Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

Is the solution to a small robot vacuum really to increase the power of the motor above the competition?

On hard wood flooring I've never found rotary brushes to be better than side sweeps (what most of the competition uses).

And on carpet where rotary brushes do perform better, I can't help but think that instead of upping the suction power you could approach the problem from a different perspective... such as using a low vibration to shake the dirt and dust free of the carpet so that it's easier to pick up the material with less suction power.

I really like Dyson products, but it very much feels like they have a hammer (high powered suction in lower watt motors) and so every problem looks like a nail.

Some of their innovations over the past 5 years haven't impressed me...

Their hand dryers do a worse job than the classic World Dryer and look uglier over time and seem to be less performant over time (smaller clogged filters perhaps!?).

Their "fanless" fan of course has a fan, and whilst it shifts a good chunk of air at first it also suffers from degrading performance as the hidden fan gets clogged with dust over a season. And yet, the classic desk fan performs consistently well all the time.

And the problem with releasing highly-hyped products that turn out to be only average, is that it's hard to believe the hype in future.

Whereas I used to look at a Dyson as being incredibly functional innovation, I now look upon them as gimmicky innovation using their single core-trick.

And of course, they will successfully market and patent all of this (of which even the linked article is a part of that puzzle), such that people start to believe this is the best solution (not proven at all), and that Dyson will claim that no-one else can provide the best because of the patents (partly true, but who said this was the best?).

Years of buying and using Dyson products has left me greatly cynical. Their upright hoovers are still the business though.

"Their hand dryers do a worse job than the classic World Dryer and look uglier over time and seem to be less performant over time (smaller clogged filters perhaps!?)."

Really? That's the exact opposite experience than I've had, the Airblade dries my hands faster and more thoroughly than any traditional hand dryer.

Which one?

The Airblade db works, but not as efficiently as rubbing hands together under a World Dryer (not one of the cheaper imitators of them).

The Airblade V works extremely well, but tends to suffer from being put where old driers were, which is too damn high to be used comfortably... in motorway services where these and old traditional ones are offered you see people choose the older ones.

The tap based one I've not seen in the world.

I didn't realise there were different models, I only have experience of the DB. In my experience the DB works better than the World Dryer or any other traditional hand dryer. I find it easier and more effectice to dip my hands in and out of the DB than rub them under a World Dryer, plus it's more efficient from an energy efficiency point of view. Here's a study by the University of Westminster that backs up the improved drying speed claim (check out table 2)... http://www.europeantissue.com/pdfs/090402-2008%20WUS%20Westm...

As for the V, it's hardly Dyson's fault if they are installed in an inappropriate way.

Apart from the tips of your fingers, which always come out wet...

That's not what I've found. I wonder what I'm doing differently. Do you shake your hands before putting them in/under a dryer?

Dyson definitely does a great job at marketing, and giving their products a premium price and expectations.

I was at the store one day, and saw vacuum cleaners. Now, I have no interest in a vacuum at the moment, but they had a Dyson Ball, and I've seen countless videos of it, and had to take a look to see this high-end vacuum. I was disappointed from the first second, it just looked like a bunch of cheap plastic parts, and similar to something I'd find from a yard sale ten years ago. Photo below of my expectation from all the marketing, and a photo someone took of the actual vacuum.

http://i.imgur.com/bs1ygfM.jpg

I played around with it for a bit, and it just felt cheap, in every way possible. I was expecting the best vacuum in the world, and I was holding something that was entirely different. Now, I don't own one, it might work great for vacuuming, but it had no sense of luxury in person.

Another example, is the handheld vacuum, I'd see commercials on television, and then I saw one in the wild at a friends house. Comparison below is using slightly different models, but just look at the materials. In the promo image, it looks like glass and metal, and then in reality, it's some cheap stamped plastic that you'd expect from a bottom of the barrel vacuum.

http://i.imgur.com/RZ8sFxq.jpg

As for the hand dryers, I find they work well and fast. It's a creative idea, and I think they're a success. I imagine they're more difficult to clean though, and get dirty with all the water dripping on them.

You really don't want things made substantially of glass when you have to hold them at arms length and bash them around nooks and crannies :) One of the nice things about Dyson vacuum cleaners is that you can take most of the important bits apart by hand - something other manufacturers don't seem to bother thinking about. Vacuums get blockages all the time, especially if you happen to have cat litter made from wooden chips...

