By James Wells in Berlin

BERLIN: Dyson has launched a new vacuum cleaner at the IFA 2009 trade fair in Berlin called the DC26 City which is so compact it sits on an A4 piece of paper and weighs just 3.5kg.

Featuring 275 separate parts, the DC26 was tested extensively prior to launch with 5,318 drops on to a hard floor and 10,000 collisions with a metal wall within Dyson’s testing facilities.

“With DC26, the engineering challenge was to miniaturise the machine without compromising on performance. It took us five years to painstakingly compress and rebuild every single component before we had a machine that was a third smaller than its predecessor, yet could still tackle dirt like bigger machines.”

Also on display on Dyson’s stand at IFA was a pink version of the recently-released DC23 which was specifically created to support breast cancer awareness.