Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption
2earth.github.io82 points by 2earth a day ago
82 points by 2earth a day ago
This piece doesn't mention the fluffy cones next gen replacement to the dyson stick vac: https://youtu.be/ve6JuJV17FQ?si=aCq_qwtpAhRyS0by&t=159
It was announced a month ago and seems to handle the design criticism in this blog entry. If it works as well as demonstrated will put it in a new class of vac.
I have to say, I don't see what makes it handle the criticism from the OP. It looks exactly the same as every other Dyson product I've ever seen.
Dyson has not made himself very popular in the UK by advocating loudly for Brexit, then moving the HQ to Singapore, then firing almost his entire UK R&D department. Someone I know was fired by email while on holiday. Bastard.
Please, James, don't sue me. It's just my opinion as a fellow Design Engineer... and in my defence, I probably wouldn't have written this if your company didn't constantly proclaim how amazing all your products are. And besides, these days, I can't exactly opt-out of a Dyson-altered existence, given that you're systematically making public washrooms everywhere louder, wetter, more expensive and more confusing. I don't really like your products, James, I don't like what they stand for and I don't like you either, for that matter. Anyway, here's (just some of) the reasons why. But please, James, don't sue me.
The germ spreading of the circulating air always creeps me out.
The particulate aerosolization worries me.
In the future we're going to regret breathing bad air. It's the accelerant for so many health problems.
> In the future we're going to regret breathing air. It's the accelerant for so many health problems.
A non-oxygen dependent energy system for the human cell is the only option moving forward. We need to utilize a clean energy source like sunlight and dump that oxygen dependency once and for all. Cyanobacteria was a crutch dependency that helped bootstrap that whole life thing pretty quickly for the demo. We have a proven concept now that we know work. Can we leave the idea to use oxygen back in the GOE era where it belongs now? Building all this complexity on top of a fundamentally flawed bases like oxygen reactivity was the main mistake.
Come a week Thursday after the singularity we can all upload and be done with that air nonsense.
I love the satire. (Did I really write "regret breathing air" before editing or something?)
Oxygen is an amazingly energy rich fuel and is super abundant for us. The oxygenation of earth was one of the key steps, and it might be a "hard step" for other civilizations.
Of course oxidation causes a lot of damage and byproducts, and is one of the causes of our aging and death. But without it, well...
I was primarily referring to particulate matter suspended within the air we breathe. High PPM / particulate measurably reduces lifespan in several population studies, and it also produces noticeable pulmonary and cardiac disease states.
Polluted air is bad.
shit sorry that way my mistake. lol. I meant to add a strike through "bad" but realized HN doesn't have strike through, so I deleted it and thought I added a "FTFY" but forgot to add it. sorry about that.
No worries at all! I frequently edit my comments on HN to better wordsmith my arguments, so I half thought I'd made the mistake and been caught in a slip up.
I've always wondered why central vacuum systems never took off. We recently moved into a house that was built in that sweet spot in the late 80s / early 90s when central vac was getting pretty popular, and we love it. Quiet, light (you're not hauling around a motor) and with lots of wall inlets, you can vacuum the whole house with a pretty short hose. In my view, this was peak vacuum design, and they perplexingly seemed to go out of style and are not built into newer homes.
It didn't include the terrible battery pack design of the vacuum cleaners either. They could have added a few resistors (already supported by the battery management chip they're using), but instead they didn't so the battery packs just fail. https://old.reddit.com/r/18650masterrace/comments/tifbgr/dys... and the eevblog original linked there.
I had a terrible experience trying to replace failed battery packs for a family member's dyson handheld hoover. They seem to fail every 2 years or so, and the first time around we ordered the wrong part (all the different models seem to have slightly different interfaces). Dyson wouldn't allow us to return either the failed or functional but incorrect batteries, so now we have a pile of 3 or 4 hoover batteries in the cupboard!
Jesus, they have a battery handshake? We truly do own nothing.
