Dyson Omni-glide review: Float around the floor

Having reviewed Dyson’s flagship V15 Detect Absolute, its 2021 range-topper, now, as they say, it’s time for something completely different. The Dyson Omni-glide is a compact, quick cleaner for hard floors that sits in between the V Series vacuums and the also new and diminutive Dyson Micro 1.5kg.

The Dyson Omni-glide is designed for smaller houses and apartments with tiles, wood, laminate or lino flooring. Why only smaller properties? Because it’ll only run for 20 minutes on the battery (and even less on Max mode). 

But the Omni-glide also boasts a rather clever dual soft roller head that can rotate in all directions. Therefore it’s absolutely perfect for gliding around furniture and other tight spaces. We’ll run you through how that performs shortly. 

Design and tools

• Available colours: Purple/Nickel
• Dirt-bin capacity: 0.2 litre
• Dimensions: 108 x 21cm
• Weight: 2kg

The design of the Omni-glide is similar to regular Dyson vacuums like the V15 and others – in that the tube snaps into the body of the cleaner, which consists of a dirt-bin under the traditional Dyson cyclones, which in turn is under the five-stage filter part that screws on and off easily.

The benefit of all this stuff being ‘in line’ is that you’re able to vacuum under furniture. The trade-off is that you don’t get a particular handle-like handle. That’s OK with something designed for quick jobs though.

As with Dyson’s other cleaners, you can wash the filter easily. Indeed, you can also wash out the bin and rollers too. 

As usual, you can also miss out the ‘tube’ part of the vac and connect the attachments directly to the body of the cleaner for handheld mode. 

The package includes the following tools: 

• Omnidirectional ‘fluffy’ soft roller cleaner head
• Combi-crevice tool
• Worktop tool
• Mini motorised tool
• Docking station and charger

In terms of the other tools, the mini motorised tool is perhaps the most useful. It’s not intended to be a carpet vacuum, but you could say it’ll easily clean upholstery, such as in the car or on stairs.

Clearly a lot of work has gone into the omni-directional head – which is truly 360 degrees. This is classic Dyson design with even the castors designed for minimal resistance. 

The combi-crevice tool is designed for sucking up debris in tight spaces, with a brush that you can also slide down the spout to use for cobwebs or to brush something off like the top of a picture frame. The cleaner is less than 2kg all-in, so it’s fairly easy to lift. 

The worktop tool is a simple wide scoop for cleaning up something like spilt sugar or rice from a work surface. 

Note that the tools here aren’t compatible with the V Series vacuums (V8, V10, V11, V15 and so on) but they are compatible with the even smaller, lightweight Dyson Micro 1.5kg. 

The cleaner’s bin is easy to empty – you just push the button on the rear of the bin which releases it, then there’s a rotary catch to release the lid and the fluff. 

There’s a compact docking station included into which you can ‘lean’ the cleaner to hold it in place (with the cleaner still stood on the floor). If you screw it to the wall use some good fixings if you’re installing on a plasterboard wall or partition. You don’t have to screw it though – Dyson provides some super sticky strips. 

Cleaning and performance

• Removable battery, wall-charger included
• Charge time: 3.5 hours
• 8 radial cyclones 

The Omni-glide’s controls are extremely easy to use. There’s a button rather than a trigger to switch the cleaner on – which does give you nearly the cited 20 minutes of battery life; we got around 16-18 minutes generally – and another to put it into Max mode, which rapidly drains the battery in just a few minutes. And with a battery charge time of 3.5 hours, it’s quite a long time before you can use it again. 

Talking of the battery, it’s housed in the handle and can be easily swapped out if you have a spare – the compartment just clicks open at the top. An LED on top of the battery compartment tells you if the battery is low or empty, but it isn’t obvious and the lack of remaining power is definitely a negative.

Essentially, you’ll need to plug it in after every time you use it – unless you’re just quickly sucking up a pod of spilt peas from under the table.  

One of the best things about the omni-directional head is that it’s only 20cm wide. That means you can get it under things like sideboards. Thanks to the twisty connector you can then move it in every direction – including sideways. It really makes cleaning easy and comes into its own when you need to move around an obstacle like a pillar or table leg or get under a coffee table.

Unless you’ve got a trendy sofa on stilts, you won’t be able to fully clean under the sofa without moving it though. It can clean up a lot of stuff – even quite large chunks of, say, mud. 

The Omni-glide isn’t as powerful as the higher-end cleaners in Dyson’s range, although it also boasts a compact version of the 105,000rpm Hyperdymium motor with eight cyclones instead of 14. Again, it’s designed for sucking stuff up from hard floors rather than getting deep into the fibres of a carpet and it’s a job it does very well. 

We used it as our main cleaner downstairs for a week – we have tiles in the kitchen and hallway, plus a wooden floor in the living room. And the Omni-glide coped with pretty much anything thrown at it (by two kids and more) including mud, spilt breakfast, misplaced rice, and so on.