that I have this machine, and I know how important vacuuming our mattresses is to the air quality that we’re breathing while asleep, I’ll likely do our beds a couple times a year. But I’m also sure I’ll be breaking this out of the closet more often than that, to take care of the dust, dirt and crumby mess my kids manage to spread regularly on our couch and car seats.

For further info, or to grab one for yourself, check out the Dyson webpage.