SINGAPORE — When I was growing up, my mother made me vacuum our five-room HDB flat on a daily basis to, as she said, “build muscles”.

These character-building chores would take about an hour, including dragging the heavy appliance over steps between the hall and the balcony as well as switching power outlets when the power cord reached the end of its tether.

When I got older, these home “work-outs” included carrying the vacuum cleaner, which probably weighed around 4kg but felt like a tonne after cleaning only two rooms.

So when I was introduced to the Dyson Digital Slim DC44, a lightweight (2.3kg), cordless, handheld vacuum cleaner, I had scoffed at the thought of using it to clean my mid-sized HDB flat. After all, the appliance only held a 20-minute run time charge.

When I said as much, the spokeswoman challenged that a model 4-A HDB flat can, in fact, be cleaned under 20 minutes. This despite the pitch that the DC44 is meant as a pick up appliance, and not the main vacuum cleaner for the house.

The DC44 comes with a ball-jointed motorised cleaner head that combines anti-static carbon fibre filaments and stiff nylon brushes, said its press release. And its patented Root Cyclone technology and Dyson digital motor, which spins at up to 104,000 rpm (revolutions per minute) — or five times faster than an F1 race car — is designed to pick up stubborn dirt.

What all that means is it whisks up the dog fur and dust off my floor like a whirlwind. Which is the analogy the Dyson engineer used to explain its Root Cyclone technology: As the motor spins the air inside the vacuum cleaner, centrifugal force sucks up the dust and dirt. The debris then gets deposited into the bin when it reaches the outer rim of the “cyclone”, which has less speeds.

At the end of the challenge, I was left with a very clean house and the time taken to clean my house was 16 minutes; well within the 20-minute deadline.

My only complaint was that you had to keep your finger on the trigger at all times to activate the vacuum cleaner and I lost count the number of times I had to switch fingers because of cramps.

The Dyson Slim DC44 vaccuum cleaner is available at all electronic shops at S$749.