Never been less satisfied than having bought a Dyson vacuum. Cheap plastic construction
My feedback:
1. It works great. I had to empty it several times because it was picking up so much more stuff than our existing vacuum did - mostly pet hair and the like.
2. It's the one with the little laser thing, which is a dumb little gimmick until you see it in action and then it's life-changing - if you're like me and find satisfaction in picking up every invisible crumb anywhere.
3. After a year and a bit, maybe less, it started misbehaving. It would suddenly turn off, then you'd have to let go of the trigger and pull it again; then it would work fine. Then it would happen a few times until it worked fine. Then it almost never worked fine. I kind of tolerated it for a while until I got fed up and googled the problem, and it was suggested to buy a new housing - the electronics plus the motor, basically the whole 'vacuum' part of the vacuum, which was only just over a hundred dollars direct from Dyson. Irritating to have to spend an extra hundred bucks to get my five hundred dollar vacuum working as expectred, but expected it to cost far more.
Would I recommend it? Not sure. It's very expensive, it works very well; it has a nice wall mount that charges it and which holds a small subset of the attachments it comes with. I'm glad I have it and I use it often.
Yes, it's plastic, but if it were, for example, steel or aluminium then it would be too heavy to use for any length of time. As it is, it feels very sturdy and has held up physically very well, but I'm obviously also not rough with it so there's no reason it would have any issues unless it were, in fact, cheaply or poorly made.
Going on 13 years now I think.
It's a cheap part to replace. It also means a complete disassembly! A lot of it isn't hard but there are some wires that have to snake around, and popping out certain things requires some scary use of force. It took like 3 hours to do for mine.
Also these things don't seem to be great at battery maintenance. I forget how long that took me but it didn't leave any scars, I think it was easy. Just, more expensive. Less so now that batteries are cheaper. But I have my suspicion that their float charge mode is maybe not good & injured batteries. I specifically avoided that but still had issues.
The trigger really made me mad when I finally dug it out of mine. It was such a blatantly obviously designed-to-fail system. It really makes me super distrust this company.
That's not to say it's a bad product, but I've had my Henry vacuum for decades, and in that time it's been kicked down the stairs and used vacuum up all kinds of stuff it probably wasn't design for, but it's still just as good as the day I got it.
Due to the unfortunate quirk of language, its hard do describe how much better I like my Meile bagged vacuum than my Dyson. See my Dyson sucked, but the Meile really sucks.
My cleaners moaned about the Dyson but they love love love the Henry.
Our Dyson is cordless and so so so convenient for a quick 15-20s cleanup after kids dinner etc. Grab and go.
So we persoanlly use the Dyson for day to day cleanup, and the cleaners use the Henry when they come.
As someone in the market for a new (portable) vacuum cleaner, who has a Dyson now and no longer wants to, is there really nothing out there that isn't so flimsy and plasticky and still portable?
Had a Miele about 30 years ago and it was very good. It died when someone tried to hoover up a spilt glass of water and the motor was going to cost as much as a new cleaner.
We've had a couple of Dysons. They are great; they clean very well, the variety of tools is great, and the connectors for the tubes & tools is easy and very secure. Mine were all mains powered.
Downsides to the Dyson is it needed emptying very often and that could also be quite messy. Possibly a combination being good at sucking up, and a comparatively small hopper/"bag". I stripped it down once as it seemed to be struggling to clean as well, the cyclone/jet engine was full of "dust" and some of it was caked on but after a good clean was as good as new.
Now got a Henry. The bag hardly ever needs changing, the cable is very long, and the tube is long. I don't think it picks up as well as the Dyson and the tools are fiddlier to use as they are all just push fit and also don't feel as good quality.
Yes Henry is very robust, can be easily repaired/maintained, and they just work; that is probably why they are used commercially and so well loved. I don't think it cleans anything like as well as the Dyson though.
Mine v10 has 6 years, has seen some important falls, but bears no damage of any of those.
I wouldn't recommend it because price/quality Dyson vacuums feel like you're insanely over paying.
I've bought my grandma a 150$ Levoit LVAC-200-WEU, and I have used it a lot. I swear it lasts more than the v10 and it cleans better. It also feels much higher quality to touch.
It's cons are that it didn't come with a narrow tip to suck odd corners and that it's slightly heavier than the v10. But it costs also less than half and I see no victory at all for the Dyson product.
The new one just feels sort of flimsy in all sorts of ways, definite buyers remorse, the old one just felt indestructible + really powerful, this seems a bit crap.
I bought a Dyson vacuum and it felt like cheap garbage, to the point that I returned it. I didn’t trust that it would hold up. It creaked and jangled around. The feel did not match the price tag.
Other plastic products, like the old polycarbonate Macs, felt very solid and well made.
I would - rather it is. My grandfather had a kirby for decades. I've had a kirby for decades. Though mine has the transmission power drive that makes it a joy to use.
I can not imagine ever buying a plastic vacuum.
What model is yours?
It does have some Bakelite, but is mostly metal.
But for a cordless stick vacuum I do like the basic design. For real vacuuming I choose my Sebo E3 every time, but it's not nearly as quick to use as a cordless stick.
One of the best things you can do for a Dyson stick vacuum, in my humble opinion, is get an adapter so you can use something like a Milwaukee tool battery.
I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, but if I was a product engineer looking for a way to make my well-engineered product fail just after the warranty period was up, that trigger failure looked like a pretty good candidate. There was a specific piece of the plastic that looked like it was ostensibly there as a structural reinforcement, but it was clearly too short, and the trigger had cracked just past it.
ifixit guide for the curious: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Dyson+V11+Trigger+Replacement/1...
When I worked there they were always really worried about Shark, because apparently they have better pick-up benchmark scores. I bought one recently. Absolute trash. It has some bullshit automatic power control thing that is on by default but just varies the power completely randomly. So every time you turn it on it takes about 5 seconds - on, low power, high power finally. Vs the Dyson where you just pull a trigger.
Never again. Dysons are the best. Very expensive, but just buy the older models or refurbished.
Also don't bother with the hair drier or the cold fans. Not worth the price. The hot fans might be I guess.