Dyson DC40 Animal Lightweight Dyson Ball Upright Vacuum Cleaner

Product Information

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.

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.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. 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. 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.

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. Despite looking like a mini-me of the old Big Ball upright, Dyson’s Light Ball is all-new. This eco and weight-trimmed upright vacuum cleaner complies with the EU’s new sub-900W power limit for vacuum cleaners. It better be good – or we’ll have to protest by leaving the EU. Oh, hang on… 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. 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.

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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 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. 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. 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.