Sadly, the lack of good sense and typical selfishness and shortsightedness of a human being means that when you don't, you get the spate of e-bike battery house/apartment/highrise fires that were hitting NYC. You kinda can't fuck around with li-ion.
I don't like that my Bosch e-bike batteries have closed-source schematics, software, and chargers (i mean really, what the fuck am I going to steal Bosch), nor that the software that runs on the bike is utterly locked down to the point where I can't even pay for a copy (it's available only to e-bike dealers and none of them have leaked it as far as I can tell), but unfortunately, I have no trust in my fellow schmuck to not accidentally or negligently build bombs when they rebuild their battery packs, nor would I trust them not to do stupid shit with the e-bike software like remove speed limiters.
I barely even trust myself to rebuild packs, and I kinda-sorta know what I'm doing, which is just enough to get myself into trouble. I still look at the two packs I have rebuilt with a side-eye, months and years on from when I built them.
This is a ridiculous point of view. Those things are not mutually exclusive; you do not need to have complete proprietary lockdown to have a properly built quality battery.
Humans will lie and cheat for profit but at the same time humans also build locked batteries. It's just that nowadays we take away responsibility of people and their choices and we don't want to deal with the fact that when someone is buying a shitty poorly built copy, they are the ones at fault because of their greed.
You could very much have an open market (and should) it's just that people would rather believe there is nothing wrong when they buy something that is suspiciously cheaper than it should be.
Greedy corporations are at the origin of the problem precisely because they try to extract too much for their stuff, selling it at what is an unreasonable price.
You cannot at the same time blame people for their poor choices out of greed and at the same time re-enforce the same behavior in corporations, that's nuts.
This kind of comment is ridiculous in light of the last hundred years of transportation which worked on gasoline, a highly flammable liquid fuel that can even explode under some circumstances. Why do we trust people to handle gasoline safely, but Li-ion batteries are a bridge too far?
I'm tired of being treated like an idiot consumer because someone, somewhere, fucked up their Li-ion battery.
We don’t let people fill up their cars inside their residences either. Lithium ion batteries are additionally dangerous because the fires burn hotter, are self oxidizing, and can’t be extinguished with conventional fire extinguishers.
Good point that people generally don’t fill up their cars in their home. Though I know people have really hurt them selves trying to use gasoline to ignite a bonfire and such. Gasoline fumes are extremely dangerous
Battery fires are not hotter. An EV battery fire and ICE car fire actually have fairly similar heat energy profile. ICE cars are a bit more intense. There’s a study from Sweden that set fire to similar ICE and EV cars and measures the energy. A gasoline tank will typically store a lot more raw energy than an EV battery.
They are self oxidising if the electrolyte burns away. That’s true. The anode and cathode is shorted and you get thermal runaways. That’s why it’s a bit of a challenge to fully put out a battery fire. Next gen solid electrolyte batteries fixes that to some degree.
Of course you can extinguish a battery fire with a fire extinguisher, or just water. The problem is that thermal runaway will make the battery really hot again, which will reignite anything flammable around the battery. So you need to keep it cool for a long while, generally by spraying or submerging it in water.
Yeah, lithium ion is pretty dangerous and not to be fucked with… but actually we do allow filling up cars in private residences… You can just go get a fuel can or extra tank of your choice, fill it up at a station when fuel is cheap and keep it at home for a cheap top up to avoid having to go out of your way for cheap gas on those days when your low but not going near a gas station with good prices… no laws against it at all here in Australia and we’re a crazy nanny state so I’d be surprised if it was illegal somewhere else… except maybe California, where the fuel can is probably illegal to own if you don’t put a warning sticker about possibly causing cancer on it or something ridiculous like that.
> nor would I trust them not to do stupid shit with the e-bike software like remove speed limiters.
I’m not going to lie, this is the first thing I would do if I could flash e-bike software.
This is hardly unique to Dyson. Pretty much everything that has multiple lithium ion batteries does the same. It sucks but that's the price you pay for lithium ion.
This shit should genuinely get your company hauled into court and fined significantly. Render batteries unrecoverable to save, what, a penny on your BOM? Fucking pathetic.
