Interesting since the cordless vacuum (dyson v11) I use at home seem to work really well. The previous big corded model we had (Dyson DC33) was also built like a tank and served for almost 10 years before being passed on and still works so maybe I bought into marketing or maybe just different people have different experiences with Dyson products?
Yea, it's weird reading this thread to me. I have a cordless Dyson vacuum and it is by far the best home vacuum I have ever used, both in terms of suction power (even compared to non-cordless ones) and in terms of other usability/features.
We must have had a dud as we got the Dyson animal hair one and it was terrible. Battery life was rubbish, the suction was crappy and the pick up just wasn't that good.
Ended up getting a gtech which was fine for 2 adults in a small 2 bed house with wooden floors, but now we have kids and a bigger place we got a Shark corded and it is amazing. Literally the best vacuum we've ever owned.
I'm not sure the cordless Dyson I have compares well to a good corded vacuum cleaner for cleaning power. But for me, I got one a couple of years ago (after thinking about getting a Roomba for the umpteenth time and concluding it wasn't for me) and it's been perfect for my use case. I normally have a housekeeper come by once a month. But the high traffic areas including the kitchen really need a quick vacuum now and then in between cleanings and the Dyson's been perfect for that. I hated having to haul my corded vacuum out to do this. (So I mostly didn't.) Now it's literally a couple minutes work to grab the Dyson and give a quick cleanup.
Same experience for us. The cordless Dyson is a lesser vacuum cleaner compared to our old corded hoover. But it's light, it's easy to grab from the charger and you don't have to deal with a cord, so it gets used more. It just removes all the friction from the chore.
Yeah, the gtech was a battery vacuum too, but placed the motor/impeller right next to the entrance of the device, no long pole. I wanted to love the Dyson because of what we paid for it, but I left me a bit meh. My folks have a corded Dyson now and it is a good machine, but I really feel the shark just wins. Man I am dull :p
My cordless Dyson (V10 Animal, I think) is strong enough to get stuck to the carpet on the highest power setting. I won't use it past medium because I'm afraid that it will tear up the carpet.
FWIW, we have six furry animals of our own (with four different hair types) and also foster and board dogs. We never buy the “animal” cleaning machine. I’ve never seen a product that in any way shows it’s somehow more capable of dealing with hair or messes than other products in the same line. I have had them be more expensive and flimsier relative to that same line though.
The "Animal" product line is identical to the regular product but comes with a few additional attachments (powered hand hair brush) and is a different color. We have a Husky dog that blows her coat twice a year, 2 longhaired cats and a shorthair. The machine is amazing.
We have both a Dyson cordless vac and a Shark corded one. We use them for different things - the Dyson is for spot-cleaning, toddler messes, cars, furniture, bedspreads while the Shark is for our floors. Both are very good at what they do.
I had a similar experience with the Dyson and then the battery died. After getting the battery replaced under warranty, the machine has worked great ever since.
I think Dyson benefits from the same effect as Apple/Tesla/Beats/etc. Their products are good but their triumph is upselling. Dyson cordless vacuums are like $800+, was your previous one that expensive?
Their tech probably can't be imitated at the moment because they've got it patented up the wazoo. Luckily patents have a sane lifetime and once they expire I'd expect many competitors to show up with similar designs at lower price points and possibly better engineering.
Perhaps, but just like Apple they have a refurbished category where you can get very good deals - and that's on top of them having sales regularly.
I should add that I called Dyson once for my 7 year old wireless vacuum which was having battery problems. They mailed me a replacement completely free of charge. The upselling might be there, but the up-service also seems to be there.
This thread is filled with anecdotes. But vacuums do get tested periodically by objective reviewers. As I recall, the Dyson usually does okay, but it rarely wins overall, and never on price.
My household vacuum cleaners have almost always been corded (with the exception of a couple battery powered ones I had 5 or 10 years ago). Granted, I didn't shell out several hundred dollars for the cordless ones, but dead batteries and replacements got old after the first round so I've stuck to corded ever since. It's just not something I ever really had a problem with. The cords are typically quite long and I never have to worry about battery capacity or lifespan.
I was referencing GP's Festool comment - Festool does make great stuff, but in the vacuum space they mostly make dust collectors for woodshops and shop-vac style shop vacs -- not the household-style vacs we're talking about.
