Dyson V12 Detect Slim review: Three years later, I have an emotional attachment to this cordless vacuum

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UPDATE: Sep. 25, 2025, 5:00 a.m. EDT Since its original publish date in 2022, this review has been updated to reflect my experience at the three year mark of using this Dyson every day. At the original time of writing, the Dyson V12 Detect Slim’s retail price was $649.99, but has since gone up on both Dyson’s website ($729.99) and at Walmart ($699.95). Dyson has not made a public statement as to whether or not tariffs have affected the pricing of its products.

If you think your hard floors are clean just because you vacuum regularly, you’re wrong. That’s what I learned after just a few days with the Dyson V12 Detect Slim. And after nearly three years of using it as my trusty backup whilst testing a ton of other vacuums, I stand by my statement that the V12 Detect Slim is one of the best stick vacuums on the market. Use the table of contents to skip down to my latest update.

Dyson stick vacuums have led the market in terms of innovation for years. And I appreciate that those innovations never feel too high-tech and far-fetched to actually work well in daily life — a recurring theme for some fancy robot vacuums recently. No, the upgrades seen in the best cordless Dyson vacuums are as practical as they are novel.

But Dyson’s best feature has nothing to do with the cyclonic suction itself. Rather, the new feature — a laser — highlights microscopic pieces of debris that the human eye would miss, ultimately leading to a deeper clean by showing you the spots that need attention. New cleaning paranoias unlocked!

The Dyson V12 Detect Slim costs between $649.99 and $729.99 at full price (the MSRP has fluctuated since release) and as low as $399.99 on sale. Either way, it’s a pretty budget-friendly way to bring home some of Dyson’s high-end cleaning tech without getting uncomfortably close to the $1,000 mark.

The price difference can be attributed to scaling back on a few things compared to the next model in the family tree, the V15 Detect: a downgrade in battery life (60 minutes versus 120 minutes), a skimpier dust bin (0.1 gallons versus 0.5 gallons), a weaker motor (150 Air Watts versus 240 Air Watts of suction power), and fewer attachments. It still comes with two interchangeable cleaner heads: the Laser Slim Fluffy and the Motorbar.

The V12 Slim is also the most affordable Dyson stick vacuum with a digital display. This shows helpful intel like how many minutes remain before you need to charge, warnings about blocked airways, and a piezo counter that reports on the size and amount of particles encountered. Dyson calls it “scientific proof of a deep clean.”

As one of Dyson’s smallest-capacity stick vacuums, the V12 Slim doesn’t look like it holds much. But for a 1,500-square-foot apartment with three roommates, I was pleasantly surprised to only have to empty the bin once a week or so.

I wish the V12 Detect Slim’s button was closer to my thumb.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable photo composite

The dustbin is easy to dump directly into the trash can, but dust bunnies get stuck sometimes.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable photo composite

For what it’s worth, the downsizing in bin size is what keeps the V12 Detect Slim so delightfully lightweight and easy to operate. Weighing in at 5.2 pounds, it’s more than three pounds lighter than the Dyson Gen5outsize that my mom has. That beast feels so cumbersome compared to my dainty V12 Detect Slim — it’s just such a breeze to grab off its wall dock and whip around the apartment.

The Dyson Unveiled event on Sept. 4 revealed a handful of new Dyson vacuums, including one that will allegedly be even thinner and lighter than the V12 Detect Slim. The Dyson Pencil Vac has quite the unique design that I can’t wait to try IRL, but it won’t be released in the U.S. until 2026 — and will probably be more expensive than the V12 Detect Slim.

This laser made me feel like shit about the status of my floors in the best way possible

We’re all regretfully aware of the fact that dust is technically a concoction of things like sloughed-off skin cells, hair, and dust mites — so even if you stay on top of vacuuming the obvious stuff like everything bagel crumbs or tumbleweeds of pet fur, other stuff is constantly gathering behind the scenes. The thing is, it’s barely visible to the naked eye.

As a chronic daily vacuumer, I was the last person I expected to be shocked by how much dust and hair congregates on my floor in less than 24 hours. Naturally, one would think their floors are pretty damn clean if they’re vacuumed literally every day. The laser says “sike.”

It highlighted hair, fur, dust, and even minuscule shards of glass in spots that genuinely look spotless, like a black light illuminating glow-in-the-dark details on a bowling alley carpet. One rule: The lights stay OFF during sex vacuuming with the laser. It’s the only way to get the full experience of watching microscopic pieces of dust light up like teeth and white T-shirts in the indoor roller coaster.

This layer of dust congregated in, like, a day.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

I SWEAR our hardwood floors look spotless when not under the laser.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The laser saved our feet from rogue pieces of a broken mirror that weren’t big enough to spot with the naked eye. As for the saving of my roommate’s soul from seven years of bad luck, stay tuned.

