A few weeks ago I was walking through a store and saw a woman and her daughter linger as they spied the Dyson Wash G1 - Dyson’s first dedicated mop. 

Before I could ask her what she thought, a stranger jumped into our interaction. A full-throated, first-hand testimonial of how excellent the device was and how it had changed their home for the better. 

The woman and her daughter smiled at the assessment. She picked up the box under her arm, and made her way to the counter. Her daughter actually cheered. For a mop. 

That’s what the new Dyson Wash G1 does to you: it turns even the most people-shy individuals (like me) into someone who stops perfect strangers to rave about a mop. If you’re someone who has stood near me for long enough in the last few weeks, I’ve probably done this to you - and I’m not sorry.

And I'm not the only one on the the RUSSH team who does this. Our editor-in-chief Jess Blanch and writer Samantha Corry are also avid members of the Dyson Wash G1 cleaning cult.

Want to know what all the fuss is about? As someone who has lived with the device for multiple months, here is my first-hand review of the Dyson Wash G1 and why I think it's a hard-floors essential.

What makes it different?

An electric mop is nothing new. In fact, it’s positively antiquated. The 19th-century Industrial Revolution saw the first pairing of mops with technology when E.C Brown first invented the self-wringing mop. It surely had people stopping in the high-street to talk about it, too, like I with my Dyson Wash G1.

But we’ve come a long way since then. What sets the Wash G1 apart from other motorised and electric mops is an obsession with cleanliness. Not just the cleanliness of your surfaces, but of the water and brush cleanliness used to physically mop the floors.

Looking at the Dyson G1 Wash, it resembles most other electric mops. But it’s what goes on underneath the mop that gives you the best clean you’ll ever have.

It separates out the dirty water from the clean

If you think about it (and Dyson has), you really only get one perfectly clean sweep of your floor with a traditional mop: the very first one. As soon as you put your mop back into the bucket to wring and re-soak it, you’re working with dirty water. Water that only gets dirtier as you progress. By the time you finish your work, you’ve basically just migrated dirty water - and the subsequent germs - from one side of your house to another.

Dyson wants to make sure that every stroke of your floor results in a section that’s even cleaner than the last, and that involves constantly cycling the water. Instead of simply cleaning your floor with the water from the tank and moving on, the WashG1 uses the wide brushes to pump (not suck) the dirty water back up into a separate tank. That way you’re only ever cleaning your floor with clean water.

And the reason it doesn’t use suction? Dyson says that would pump a gross dirty water smell into your space, leaving it clean, but stinky. And nobody wants that.

See what I mean? Dyson obsessed over this so that the cleaning firm of Blanch, Corry and Steiber could, too.

It separates debris from liquid

If you, like me, don't love pouring mop water, microplastics and all down the sink and into the waterways – the wash G1 has a solution. It separated dirty water from larger debris so that you can tip your liquid down the sink but empty any debris into the bin so it doesn't get into the oceans.

The debris is caught in a tray which you can pull out, empty and easily slide back into the device.

The battery life is more than enough to mop a whole floor

As for the battery - often notorious in household cleaning appliances - you'll likely find yourself never needing to charge in the middle of a clean.

I clean around 200 square metres regularly and I never find the battery dipping below 70%. Recharging happens as soon as you pop the Wash G1 back on its stand and it'll be ready to go again before you know it.

One piece of advice I give every single person with a Dyson or other battery-powered home cleaning appliance: don't leave it plugged in 24/7. Once the device is recharged, switch off the powerpoint. It'll make sure your battery doesn't get lazy and see you having to replace it before its time. You'll thank me later.

It self-cleans

Once you finish your clean, you can take the Wash G1 back to its elegant charging base and perform a self clean. This rinses the brushes and empties the dirty water into the tank so it’s clean for next time. You’ll still need to machine-wash (or at least tap-rinse) your brushes every now and then, as hair and other debris can become tangled underneath, but otherwise, it’s an effective sanitisation tool for your next wash.

It's smaller than other electric mops

Nobody wants to look at their mop all the time. But in the same way that it has with vacuums, Dyson has taken its industrial design to new, more stylish heights to make what was once an ordinary cleaning accessory into a statement. 

The unit itself features a solid aluminium stem, the clean and dirty water bottles and the large brush heads. Despite its function, its form is positively classy. It takes up about as much floor space in your laundry or butler’s pantry as a regular Dyson vacuum stand, and when the two are side-by-side it looks like a cleaning superhero duo team-up.

It cleans more efficiently than all other forms of mopping that I've tried

There are so many gimmicks these days. But this is one cleaning gadget that does exactly what it says on the tin - and more.

It does an incredible job cleaning both timber and tiled floors, with the brushes buffing the floors to a sheen.

One tank of clean water will more than do around 200 square metres of floor before it needs to be filled again. The dirty water tank is a similar size, but you’ll almost never have to empty it before you fill the clean water tank again because of how the mop works.

It has three levels of cleaning, and each will pump out more water onto your floor if you have more stubborn areas that need cleaning. I typically use it on setting one or two as it allows the floors to almost instantly dry once you get finished with that room. There is a MAX mode which pumps out loads of water at once, but you should only ever do this if you’re cleaning up other spilled liquids or truly stubborn marks.

Once the clean water is applied to your floor by one brush, another scoops it back up again and sequesters it back to the dirty water tank for clean strokes every time.

There is one gap in its armour I have found from testing it for a few months, however: I haven’t been able to get as close to my baseboards as I’d like, and the design means that I can’t really get under low cabinets as far as I’d like. My entertainment unit - for example - sits about 20cm off the floor, and the G1 can’t get all the way underneath. The same goes for my couch. At best, that make the Dyson Wash G1 a cleaning demi-god.

As far as I’m concerned, the Dyson Wash G1 is the last word in hard-floor cleaning. Dyson doesn’t do anything in half-measures, and the Wash G1 is proof. It’s a lean, mean, clean machine.