Review: Dyson Ball Animal 3 Extra

My rabbit Lola has a body count. She has killed. She knows what it is to see the light go out of a vacuum’s eyes.

Any rabbit-owner can tell you horror stories about the vacuums their adorable little num-nums have slain in cold blood. That particularly combination of fur, poop, and hay have choked so many of my other vacuums to death. During testing, I expected the Dyson Ball Animal 3 Extra to fall to my rabbit’s fur just like all those before it. But as soon as I turned it on for the first time, I knew my rabbit had met her match.

The Dyson Ball Animal 3 Extra is like the Terminator. It’s prepared for everything. The front rollers have a thick vane of plastic fibers designed to prevent clogs. Paired with that heavy machinery is suction so powerful you can feel the vacuum suction itself down to the carpet when you turn it on. At 290 air watts on its highest mode (it also has a mode for deep-pile and low-pile carpets, as well as hardwood and ground-in dirt), it's almost a third stronger than Dyson’s popular stick vacuums.

If the Ball Animal 3 had just these two features, I would’ve been elated that my days of disemboweling the vacuum to dislodge a clog halfway through every single room were over. But there’s more up its surprisingly dainty sleeves.

For a Dyson vacuum, the Ball Animal 3 is pretty small but very dense. It’s a full-size plug-in vacuum, but it has a slim and short profile that makes it easy to just tuck into a corner (even though at 17 pounds, it can be tiring to lift up and down). Like the very first Dyson vacuums, the Ball Animal 3 comes with a dust canister that you can remove from the vacuum and empty without touching a single bit of dust or fur.

Dyson’s signature ball design is another star of the show here. Vacuuming around a tiny angry rabbit can require some careful maneuvers, a lot of picking up the vacuum and re-angling it to get it where it needs to go. With the ball, you can just tilt the vacuum and make a tight little turn, all without getting too close. This maneuverability also means it’s great at getting into tight corners, awkward fits, and even under the bed a little.

I'm surprised Lola didn't recoil from the vacuum given that it's a very loud little thing. When you turn it on, make sure it's not in upright mode, otherwise it will scream like a tortured human being until you tilt it back and start vacuuming.

When I finished vacuuming with the Ball Animal 3 for the first time, I hadn’t even noticed that I didn’t need to stop and unclog it. I checked, just in case. The 1.7-liter canister was completely full, and the detangling vanes in the front rollers were totally clean.

Photograph: Dyson

Like Dyson’s popular stick vacuums, the Ball Animal 3 Extra (as its namesake suggests) comes with a bunch of extra attachments. It has one for grooming your pet and one for upholstery cleaning, plus all the usual little blades and brushes. When you hook up an attachment and stand the vacuum up to clean out your car or couch, you don’t lose a single watt of suction no matter which attachment you’re using. It's one of two Dyson Ball Animal vacuums available; the other is the Dyson Ball Animal 2.

I’ve actually had a Dyson Animal vacuum before—the very first one, in fact. Growing up, it was my mom’s most prized possession, a black hole of a vacuum capable of devouring the truly industrial amount of fur generated by our two dogs and two cats. When I went off to college, the old Dyson Animal vacuum came with me, and it served me well up until about four years ago.

At long last, it died. Its body was starting to come apart in places, and I had to manually remove the hair and animal fur that would accumulate on the front-side rollers almost every time I used it. So I let it go. I gave it a dignified funeral, paid my respects, and moved on.

After almost over two decades of use, I've found that the Ball Animal 3 is more than a worthy successor. Truly, it has made it a joy to vacuum my apartment. It has dispelled the aura of dread that used to surround breaking out the vacuum, knowing I’d have to disassemble and unclog it about every five minutes. Now I just plug in the Dyson, switch between modes as appropriate, and sail through every room of our apartment, leaving behind floors that feel as clean as the day we moved in.