Dyson DC40 Animal Lightweight Dyson Ball Upright Vacuum Cleaner

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Go for the Ball Animal Complete and you get two more attachments. The first is a mattress tool, which is essentially a 188mm wide version of the 118mm stair tool. Lastly, there’s the reach-under tool, which is a slimmer, bendy crevice tool. It comes with its own slim dusting brush, for really reaching into hard-to-clean spaces, such as behind radiators or furniture. With no bags and washable lifetime filters, that’s it for accessories. Your only running costs will be electricity – and it doesn’t use much of that. One of the filters is housed in the middle of the Root Cyclone gubbins at the top of the bin. This is much like the main filter on the V-series cordless models, only bigger. The second filter is hidden in one half of the ball. Unscrew the purple plastic ‘nut’ at the wheel hub, remove a half-wheel and rotate the filter to remove. We struggled with this, though. Dyson engineers must have something of a personal issue with crevices. The Light Ball comes with three individual tools for getting into nooks, crannies and other awkward spots. The main crevice tool is ported from other models in the range, is suitably long and has a slide-down soft dusting brush.

The reality of reducing motor power can’t be overcome by good airflow design alone – although Dyson gives it a damn good try. The Light Ball uses close to half the power of Dyson’s Big Ball Cinetic (700W power consumption compared to 1300W) yet gives away only 25% in suction power. It offers 90AW compared to the Cinetic’s 120AW. Impressive indeed. The floor head is a completely new design for the Light Ball. It uses a noticeably bigger brush-bar roller than previous generations, but is just as easy to remove for cleaning. Simply rotate the end cap and it slides out of the head. A switch on the front offers control over three suction levels. The Light Ball aims to be all things to all cleaning duties. It combines the floor-cleaning gumption of an upright with the spot- and detail-cleaning flexibility of a cylinder. Simply pull the wand from the rear of the handle, attach the tool and off you go. Issues come when using the detail tools. With no mini-motorised tool, grafting hairs from our stair carpet took a fair bit of elbow grease using the upholstery tool. You had to go over patches a few times to clear the area completely. They did clear though – which is more than some cleaner’s hand tools manage. As an addendum to that comment, however: a fortnight of use later, we enlisted our resident Octogenarian tester for her opinion on the Light Ball. She loved it; the bin flap opened cleanly for her every time and she had no problem getting the filter off.

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At its heart is Dyson’s proven Radial Root Cyclone bagless technology. Multiple cyclones claim to optimise airflow and capture dust and allergens in the bin, rather than jettisoning them into your room. This eases the strain on the cleaner’s filter system, allowing Dyson to fit just two washable lifetime filters. That is top-spec, A-rated dust emission. Flour is a tougher customer, and we test with a 50g spillage. Here the Dyson did particularly well, collecting 49g from hard floor and 48g from carpet. Usually we see some dust residue in these tests but I really couldn’t see the missing flour on the floor in either of these tests. I suspect it was probably trapped in nooks and crannies around the vacuum’s various parts, though it’s nothing that wouldn’t get dislodged by fluff if you went on to give a carpet a good clean afterwards.

READ NEXT: The best handheld vacuum cleaners to buy Dyson Ball Animal Complete review: Should I buy it? Yet getting down close and personal with the carpet pile revealed some heavier grains of powder left behind. Not at the edge, where you might expect, but the few inches into the room. Odd. Much crawling around examining the floor head in action ensued.

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We are the largest suppliers of assorted Dyson spares in the UK, in addition to parts from other leading appliance brands. With over 40 years’ experience in the spare parts industry, our relationships with these brands is solid, so you can rest assured that our products are high-quality and authentic. While this basic Multi-Floor version is never going to cope with multi-pet homes, for a singular pooch or tabby it isn’t bad. For outstanding hard floor and excellent carpet cleaning from only 700W of power, we can’t think of any other cleaner that gets close. Verdict The second crevice tool is longer still and has a rubber section that telescopes out. This section is flexible, allowing you to bend the tool around corners and under low objects. Two smaller tools are for use on the end of this part. A small dusting brush is ideal for delicate jobs, and you get an obscure-looking flat tool with suction nozzles all over it. Anyone looking for Dyson vacuuming power in a large house with hairy pets is going to find the consistent, heavy-duty cleaning prowess of the Dyson Ball Animal a real boon. However, it doesn’t come without its caveats.