Engineers need a union. I'm sure this was a bean counter decision and not something they wanted to do.
As an EE I feel this was either extreme incompetence (unlikely) or deliberate planned obsolescence.
Battery packs can be expensive and have huge margin if you make them (mechanically) fit only 1 year of 1 model of 1 brand. Which is exactly what Dyson seems to be doing.
Designing BMS'es so that the batteries (safely) fail as quickly as possible is not hard.
I feel this completely ignores the role of brand in the equation.
Dyson's brand is to be technologically forward. It is supposed to look like the future, which is why the angular mix of colors works for the brand.
Bosch, I have no idea what their brand aesthetic is, or what they are trying to say.
This doesn't mean that the Dyson is better than Bosch, or any other competitors, just that brand does come into the equation as well.
For hairdryers particularly dyson is very trendy. People wait in line for limited edition hairdryer cases, it actually crashed sephora's website for one of the limited edition case colors, I think it was rose gold. And the hot pink dryers are very statement making pieces for salons. They are definitely great at marketing and partnering with influencers. Per my hairdresser they aren't the best products on the market but they have great branding.
I have a Dyson DC15 (https://www.dyson.com/support/vacuum-cleaners/uprights/dc15) purchased in 2006. Using it once a week (with few exceptions here and there) for nearly 20 years now, and working perfectly fine.
Yes, it is heavy, and corded, but it is a beast, and still amazed at how much dust it gets every week.
I have to admit that I am not impressed at all by the latest Dyson cordless versions, including the new Dyson PencilVac (https://www.dyson.com/discover/innovation/new-machines/penci...).
But as an owner of the Dyson WashG1 mop, It is quite magnificently the greatest cleaning equipment I enjoy using often. It guides well, vacuums well, mops amazing and overall a marvel in design and function. It's a must for those with pets and little ones tracking everything everywhere. There is literally only two design complaints I have, the pull out tray to clean should have a cocking slide trigger to release all the residue and junction joint frame from the dual canisters is a little to cheap plastic for me, it's only a matter of time before the latches break.
I have a v12 and I couldn't be happier. Best cordless vacuum I've owned. Had an aeg before that was about half the price. But it sucked.
Still some of the criticism holds, such as the terrible wall charger.
I owned one and the build quality was pretty bad. The plastic tab holding the door to the dust holder snapped off with barely any force. The exact same thing happened to someone else I knew.
Worst most overrated vacuum cleaners ever. Totally crap!
>Dyson hand dryers are very fast, but as a result, they fling water everywhere
Isn't that the whole point of them? Instead of imparting enough heat energy to evaporate all of the water on your hands, they just push it off which is much faster and more energy efficient. How would they work better than regular dryers without doing that?
I have never found a hand dryer that works better than the Dyson ones. They actually dry my hands quickly, and they don't deafen me in the process unlike some of their competitors.
Agreed, but most people don’t use them correctly, they treat them like an awkwardly shaped transitional hand dryer.
When used correctly I find they don’t spray too much water around and dry my hands almost immediately.
If the goal is to optimize the singular task of "get water off hands ASAP", sure it probably solves that fairly well.
There might be more to the task though. What affect does it have on the user? Getting splashed with water, usually at crotch height, is a nuisance and is somewhat embarassing. The loudness of these dryers is also a nuisance, and can be downright painful depending on how many are going at the same time in a large public bathroom. Long enough for permanent damage? Probably not for the average hand-washer, but for the people who have to clean those restrooms all day, perhaps an occupational hazard.
Also, the trough shaped ones are disgusting.
The trough ones are such a poor design. Carefully try to wiggle your fingers in there, and then they blow with force such that you touch the wet dirty surface that everyone else has touched. I don't understand why these things exist, let alone why people choose to put them in a bathroom.
I dunno about this; that greenlight vacuum they brought to market a few years back is dope af. My first little orb Dyson is still kicking almost 15 years after I bought it.
I think their brand isn't just about tech itself, but the utility exploring novel tech can drive.