I actually hate my Dyson vacuum (animal 8 I think, or something like that). To me it's absurd that it has a trigger - very inconvenient when carrying it around, and tiresome to use for extended time. Made me think that Dysons are form over function, so the linked article plays well into my bias.
That's weird because the cordless Dyson vacuum we had was utter garbage and my 20 year old Dirt Devil was better in almost every single way except it didn't look as cool and had a cord.
2. My Kirby G3 is 25 years old and can suck a blonde through the chrome of a trailer hitch. How old is your Dyson? How long will your Dyson last? Can you get parts for it? Is it repairable?
The G3 does have bags but they're HEPA H11 and EN1822 that catch ultrafines, so there's negligible emissions and it's all contained in a bag rather than breathing that crap while dumping a baglass.
If Dyson had to choose one product to keep making, but discontinue all others, it should be the V11 vacuum. Runs forever and cleans very well. All their other shit can kick rocks.
I have one of their circular fans in my bedroom. It's got a remote, it's quiet. Yes it's expensive but it's definitely better than the cheap fan I used to have there.
My mom still uses her Hoover from the early 70s. It's mostly metal and the bags for it are still readily available at the store.
A Dyson would probably clean better, but she's not going to upgrade until her old one breaks, which may be never.
That said, it hasn't been completely care free. My parents have had to replace the belts several times, but those parts that are easily available and very cheap. The light bulb is more of a special order part, but you can find them on the internet.
In comparison I bought a Dyson vacuum back in the early 2000s and it died due to the plastic at the joint between the handle and the body breaking after about 15 years. There was no repair that didn't cost more than a new vacuum cleaner. Also, the hose that connected to the corner brush never connected properly because of a factory error, so it always had tape holding the hose on.
But we replaced it with a Dyson ball vac because my wife was convinced they did a better job getting the dirt up. The ball vac is still going strong, although I think we may have shortened it's life at one point. It had gotten plugged up at one point and after my wife had tried to vacuum two rooms it suddenly shut off. I took it apart and removed the blockage but it still wouldn't turn on. So I used a shop vac on the blow side to force air through the motor to get it spinning again and discovered that it had probably thermally shut down because the air that came out the other side was so hot you couldn't put your hand over it. A few seconds of that and the vacuum turned back on and sent out a blazing hot stream of air for several minutes. I'm pretty sure if I took it apart I'd find cooked and now brittle plastic around the motor housing.
My wife has caused every vacuum we’ve ever owned to literally catch fire. Ranging from cheap Bissell to expensive Dyson. It’s quite impressive, actually. The cheap ones usually last <1 year while the Dysons last ~2 years. So now we just buy the cheapest one and run it into the ground. It probably doesn’t help that we have 5 animals + 1 husband in the house.
Ouch. Maybe you should be more aggressive about cleaning out the filters? Our Dyson says to clean them every 6 months or so I think, but if your house is especially dirty (say because the dogs track in a lot of dirt and shed) you should do it more often.
If you have not done it in awhile it can be surprising just how much better at picking up dirt it will become after a good cleaning. Because the filters are trying to get down to 2.5ppm they clog easily.
I wonder how much that Hoover cost brand new (adjusted for inflation, of course).
I've always had the narrative in my head that appliances have become flimsy and have shorter lives because people tend to buy whatever is the lowest price. A race to the bottom on prices means a drop in quality.
I'd say with couple of times a week usage for a thing made out of plastic I could expect a lot more troubles than it had.
It did require one dyson service which they kindly provide even for old devices and one this pipe thingy swap since it ripped.
But as other commenter pointed out - it still works we just wanted to move on to something smaller and cordless and we expect the first thing that will fail in V11 is going to be batteries because other than that they're really sturdly built.
Any cordless appliance with non-replaceable batteries is going to be designed to last only as long as the batteries. Typically 5 years or so.
At least cordless tools usually use replaceable (but absurdly expensive) battery packs. Home goods however seem far slower to adopt battery pack technology.
One thing I hate is that every single manufacturer has their own special battery tech that is expressly incompatible with every other manufacturer. This is an area that is absolutely crying out for standardization but probably won't get it because they're making too much money selling literally $7 of materials and labor for $80. I meant that too. 8 18650s for $0.50 each, plus a cheap off-the-shelf $1 charge controller and plastic case.
Seriously, the Dyson cordless is one of the best investments I've made. Having the charging station hang on the wall means it takes up no space that I was previously using.