My mother is the one person I know whose reaction to what’s hiding on the floor might be even more visceral than mine. I brought the V12 Slim along on a visit to my parents’ house and told her to let the laser rip on her textured tile kitchen floor. “This is the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen,” I heard her say as she witnessed so many more pieces of dander and tufts of cat fur than you’d ever notice with a casual glance.

But after you’ve spent a few good minutes rocking in the fetal position whilst ruminating over what you’ve been stepping on all this time, it’s really satisfying to visualize just how thorough of a job this vacuum is doing.

Most of us know the space underneath our bedroom furniture or behind the couch is a breeding ground for dust bunnies. We pretend we don’t know, but we do. But if you ever do feel so inclined to give those “out of sight, out of mind” spots a much-needed sweep, the laser head makes it easy to see what you’re doing.

Not me airing my dust bunny petting zoo on the internet!
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The laser fluffy head ditches the tennis ball-sized ball that the motorized head uses to swerve around (it’s like the mini version of the Big Ball that corded Dysons have). Instead, it takes on a bendy straw design. This keeps its profile low and allows the whole vacuum to lie almost parallel to the floor, depending on how close to the ground you feel like getting. I was able to push it under furniture where even the slimmest robot vacuum definitely couldn’t fit. Its soft, bristly approach laps up specs of dust similarly to how a cloth or Swiffer pad would, rather than relying on sheer suction to pull them up. After going over a particularly dirty spot, you can take a second look with the laser to ensure the pieces you saw before are gone.

While the fluffy head’s wheelhouse is bare floors, it does a decent enough job on carpets and rugs that I didn’t bother to swap heads unless I was strictly vacuuming plush carpet. I actually preferred it on the flat weave rugs in my apartment that toyed with the Motorbar. When my cat, Sansa, knocked her container of catnip off the coffee table (classic), the fluffy head picked up most of the leaves in one or two passes.

The V12 also automatically boosts suction when it encounters extra dirty spots, and the shift is audible. Past the satisfying visuals, it’s comforting to hear how hard it’s working, too.

No, the laser doesn’t highlight invisible debris on carpet, but I wish it did.

Who, me?
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The Motorbar is great for heavy debris, but sometimes too strong for its own good

The Motorbar cleaner head is the go-to for thick carpeting. It’s half an inch thicker than the slim head, optimizing air flow for stronger suction. The conical shape digs deeper into carpet fibers than the soft design of the fluffy head, using special anti-tangle spirals designed to tear hair out of carpet fibers and push them into the bin without wrapping around the head. In my three-year window with this vacuum, I have noticed that thick wads of hair do start to spool at either side of the fluffy head if it hasn’t been flipped over recently.

I was most impressed by the Motorbar’s success rate on kibble on my parents’ medium-pile carpet. (This mess was self-inflicted because the cats’ bowls live on tile, but vacuums are better put to the test on a surface where crumbs can stick like Velcro.) In my experience, the most a vacuum typically interacts with heavier debris is pushing it around or sucking it up, then shooting it out the back of the cleaning head — or glossing over it completely.

Not all suction is strong enough to pull up large pieces of debris, especially on the first pass.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The Motorbar will probably eat your bath mats, even on the lowest power setting.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable photo composite

I drove the V12 Detect Slim right through the middle of the pile and watched a pristine path form behind it, clearly showing where the vacuum had and hadn’t been. Not a single piece of food was left after just one pass.

While I’d still prefer the fluffy head’s fibers to lick up tiny specs of dust, I found the Motorbar to be really effective on heavy debris like soil on my hardwood floors. It’s a godsend each time my roommates and I decide to re-pot plants inside.

The Motorbar is tough on dense piles of dirt.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

However, the Motorbar’s beastliness was also its downfall on some floor types. A flat weave floor runner, a low-pile bath mat, and a furry rug all tripped the Motorbar up to the point where it stopped spinning completely. At that point, you have to turn it off and back on to resume spinning. People on Reddit have been bitching about their Dyson literally being too powerful for years, too, so the laser head is a nice chill alternative.

With these attachments, a dedicated hand vacuum is obsolete

Starting with the best, the motorized hair screw tool is essentially a mini version of the full-sized motor head with the same anti-tangle conical brush bar designed to target long hair and fur. This little beast is so powerful that no one would be surprised if it were a separate, extra purchase, so it’s nice that Dyson includes it. (Mini motorized attachments aren’t often included with cheaper cordless vacuums.) But if you have pets that sit on the furniture or car seats, motor-driven cleaning for smaller spaces is almost as crucial as the full-sized cleaning heads themselves.