I had a dc34 and loved it. cost about $190? Point and shoot cleanups with the edger attachment.
The humdinger should be a more modern replacement, but it sucks. No trigger, no fun.
I used to work for Dyson and I think this is quite off in many ways.
* The industrial design of Dyson products is generally great. I don't think they poke you or anything like that. They even have nice affordances like all the things you can use being red. Contrast that with my terrible Shark where everything is black. Took me a good few seconds to find the bin release button. It also has an atrocious UX - a slow on/off button instead of a trigger, and an amazingly useless "smart power" feature that just varies the power almost completely randomly as you vacuum.
When I worked there all the vacuum guys were worried about Shark because their pickup is apparently better. They needn't have worried because their UX is so abysmal. Although I guess in fairness Which doesn't know UX exists.
* Some of the criticisms of the tech are valid, e.g. the hand dryers spraying water everywhere (they easily erode painted walls and now they generally install them only on tiles). But those are just flaws of the tech, they don't negate the fact that the hand dryers are much better than the standard cheap ones. He quotes the claimed hand drying time for a cheapo dryer as being close to an air blade but anyone that has ever used one knows how much of a lie that is. The washing machines did damage clothes but apparently the main reason they stopped making them was a manufacturing issue with the drum.
* I don't think anyone really believes that James Dyson is personally inventing all Dyson products now. That doesn't mean he has no influence. When I worked there (about 10 years ago tbf) he still had huge influence over the designs, especially the ones he cared about.
The one thing that is true is that Dyson won't make anything that isn't patentable because James Dyson dislikes his products being cloned so much. So even though though could make really good versions of normal products, they don't.
Also they are way too expensive. Though in fairness my shitty Shark was expensive too.
Don't buy a Shark.
> Although I guess in fairness Which doesn't know UX exists.
What is "Which" in this context? As used here it appears like a proper noun.
As an owner of a Shark, I don't agree. The ergonomics are great, controls/buttons are grey, everything else is red or black, sounds like you just made a poor choice in model and/or colors. Mine is a corded vac and just works. Replaceable, washable filters, switched power, handles egregious amounts of pet hair (Husky) and a lift-away tank. We replaced a cheap Bissel vacuum with the Shark, and the Bissel was great, it was just really hard to clean stairs with it.
I think of a Dyson as more of a status symbol, like the latest Mac Book, a watch collection, or a Porsche. Dyson owners like telling people they have a Dyson. Most people just need things to work well for their use case, be reliable and affordable.
The saying goes... "Fast, reliable or cheap. Pick two."
> has an atrocious UX - a slow on/off button instead of a trigger, and an amazingly useless "smart power" feature that just varies the power almost completely randomly as you vacuum.
Contrast that with the Dyson v15 which has a trigger I have to hold continuously while I twist and turn the vacuum so I can't change the grip without it turning on and off as my finger slips off the trigger or inevitably gets tired. Or the amazingly useless "smart power" feature that just varies the power almost completely randomly as I vacuum an otherwise perfectly smooth hard floor.
Or the peak of uselessness, a display to tell me how many particles of dust it thinks it vacuumed, and their estimated sizes. Because I needed to be told I vacuumed 20 million dust particles of one size but only 1 million of another size. Counted twice just to make sure.
My only complaint about the Dyson products is that they compromise on battery tech to help margins. I would expect such a design focused company to use the best batteries despite the effect on margins.
No sense charging top dollar and using less than state of the art batteries.
Tbh I don't remember that being mentioned at all. Even if true a huge bonus of buying Dyson is you can get cheap third party batteries easily.
I would say that the battery tech could be about 10 years old which would line up with your tenure.
> has an atrocious UX - a slow on/off button instead of a trigger
sort of like the humdinger, which I think I wasted my money on trying to replace a dc34
All I see with Dyson is shitloads of overpriced plastic. I refuse to use any of the various expensive always-break plastic Dysons and prefer my heavy fifty-year-old Kirby Omega. Actual metal. You can still get almost all parts for it, they'll rebuild it, and it is incomparable at sucking up and mulching spilled hay and wabbit poop. I could probably vacuum my driveway with it. $35 used on eBay years ago.
