I understood them back when my parents bought a Dyson bagless vacuum back in the early 2000s (iirc). It was high tech, powerful (I still remember them showing me how much more dust and dog hair it pulled out of the carpet), and advertised no loss of suction.

Unfortunately it did lose suction over time, and was eventually replaced by an absolutely ancient Kirby vac (the kind that were sold by door to door salesmen god knows how long ago), which is built like a tank and still works perfectly well today. Probably the sort of thing I'd put in the "buy it for life" category.

I still kind of put Dyson in that early 2000s category of products - both for aesthetic and general attitude reasons. It has that energy of "it's the year 2000, so stuff is now HIGH TECH", but often times the older, less flashy stuff is still better.

They used to make the only bagless vacuum cleaners that worked well, it is not really the case anymore, probably due to patents expiring, but they still the big name brand.

And their bladeless fans, while not really better at moving air than regular fans, they are certainly stylish.

I personally think that they make overpriced items and are not worth it anymore, but I understand the appeal.

Marketing. Good (looking) design. Money for patents and more marketing.

I had one at some time in my life, it was OK but not life changing to cost 10x what a normal regular vacuum would cost.

It's just like any luxury item mostly flexing and status signaling through purchasing stuff, or so it seems to me

Other than the original vacuum cleaners and the airblade every other product they released are gimmicky. The brand got praise inside UK because its the success story of a local inventor and the company for a long time kept every aspect of their work in-house promoting local prosperity, not sure if it's still the case. Other than that nowadays they are mostly an expensive brand due to prior recognition and they try to be apple like without really delivering something special.

The bathroom hand drier they invented is/was cool. No heat and knocking the water off with a faster jet of air by pushing it through a smaller hole was a decent improvement.