Though the V12 Detect Slim’s dust sensor has pointed out how much cat fur collects on my floor, I swear that just as much is matted down into the fibers of the cat tree. The mini hair screw tool’s compact size allowed me to get close to the curved edges, where my ChomChom is too wide and stiff.

The dust bin was basically empty before I used the vac on the cat tree. Just sayin’.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The mini Motorbar was great at combing crumbs off of velvet furniture, which is sometimes stubborn.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

My apartment is only one level, but it’s not hard to see how the mini motorized tool could come in clutch for carpeted staircases that collect fur where a full-sized vacuum can’t provide the flexibility to nail the corners. Obviously, that detailing is something even the best robot vacuums can’t provide.

The other included attachments, a crevice tool and a combination tool with a wide nozzle and brush, can be found in just about every cordless vacuum box, regardless of price or brand, but are useful nonetheless. The skinny extender gets precise with where it’s pointing and is great for squeezing between cushions, sweeping out crevices in the car, or tending to those nasty baseboards.

The McDonald’s fries salt living in my cupholders has met its match.
Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Downsides: It’s not the most heavy-duty, but that’s OK

If anything, large homes (more than 2,500 square feet, maybe) with multiple pets that shed heavily might consider bumping up to a Dyson with a larger dustbin and longer battery life. You can squeeze just under an hour out of the V12 Detect Slim on one charge if it’s on low power mode, but that’s hard to maintain when the vac automatically works harder on areas it senses to be dirtier.

Being so compact, the V12 Detect Slim has an inherently smaller motor than the more expensive V15 Detect or Gen5 Dyson vacuums. The dustbin also holds way less — but again, that’s how it remains so agile. I only think the pared-back cleaning performance would be a dealbreaker if you’re tending to a large home with heavy foot or paw traffic.

Three-year update: My sidekick is still kicking

I got my V12 Detect Slim in the summer of 2022, and as I write this, it’s now the fall of 2025. No exaggeration: I’m confident that I have used this vacuum just about every single day since then, barring the windows when I was away from home for more than a night.

I’m not vacuuming every room in the house every single day, of course (though that sounds like a dream in my sick and twisted mind). Our daily routine involves sweeping the zone of tracked kitty litter around two litter boxes, the crumby area around the cats’ food bowls, and the stretch of hardwood near the kitchen counter. I’ve since adopted another cat, too, and my V12 Detect Slim is still more than enough to keep up with two cats.

Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The compact build and nimble cleaning head just make it so easy to scoot right up against walls really quickly, with the laser blatantly pointing me in the direction of the visible debris. It’s such a snappy, intentional process that it’s sometimes painful to leave the mess for all of the robot vacuums I’m testing. If someone’s ever wondering whether they should get a robot vacuum or a stick vacuum, I always advise that they consider how motivated they’ll realistically be to keep up with manual vacuuming. The V12 Detect Slim is one of those stick vacuums that you genuinely want to use.

In the past three years, I have yet to experience any loss of suction or other functional issues with my Dyson — just some unfortunate chipped orange paint. That’s probably because I use handheld mode to sweep out the drawer area of my automatic litter box, which involves me jamming the vac into a narrow slot and accidentally scraping it against the opening.

Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Dyson’s own FAQ says that you can expect most cordless stick vacuums to last between two to five years. I can definitely see my V12 Detect Slim reaching the five-year mark at least, and I know why it has lasted so much longer than my old V10 did. I’m going to hold your hand when I say this: You probably need to wash your cordless vacuum’s filter way more often than you are. I rinse the layer of cat hair out of the filter once per month, scrub the fluffy laser roller with dish soap, and deep clean the gunk from the dust bin, past just dumping it into the trash can. For more specifics, check out my Dyson cleaning guide — step-by-step pictures included.

Is the Dyson V12 Detect Slim worth it?

Yes, the Dyson V12 Detect Slim will make a great addition to most households. I would recommend it to just about anyone — I’ve actually done so several times in real life, with a passion tantamount to when I insist that someone watch one of my favorite shows.

Between the dust-detecting laser, low profile, flexible swerving mechanism, and less-hostile suction on finicky rugs, I almost always find myself reaching for the Laser Fluffy Slim head over the Motorbar head. This says a lot about whether to opt for the V12 Detect Slim over a cheaper Dyson that doesn’t come with the laser head. In most situations, I’d also choose the Dyson V12 Detect Slim over any Shark stick vacuum.

The Dyson V12 Detect Slim isn’t Dyson’s cheapest or fanciest vacuum, yet it’s still one of the best cordless vacuums you can buy in 2025. It provides proof of a debris-free floor — and the peace of mind that comes with that — for hundreds of dollars less than its siblings, and that’s why I’m still sold on it three years later.