It has a headlight.
You could say the same about Apple or any company over 20 years old which has had time to go through a few department leads and culture shifts.
I’ve had the Dyson DC02 (1995) - great machine, rubbish plastic in the handle which always cracked after 5 or more years. The filters were also a terrible, throwaway design.
Then bought the DC25 (2008). The DC02 still worked, but this was a dramatic upgrade, solid, strong, easy to clean the brush bar (a long haired dog and 2x daughters made this a god send feature) and easy to wash filters.
Then bought the DC16 - their first cordless. Appalling suction and batteries which died after 1-2 years of use.
Next decided to try a different brand and bought a Miele CX1 (2019) - their first bag less cleaner. Highly rated, very expensive. It had the worst brush head I’ve ever seen, required fiddly disassembly to empty the weird little dust compartment within the canister and had a very odd dust filter which was a pain to clean. Terrible vacuum and lousy design compared to our previous Dyson.
Now we have the V15 - phenomenal cordless vacuum. Can’t praise it enough. It’s just a vacuum mind but it’s very good.
As an aside we’ve also bought the Dyson fans for work. The circular one worked well the HP02 heater purifier which cost a fortune has a high pitched whine which is so irritating that everyone turns it off and this is despite Dyson reluctantly taking it back and ‘fixing’ it - whereupon a year later it’s back to whining.
Dyson himself seems a hypocrite and a little questionable - between Brexit and then incorporating in Singapore and also buying swathes of British farmland I’m not exactly enamored. Also backing out of the Dyson car seemed a low ambition move to me given he has total ownership of the company and is one of the few people in the world who can make that kind of impact.
But the article itself just seems a nothing burger.
I find it perplexing that the new Dyson urinals are not present as an example of what good design is...
Dyson is like the IKEA for household appliances. They are pretty and fancy and somewhat featureful but they never seem to hold up to the truly high end stuff like Sebos/Miele. Those brands will cost you an arm and a leg but they will do exactly what it says on the tin, and nothing more. No gimmicks, just suction.
ikea is where you shop if you want new furniture but can’t afford real furniture. In this context, “real” means made of real wood.
And im not judging, i too was a broke college kid at one point. And many people just don’t have the money. But ikea is ANYTHING but fancy. Its super cheap.
Ikea has every grade of quality from cardboard to solid wood to metal furniture.
I will never understand why there are always such comments saying Ikea furniture is bad quality, or in your case not even "real" furniture, come on, it's like you have never even been in an Ikea store.
We can agree to disagree. yes Ikea offers _some_ products that are made of solid wood. But i’d say maybe 75% of their selection is particle board mixed with _some_ wood elements. That was what i saw during my last trip in ikea in 2020, in NY. Their selection of office furniture is similarly sad. Office chairs that might last 10 years with gentle use MAX. A lot of the ikea stuff is what i’d consider “buy it for life if you treat it gently and don’t have kids”.
I think Ikea is wonderful on a budget. But i personally wouldn’t waste my time there, except for rarely used pieces of furniture. im blessed to have more discretionary income these days. The one product i really like from ikea is their PAX closets. I think they are a very good value, despite feeling a bit cheap. I like how customizable it is, and it’s very functional.
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For example the Amish make very high quality wood furniture in the U.S., at a fair price. If that’s not your thing, there are companies that focus strictly on buy it for life high quality wood furniture. My dining room table was made by MS&Wood (based somewhere in bosnia i believe…they sell direct and wholesale to furniture companies).
https://www.adakezic.com/images/Zastupstva/mswood/2018_MS&WO...
It must depend on the country then, because IKEA near me propose at least 50% pine wood (except slim pannels which are often chip/particle boards, but sometimes plywood). Since I dislike pine for multiple reasons I don't go there often, but honestly if you don't have any woodwork tools and don't do your appliances yourself, IKEA is good enough.
