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?
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.
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.
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.
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.