I own the vacuum pictured in the first link. I bought it with high expectations and disappointment began to set in almost immediately. After 3 years of not-totally-clean floors and periodic struggles getting the rotating brush to work, I finally replaced it with a much cheaper competing brand. My carpets and floors have never been cleaner.

It appears that you are placing a very high value on how shiny things are and their presentation. In that case Dyson is probably not for you; they are fundamentally an industrial engineering organisation.

I own that model of vacuum you have photographed, and it's just.... good. Lightweight, easy to push around tight corners, and sucks up everything in my flat in under 10 minutes without ever having to fight it. It makes it very clear that ever other model I've ever used was not very well-designed.

It is not the kind of status symbol that you appear to be seeking. Kirby makes those and I think you'd be a lot happier with their products.

I don't care about a status symbol. I'm not in the vacuum market right now and already own a miele.

Based on all the hype Dyson tries to generate, their product renders, commercials, sales lingo, etc, I expected this to be the iPhone of vacuums, where it was priced high, because it functions well, and has a great build quality.

Instead, it just looked overpriced, and the quality appeared no better than the vacuums a third of the price. I was disappointed, that's all, it looks like they spent their budget on marketing and the quality of the product came second.

Agree with the GP -- I own this vacuum and it works great. If you're more in the market for a chrome-and-platinum vacuum and don't care as much about the performance, you're probably headed the right direction with what you have.

What may be worth understanding, though, is that there are people who are equally willing to pay money for good vacuums, but whose judgment of "good vacuum" runs much more to "suction power and functional ability" rather than "build quality."

The idea that there is not a single axis of quality, and that different products can optimize for different axes, is not a new one, but it's one that many tech people in a post-Steve-Jobs era seem to have a hard time remembering.

If you're more in the market for a chrome-and-platinum vacuum and don't care as much about the performance

Is no one listening here? I said I care about performance, and build quality. Why can't I ask for both? Perhaps the Dyson performs well. I said I don't have experience with it, but the quality looks cheap. When a product advertises itself as being premium and top of the line, and asks for a high price, I expect both of the above.

Likewise, when I spend money on a phone or laptop, I expect it to feel solid. Don't sell me a $1,500 laptop that's built like a $300 Dell Inspiron.

People are listening, but they disagree with you. The build quality is good as well as the performance. It is made of plastic because that is tough and soft (see previous comments about banging into things). You seem to be saying it should be made of metal and glass because plastic is "cheap", but that would be a worse vacuum.

More than anything else, plastic is light for comparable strength. This is important for something that you're going to be pushing around a lot.

I had a Miele cylinder before this one. The experience of using it was that I dragged it around the flat and needed both hands to manage it. This Dyson model, I point at things, with one hand. It seems to be a combination of low weight, and the ease of pivoting on the ball that means it's rolling everywhere, but the difference is huge.

I suspect also that fewer people have used a Miele (or seen advertising for one) than a Dyson. They are not fancy, but are very, very well made and designed.

I think the point asuffield is making is that you're judging "quality" not based on how it performs, but on how it looks.

I think it might be instructive here to think about how notions of what kind of "build quality" and materials are best might tend to differ between:

a) a jewel-like, highly refined computer that you hold in your hand and touch gently to use

b) an industrial cleaning device designed to be banged into objects on a regular basis, scrub surfaces aggressively, and suck up dusty dirty things, without damaging what you bang it into

Kirbys clean carpet & mattresses extremely well... that's the appeal. I have a really hard time believing anybody sees a Kirby as a status symbol, as "cool", as anything other than highly utilitarian. I think this is why Dyson was so successful disrupting Kirby: they sold these based on function, not looks, and Dyson came in and competed on functionality AND price.

In you first picture, if both angle of view would be the same and if the user-taken picture would have been taken before actually using the vacuum, they would look much more similar... (the dust compartment looks full and hide components)

So you never actually used the vacuum, but you feel entitled to express on opinion on the quality of the product. Dyson is a design company. Design as in "how it works" not "how it looks." Perhaps the plastic you are complaining about here serves a purpose: keeps the vacuum light and allows the user to bump into things without damaging their furniture or the vacuum.

It's a vacuum. They suck up dirt. Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine that a vacuum's bin would therefore have dirt in it? The entire point of a clear bin is so that you can see how much dirt is in it and whether it needs to be emptied.

The marketing photos show a new, unused vacuum. Duh. The alternative would be as odd as a Johnson & Johnson selling bandages by using a photo of a gory, infected, pus-filled wound on the outside of the box. While that may very well be a valid example of its use, I don't really see many people wanting to buy anything marketed in such a manner.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com