Lots of IKEA furniture is real wood, and lots of "expensive" brands are still flat packed particleboard. Ever bought anything from West Elm?
I'm curious where people are buying "real" furniture, even even they spend "real" money. I've had the best luck with the Amish and at estate sales, but that's not super repeatable.
All the major furniture stores like Ashley or whatever are similar in quality and construction to IKEA -- I don't really think the "cheap" reputation is deserved just because IKEA has $10 LACK side tables available.
west elm pretends to be high end but it’s not. As you said it’s hit and miss, some gems and a lot of junk. As consumers in 2025 we are awash in a sea of cheap junk. It’s frustrating sometimes.
I personally recommend people go to a real furniture store (a large one), where the salesperson is actually knowledgeable and where they offer many brands. Ask for what you want. Specific materials, finishes, price range, etc. Make a note of the brands and manufacturers. Then dig deeper. Often times these brands are featured in a niche catalog or magazine, where you can find similar brands offering similar products.
There are many high quality buy it for life items to be found! But rarely at the convenience of a button click from westelm’s website.
Real furniture stores lay somewhere between being useful and being like a mattress sales money laundering operation. I just find most of them full of gaudy furniture that I’m not sure anyone would really buy (hence my guess that money laundering is involved).
In the Seattle area, the best I could find is Dania, which is a chain that is basically a higher end IKEA that focuses more on furniture (Scandinavian style).
I’ll be in seattle in a few months, maybe i’ll swing by Dania for an hour just to see what they have. Thanks for the recommendation!
Some brands that you might like if you are looking for buy it for life. Some sell direct, some only sell via wholesale to other furniture stores. This is a list from a note i created 3 years ago when i was shopping for a new dining table.
* MS&Wood. Bosnian company, 100% wood products. https://www.adakezic.com/images/Zastupstva/mswood/2018_MS&WO...
* Ethnicraft - 100% wood (oak, teak, walnut). made in belgium.
* Cattelan Italia. Italian company, very high end and also very high quality. Styles are a mix of gaudy and timeless - wood, glass, and metal.
https://www.cattelanitalia.com/en/products/index?c=new
On the lower price range, some good choices might be “Article”, “Blu Dot” and “HAY”.
that is totally not my experience. you don't have to buy the latest and greatest, I've bought a V8 a few years ago. it does it's job perfectly fine like in the first day. it's the only vacuum (of the ones I've owned) that is capable of cleaning the cat hair from my sofa. maybe there are other products capable of that now, some years have passed, but the quality of dyson is pretty top notch.
I've had the same experience with dog hair and our Dyson Animal vacuum. We've had it repaired twice. Once for the hose, the other for something in the motor that went awry. Even the people at the repair shop said they're worth repairing since their performance stays consistent for so long. It was a couple hundred bucks total for both repairs to get another 7 years out of it? 100% worth it.
Still have that purple and grey beast. Best vacuum by a mile and still going.
Similar experience here. I bought a refurb V8 that weirdly needed service right away, but on the flip side, I got a new motor/electronics for free since it was under a fresh warranty. About 4 years later I still really like the V8 general vacuum tasks with the caveat I have mostly hard floors and no high pile carpet.
Disagree. A broom and mop will do better, costs less, has almost no noise. Dust flying everywhere sure, but these dyson gimmicks are plain useless.
Or the Nilfisk consumer vacuum cleaners. They used to be frequently seen in Dutch households, nowadays less so. Indestructable.
My first confrontation with a 'Dyson Airblade Wash+Dry short hand dryer' was after paying 50ct to enter a newly modernised toilet on a Dutch railway station. I got totally splashed with water blown out of the sink, all over my clothes. Quite embarrassing to walk out a toilet like that.
Culturally, the Dutch expect higher quality at reasonable prices (love to see frugality as part of a national identity!). On the whole, American ad culture has us convinced that we must either suffer with worse tools or spend more on a name brand with increasingly diminishing returns… to say nothing of the conspicuous consumption we’re all nudged/shoved into.
