Dyson PencilWash      Price: €350Where To Buy: DysonHow many floor cleaners can one company come up with? Quite a few, if you are Dyson. The latest is the PencilWash, a hard floor cleaner designed for small spaces and homes.The idea is simple: add water to the tank and let the PencilWash take care of the cleaning. It has a soft roller that will scrub away at your tiles or wooden floors, lifting dirt and stains. It is motorised so it propels itself; all you have to do is hold on to the handle and direct it where you want it to go. When you are finished, the handle slots into a small charging dock to power up for the next session. There are two modes: standard, for everyday floor cleaning, and max, for spot-cleaning stains and more stubborn areas. The LED screen built into the handle will display your chosen mode, along with any maintenance alerts. Unlike other cleaners, the water tanks for both waste and clean water are built directly into the cleaning head. That makes it easy to get started – pop out the clean water tanks and fill it – and to keep it clean, as there are no filters to mess about with. You empty the dirty tank (carefully – more on that later), wash the roller and leave it to air dry, ready for the next cleaning session. The wand handle, which contains the battery, is charged separately, in the floor-standing dock that also functions as handy storage. The PencilWash, as the name suggests, is designed to wash floors. It doesn’t do vacuuming, so if you have rugs or carpets elsewhere in the house, you will need to have another option for cleaning those. However, it will pick up dirt and debris from hard floors as it washes, depositing it all inside the dirty-water receptacle built into the head. Every time the roller rotates, it squeezes water and debris from the roller, so you aren’t washing your floors with more dirt. [ Dyson Wash G1 review: Tackles almost everything the house throws at itOpens in new window ]The PencilWash seems to make the most of what it has to work with. It didn’t leave the floor overly damp, but at the same time, it managed to lift a surprising amount of dirt from the surfaces. Because this is a compact cleaner, you would expect battery life would be poor. But both the battery and the 300ml tank of water lasted long enough to do the full downstairs of my home, which consists of five rooms of hard floors and the hallway. And there was still some left over in both cases. It tackled food spills and dust equally well, although some dried-on pasta sauce discovered under the kitchen table proved a little more challenging, especially in the tile grout. Muddy footprints were quickly erased, too. Cleaning the device itself after use was a more annoying process. You need to empty the dirty-water receptacle, remove the mop roller and clean everything down. The first time I tried to empty the dirty water, it ended up on the floor. So I put it all back together again and went for a second go at the floor. The next attempt was more successful: dirty water ended up down the drain. The roller itself is cleaned continuously by the Pencil Wash’s system for squeezing the dirty water out as it cleans your floor, but it will need a rinse and a regular clean of its own to keep things in tip-top shape. Dyson recommends rinsing the roller after every use, and leaving it to air dry. The only problem is that it can take a while to dry, so be prepared to be without the cleaner for a day, or buy a second roller so you can swap them out. GoodIf you are looking for something compact, the PencilWash fits the bill. The cleaner takes up very little space on the charging dock, and when being used it will fit into the smaller corners of your home and under most furniture. You can clean effectively with just plain water, or add floor cleaner – Dyson approved – to tackle more stubborn stains. BadLike many Dyson products, you pay a premium. But it is only a wet floor cleaner, so if you need a vacuum too, you will have to look elsewhere. The roller doesn’t clean right up to skirting or kitchen baseboards so there will still be a small strip of floor left uncleaned. Emptying the dirty water tank can be a bit messy. Everything elseThe device has two modes – standard and max – and defaults to standard when you switch it on. It has a battery life of about 30 minutes, but works quickly enough that I never ran out of cleaning power, even when tackling the entire downstairs of our home. Verdict Pricey for a single function device, but if you have hard floors and a small space to devote to storing cleaning equipment, it may be a good option.