Dyson’s latest upright, the Dyson Ball Animal, is an update of its previous Ball Animal upright vacuums. There are three in the range now, one that looks almost identical to the original Ball Animal, and two that have the larger body and extra features of the Ball Animal 2. At BuySpares, sourcing essential Dyson spares and accessories is our speciality. We aim to offer spare parts for various types of Dyson vacuum cleaners to ensure that all of our customers’ requirements are catered to. Controls are simple: one button for on/off and one to start/stop the brush bar. The motor itself is claimed to be 40% quieter than previous Dyson models. In use, it certainly is: we measured just 65-66dB vacuuming over carpet. That’s blissfully quiet. Yet the energy label states 80dB. Hmmm. The easy-to-steer ball technology and instant-release wand with ridiculously stretchy hose are great. Add in the superbly lengthy 9.4m power cord and this Dyson offers outstanding cleaning reach. All the tools easily clip securely on and off and you even get a little on-board storage lug. Okay, so you can only store one tool here – but it’s still quite handy. On hard floor it missed about 1g, collecting 25g. Most of this seemed to fall out when I moved the vacuum away from the cleaning zone, so had perhaps got trapped somewhere before making it to the collection bin when I thought the clean was finished. However, it’s still almost perfect, and cleared easily with a second pass.

Our Dyson spare parts are all available for incredibly low prices, and eligible for our price match promise. So, if you find your Dyson parts somewhere else for cheaper, we guarantee to match this price. On a straight staircases, getting all the way to the top is even easier. The only caveat to the Light Ball’s usability on stairs is the long wand. You do end up holding the wand a long way from the business end of the cleaning. This simply isn’t as easy as using a handheld cordless cleaner, for example. At 6.9kg, you still wouldn’t want to be doing the cleaning equivalent of hill repeat exercises with the Light Ball. Thankfully, you don’t need to. The stupendously stretchy hose and long wand combined to get to the very top of our stairs – all the more impressive given the rather awkward about-turn in our staircase half way up. The indents on the purple nut were just too small for my fingers, which made things a little awkward. Removing the filter itself also proved a challenge. It’s sealed on tight and there’s nothing to grip onto. We suspect this will loosen a little when it’s been off and washed a few times, however.

In fact, Dyson’s cleaners have never been mains power-hungry monsters. They’ve often consumed much less energy than rivals anyway. With a 900W power limit to with which to comply, you might think an 899W motor would be the way forward. Not so – the Light Ball has a 700W motor and an annual estimated consumption of just 28kWh. That’s a solid A-rating for efficiency and less than a fiver of electricity per year. On hard floors, the ball steering is precise and the machine never skids or slides. It does take a fair bit of force to tilt the cleaner into a turn – a little more so than Dyson’s own V-series, for example – yet not onerously so.

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It has a 10m cable and needs to be kept plugged in at all times. I found that with it plugged into a central hall or landing, it could quite happily reach most of the rooms on each floor of my house, with only one unplugging required to reach the extremities of an extension. Despite this model not looking too much smaller than other Dyson models, it weighs far less. Under 7kg, in fact. In addition, the mass is low down in the ball, so it balances easily in the hand while carrying. Removing the bin from the cleaner is via a simple button press. Emptying then involves pushing the same button again to release the flap at the bottom of the bin. This has a chunky rubber seal and is an unusual shape to accommodate some pipework near the ball. The upshot being that the flap needed a little extra help to pull open. This isn’t onerous, but these are unusual design hiccups for Dyson. Both suction and the level of airflow are very good. That translates directly into excellent cleaning on both floor types and when using the tools. READ NEXT: The best cordless vacuum cleaners to buy Dyson Ball Animal Complete review: What’s it like to use?