Not sure how America got caught in this crossfire. Dyson is not an American company.
no, but companies like Dyson that promote conspicuous consumption do very well in the US where they might not otherwise because of those cultural differences.
The best cordless vacuum are made by Dyson though.
Disagree. We have had to replace the battery twice in our Dyson cordless. Dyson charges $130 for the OEM replacement battery (yes there are cheaper aftermarket batteries available).
The last time the battery failed we decided to buy an entire Shark cordless vacuum + accessories kit for less than an OEM Dyson battery. That shark vacuum is still going today 5 years later on the original battery.
My V8 is still it's the original battery, almost 7 years since purchase. Did your battery fail or just lose capacity?
I disagree. The best cordless vacuums all follow the same basic flow-through (e.g. https://a.co/d/bpto7LL ) design and are around $30 USD.
The cost multiple of a Dyson doesn't even result in incremental performance.
The singular use case for a Dyson cordless is frequent cleaning of an uncarpeted floor in a public space (e.g. coffee shop, gym) as it does have substantially reduced noise while running.
> The singular use case for a Dyson cordless is frequent cleaning of an uncarpeted floor in a public space (e.g. coffee shop, gym) as it does have substantially reduced noise while running
This problem was solved before electric vacuums ever even existed. I can still remember the days of seeing these things being used in hotels and restaurants: (google non-electric electrostatic sweeper)
that’s maybe fine for cleaning a car or some crumbs in the kitchen. It’s a solid vacuum. But not so useful for cleaning a room or house…different use cases.
The suction on the dyson v12 is fantastic at max speed, so it’s great for quick carpet cleaning. I also appreciate the very quiet hardwood floor attachment. I’d recommend it to any apartment dweller that’s not cost conscious. If they are, i’d recommend a cheaper shark vacuum.
The Miele cordless stick vac is a piece of crap unfortunately. Real missed opportunity.
Dyson is expensive as fuck, not really a comparison with IKEA which is truly about insane mass market scale and saving costs everywhere you can.
My Oreck is more than I have ever needed and I think it was around $100.
I have a corded oreck and a Dyson stick vac. I absolutely adore the oreck, and I rarely use the Dyson.
In terms of maintenance and performance the Oreck is a reliable, one-click WordPress install, and the Dyson is a few dozen fickle micro services.
I got the Oreck for like $20 on Craigslist a decade ago because it was listed as "broken." I bought it on a whim to see if I could repair it after one of the famous vacuum guy reddit AMAs. Without exaggeration, it may very well be the best $20 investment I've ever made.
I was amazed how simple it was to disassemble and reassemble. There were surprisingly few components and every single one had an appealing heft and remarkable quality.
As a somewhat funny aside: The woman I bought it from said she had three teenage daughters and it couldn't keep up. The first time I serviced it, I removed enough hair for several wigs.
Ever since, it's worked incredibly and in the rare event performance has started to suffer I've been able to service it myself multiple times over the years, and replacement parts are readily available. It's designed to be maintained. After each service it works literally good as new and I fall in love with it all over again.
Contrast that with my hand-me-down Dyson. It's awkward as all hell to store. Battery is pathetic and charging is a pain. So much delicate plastic. It clogs practically every use; though to be fair my children and animals are all filthmongers. The components feel cheap, and I can't help but feel like it's hostile to the average consumer attempting to repair it. It's deteriorated in performance even though I've used it lightly. If I had spent even a single dollar on it, I'd be so pissed.
Push forward, push backward, lift up cord and turn to the right
Push forward, push backward, lift up cord and turn to the right
I have never seen anyone describe IKEA as 'pretty and fancy' before. It's cheap and functional. I can typically get the item I need in IKEA for cheaper than elsewhere and be confident it will be at least average quality. Dyson products are generally far more expensive than the competition.
Not sure why this is downvoted, this is the exact same impression I have. Ikea is mass produced decent quality standard but dyson is really high end
Would it be best to make an open source company to challenge Dyson?
Everything will be worker and independently owned (bootstrapped and no VCs), no patents (we don't care about clones)
Just make great product that is open has free software.
