It’s a good watch, including FLIR performance analysis, Fourier analysis of bearing noise, and more.
In summary it’s definitely more engineering porn / extreme overkill than marketing bs.
Dyson's very into moving air in creative ways and blowing through holes. They definitely seem to be the best at it and are very good at it, but they're just playing with an artificial constraint. No one says you have to be able to see through your hair dryer or air purifier. You could make much more effective or cheaper products without those constraints. Just people think they look cool, so they're willing to pay a premium for the weird, "futuristic" Dyson product over the boring normal product. That does make it seem like largely marketing though.
People spend way more money for decorative things that have no functional purpose at all.
Or, as some journalists found, just squeeze the bag in your hands and get more juice out of it than the Juicero did. You know you've over-engineered your product when it's that hard to get something that simple right.
So you have products that are marginally better (because those people 100 years ago were smart too and they have not been completely sitting on their laurels) because it uses modern technology and design informed by modern aerodynamics and the like, but is expensive because it doesn't have 100 years of cost optimization behind it.
Worse, you have products that have 6 months of heavy cost optimization resulting in high precision high power motors mounted in flimsy plastic cases that break the first time you drop them.
Thanks, homie.
In the actual consumer marketplace, luxury is more about exclusive high priced varieties that look different than it is about superior functionality.
People seem to be eternally shocked by this like we're living in some real life version of groundhog day. Almost as if believing consumers actually aren't infinitely rational utility maximizing automatons is some kind of impossible leap of faith.
Sorry, everything is absurd and there's nothing you can do about it.
He has some interesting discoveries like how they make plastic feel like metal but overall the vibe I got from it is the product does not match the price.
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.
Their tech can probably be imitated at a lower cost, but I won't take chances with the cheaper knockoffs, the tradeoff is not worth it.
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.
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.
Wait what, is ten years supposed to be a good lifetime for vacuum cleaners?
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.
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'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.
They said it's still working, so seems like its lifetime is greater than 10 years.
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.
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.
Dyson the company has been riding that one idea since, and I agree the rest of their products are over-priced luxury items. In fact their vacuums are over-priced as well now.
Dyson rubs me the wrong way as well personally by purporting to be a "patriotic Brit" moaning about the current state of the country. Then upping sticks to Malaysia with the company HQ in tow.
Dyson really does have good marketing though.
The old school super blowers that just do hot air down, or whichever direction you turn, probably consume more power, but certainly dry my hands faster and I don't have to worry about touching anything that isn't clean in the process.
Anything that blows air around will also blow viruses and the like into the air. People do not wash hands in a "standardized manner" and some people do not even use soap. After their hands are wet, they just stick their hands to the airblade, sometimes touching the sides and shaking the rest of the water all over because they are in a hurry and can't wait that 10 seconds or whatever it takes.
I hate airblades and I don't like hot air dryers.
Paper towels are the best.
So far, the new washer hasn't given me any issues with getting things clean. The only adjustment I had to make was learning to use much less detergent than I was used to.
There are also just two people in the house and no kids, so perhaps it's more of an issue with larger loads or more grass stains, etc.
Also, my kids won't use them because they're too loud.
Also, the dyson's do the same thing.
Either way Excel were the innovators. Dyson just made it look cool. The apple-style marketers who charged 2x as much so could afford some stupid overengineering.
Wiping your hands on your pants when there's towels or something is kind of silly, but how on earth does the article of clothing define if you can wipe your hands on it?
Are you wearing vinyl pants or something?
If I'm wearing $50 jeans, I might wipe my hands on them.
If I'm wearing a $2,000 suit, I won't wipe my hands on it.
a) it's just water, and very little of it at that since you do the directed shake into the sink first
b) the thought of what I'm wearing never enters my mind when I wipe my hands on my pants
I don't think anyone really does it purposely, you just blank for a second and the action is done and now you have a wet spot on your pants
The too nice viewpoint is less relatable, but could be from fastidiousness or OCD applied to the clothes themselves, rather than being concerned about your hands.
I always found the traditional hot air ones to be useless and I would walk away with wet hands after using one.
But none of this is something you would notice from a sexy ipod-esque ad. All of this you pick up on after you start using the tool. Then it makes perfect sense why this is such a good vacuum and well worth the premium relative to other offerings on the market.
That's interesting to me because I've had the opposite experience.
I move a lot. For almost decade I moved twice a year. I don't like taking the dirt from one place to the next, so I buy a new vacuum cleaner every time. So I've been though a lot of vacuum cleaners.
I've tried every brand and almost every level of vacuum cleaner on the market, because sometimes I have more money to spend on a vacuum cleaner, and sometimes things are a little tight, and I have to get a cheaper one. The two Dysons have been the best of them all. My only complaint is that with the wireless models, the battery doesn't last as long as I'd like, but if I stick it back on the charger while I'm moving furniture out of the way in the next room, it keeps up well enough.
That seems extremely wasteful. Why not just emptying the vacuum cleaner before bringing it to the new place? One person buying 20 new vacuum cleaners in a decade is just one of the reasons this planet is running out of resources.
It is. I'm not afraid to admit that. Old vacuum cleaners give me the heebie jeebies. We all have our quirks.
IIRC he recommends Miele vacuums.