If there would be significant interest Dyson could have a direct competitor just like many other open source companies like System72 and Red Hat
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I know it's trendy to hate Dyson machines on HN because everyone here is absolutely smarter than every other person in the world that actually makes things, but, I rather like my Dyson vacuum cleaner.
People on HN are always saying they'd pay extra for a vacuum cleaner that is repairable. Well, here it is. Put your money where your mouth is.
I've had mine for at least ten years, and when something goes wrong, I'm able to order parts, and fix it myself. The whole thing is extensively designed to be repaired, complete with little icons on most of the parts to guide to taking them apart and putting them together.
I suspect that 90% of the people on HN who complain about Dyson (and most other consumer products) have never owned one, and are just aping things they've read online just to have something at all to say.
Plenty of comments here seem positive towards Dyson. Others are negative but explain their reasons.
These kinds of curmudgeonly sneers/swipes at the HN community are so lame. They're easy to make and will attract upvotes and agreement from people who want the stereotype to be true. But they're futile to try and refute because people will always put more weight on the evidence that supports a belief like this than that which opposes it. The ultimate effect is wasted energy, and making HN threads depressing, which is interesting when the commenter is purportedly concerned about excessive negativity in this community.
Comments like this are clearly in breach of the guidelines, for good reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I have found the parts to be very expensive though.
I have found the parts to be very expensive though.
Seems OK to me. I have an articulated, motorized brush head on the way. ~$51, including shipping. Pretty good considering recent inflation, tariffs, etc…
The only Dyson that we have is an old vacuum I pulled out of the trash, which they haven't sold in years. Was clogged with hair; we removed the hair. Works well enough. It's a vacuum. It vacuums stuff pretty ok.
9/10 would trash pick again. I don't think I would ever buy one new though.
Additionally the comparison of the hand dryers is pretty unfair imo. Those V-shape Dyson dryers are so much better than any others I've tried ever. All the other seem downright anemic (or rather asthmatic in this case) and take much longer than those advertised 20s.
Yeah the airblades are night and day better than anything else, other than the noise which is painful if you're hungover.
I did pay more for a vacuum. I bought a Miehl 12 years ago and it's awesome.
Not quite as long ago, but yeah I've taken my miele down to parts for cleaning and back. The motors, molding, and reels are available as spare parts if I ever need to replace them, which I haven't yet. The only downside has been the premium.
Yeah, I was thinking the same. I have two Dyson vacuum cleaners, one purchased about 9 years ago, and the other two years ago. Both are excellent, and I still use the old one for my basement.
I don't hate Dyson because it's trendy, I hate Dyson because my $700 vacuum wont pick up cheerios; a common spill with toddlers.
I don’t have a Dyson, but my vacuum also struggles with items so big they don’t fit under the roller. I don’t generally find it to be a problem because at that size they’re easy to pick up.
Not defending Dyson, there’s a lot of valid criticism here, but at some size pieces are too big to vacuum, and if that size is Cheerios, maybe that’s not much of a problem?
I’d rather have a vacuum that does well at the small stuff I can’t reasonably pick up.
Buy a dog. The dog picks up the cheerios and the $700 Dyson picks up the dog hair.
> I suspect that 90% of the people on HN who complain about Dyson (and most other consumer products) have never owned one, and are just aping things they've read online just to have something at all to say.
Same suspicion for me. I've owned two Dyson vacuums, and the only reason I had to buy the second was because someone stole the first one when they broke into my apartment over a decade ago. My current vacuum is more than 8 years old and has been repaired a few times doing it myself, and is still fully functional and comparable or better than most new vacuums.
Dyson makes very good products that are also beautiful. Yes, they're plastic, yes they're expensive, no they're not necessarily on paper the /best/ at their thing, but they're good, they're repairable, and they pass the wife acceptance factor.
I have a bunch of Dyson things because the wife loves the design but I find them to be consistently disappointing. Incredibly expensive for mediocre results and usually bad battery life. It's a step above junk but you're really just paying for style.