He says elsewhere in the thread that "you're going to budget more than [$400] if you want a quality vacuum". He calls anything under $200 "pure shit". He recommends cleaning the brush roller monthly, and changing the belt in the vacuum yearly. He recommends a brand that sells a pack of bags and a filter for $100 that's "a 2 year supply".
Sometimes I wonder if people in threads like this Reddit thread live in the same universe as me. So many times it's cult-think to justify spending absurd amounts of money. (E.g. "obviously that $200 fountain pen is going to write so much better than a $30 Lamy.") The trap is when you start thinking "people who really care about X buy Y brand", and then you start thinking that way about everything.
For reference, I own an upright bagless Black and Decker that I bought from my local big box store for ~$70 over five years ago. I have never replaced any parts. I've cleaned out the brush maybe once in that time. It still sucks just as much as it does when I bought it (you can fill up half the damn canister on one vacuuming run). Even granting that I could get a bagged vacuum that would last the rest of my life for free, the $50+ a year for maintenance would cost me more.
(Granted, a more expensive vacuum would probably clean better by some metric, but this vacuum does not leave any noticeable dust or debris or my very low pile carpet.)
FWIW, I have a Dyson wireless handheld vacuum. It's pretty good, but I can't way if it's worth the price.
I remember seeing the Dyson Ball vacuum the first time in the store and being incredibly underwhelmed after all the marketing on TV. It was heavy, and felt like a bunch of cheap plastic that was going to break apart. Then I tried a few of those handheld Dyson vacuums in different Airbnbs I lived for a while. They were a pain to clean, hair would get caught in the spinning brushes, and the battery life on all of them was terrible (one would only last about 2 minutes, likely because the battery was aging). It always feels like marketing and "cool" gimmicks come first with Dyson products and the actual quality is second.
I went through several other brands (both well known and no-name things from china) and then returning them to amazon because they were either just crap at cleaning, and/or the wall holster was a glorified hook that required you to put it in the holster and then still plug it in too as a separate step.
I finally gave in and paid a little bit more for a dyson cordless stick vacuum and it has been really quite excellent and I cannot fault it. It always gets a lot more "out" of the carpets than our previous vacuum, and the usability of the wall holster means it is super-fast and easy to just grab and go without faffing with cables (vital for me with a small kid - we're vacuuming multiple times a day)
As I recall, one of the selling features of the Dyson Airblade is that it has a HEPA filter built-in.
Paper is actually really effective, but only if you use it properly (don't crumple, always fold in 2, and wipe). 1 small piece is actually enough for both hands unless they are still dripping water.
The old design would just push your hands into one side or the other, where the bacteria-laced water from the last person still remained.
The dyson's are bagless but they have to be emptied all the time, and the maintenance is a lot more of a chore.
I think the ideal mix would be to have a cordless dyson but with sort of a base that empties into a bagged vacuum, similar to the robot vacs nowadays that empties themselves and have a bag that can be thrown away once a month.
Having to empty the dyson every 3 days sort of defeats the point of having a HEPA filter for allergy viewers.
And while it's bagless, with my cats I had to empty the canister a couple of times every time I cleaned the house.
Now the power supply to the rotating brush seems to have died, I'll probably try to fix it eventually but I took the opportunity to buy a good old Henry as a replacement. It's got a huge bag, a huge filter, it's much more powerful and does a great job. Yeah, I have to buy bags, but they're cheap and that's basically the only maintenance I have to worry about.
Dyson on the other hand ranges from poor like the Air Purifier to Decent with their Vacuum and Hair Dryer.
I have no comment about the rest of it, compared to other ones, because I haven't had to replace it since we got it a couple of decades ago.
the first time i went to clean the filter in ours, i kept seeing that i could easily take off/remove one more thing, so i did. next thing i knew i had completely dismantled and washed it.
then it went back together just as easily. hardest part was waiting for things to dry out.
But I am quite fond of my dyson upright and handheld vacuums. Their fans and other things seem more like novelties to me, but that doesn't make them bad, they just are what they are. Expensive and neat, but not optimal if you want to chase a metric or price optimum.
It has far better suction and cleaning effectiveness than anything I've ever used - which is partly why I bought the v11. Our mains powered central vacuum just wasn't cutting it, and was bothersome to use.
I absolutely would buy another Dyson if either of these failed or broke, no question. We're super happy with them.
Their stick vacuums and they are excellent as well.
That said, you should not judge their performance based on their cost, as there are other factors, such as ergonomics, WAF, etc.
That’s interesting, I always found those vastly superior to all other solutions. They dry my hands the quickest, only the copycats come close.
It's light, but has been really powerful, durable.
But as others have said, Miele is incredible. Sebo is another good one. They'll have specific models for your use case.
You can browse /r/vacuumcleaners [0] for ideas.
I can't speak to the other products as I never used them, but air blades really are a big improvement IMO.
I also bought a pair of beats running earphones that work better for me than the apple airpods because they do not fall out, they were both about the same price.
I found the v11 I bought to be vastly better than previous vacuums I've owned, with excellent power despite being cordless, really light and much much quieter.
I haven't used any other Dyson products; I opted to buy Rabbit air purifiers over a Dyson Air.
Pretty much every Dyson product I've used, from the public bathroom air "blades" to the vacuums, seem like a gimmicky, inferior products with a premium price tag. None of them do their intended job better than older, cheaper products in their category. I know James Dyson is regarded as a genius engineer, but the consumer product company bearing his name seems to be 99% marketing.