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.
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.
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.
The investment is quite big, I don't know about maintenance but I would expect these air ducts need to be cleaned regularly. Then you need to switch the hose many times to clean the whole house, right? I'm using dyson v12 slim battery vacuum and I'm quite happy. Battery lasts for almost 50 minutes, it's easy to empty, quite lightweight and the green light illuminating the floor is so useful. I don't see why I would ever consider the central one.
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!
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.
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 V12 and had V6 cordless before and I am quite impressed by these including the Pencil one. It made vacuuming at our home quite simple even for kids. Where do you see they are lacking?
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 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.
If Dyson is picking shiny tech-centric design to the detriment of practicality, then why are their vacuums still the clear top choice in the cordless stick vac category? I'm trying to purchase a new cordless stick vac for a family member, and all the review sites put the Dysons at the top.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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 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.
hey, author here, thought I'd reply to you. Cheers for reading and thanks for the feedback.
I wanted to explore how the focus on tech-centrism impacts the product design and styling. I do think Dyson makes compromises on cost and ergonomics to uphold their brand values. Does that mean the products are bad? No - but I think they could be better. Do I think a lot of other products on the market are far, FAR worse? yes. But Dyson asks us to hold them to much higher standards (and pay a lot more). So I think serious design criticism is warranted.
Dryer time - there is a huge spectrum here. There are many dryers which cost a fraction of an airblade and dry with similar speed. My real point is that dry speed is a key factor but not the only factor, and that I believe other manufacturers have set their design decision-making with a different set of priorities.
You make a good point about colour-coded interaction points - and the consistent application of those colours across the vacuum product range is good as well. I intend to update the article with some feedback and I'll be sure to mention that for balance.
Regarding James Dyson and the invention culture: I worked with senior ex-dyson designers some 6 years ago so have some 2nd hand awareness over the IPR culture and JD's oversight of design reviews. I agree that I don't think the public literally think that it's JD himself inventing things (though, he is certainly more involved in design than a typical CEO). Yet the objective of the Dyson branding is surely to ensure that the name James Dyson is firmly in the public consciousness as an inventor extraordinaire. I think that is a conscious choice by Dyson and that it has a sizeable influence on societal perceptions of the design profession.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
bredren|7 months ago
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.
Ambroisie|7 months ago
hermitcrab|7 months ago
2earth|7 months ago
detourdog|7 months ago
ryandrake|7 months ago
brulard|7 months ago
mkj|7 months ago
rej696|7 months ago
ToucanLoucan|7 months ago
Engineers need a union. I'm sure this was a bean counter decision and not something they wanted to do.
ok_dad|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
pedalpete|7 months ago
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.
randycupertino|7 months ago
llsf|7 months ago
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...).
brulard|7 months ago
rhinojosa|7 months ago
svelle|7 months ago
Still some of the criticism holds, such as the terrible wall charger.
doright|7 months ago
dizhn|7 months ago
Centigonal|7 months ago
Onavo|7 months ago
lurking_swe|7 months ago
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.
andrepd|7 months ago
basisword|7 months ago
zuppy|7 months ago
rapnie|7 months ago
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.
thenthenthen|7 months ago
Thaxll|7 months ago
epcoa|7 months ago
autobodie|7 months ago
phoronixrly|7 months ago
thesaintlives|7 months ago
ubercow13|7 months ago
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?
aag|7 months ago
wpm|7 months ago
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.
MangoToupe|7 months ago
colesantiago|7 months ago
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
spandrew|7 months ago
I think their brand isn't just about tech itself, but the utility exploring novel tech can drive.
IshKebab|7 months ago
* 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.
accrual|7 months ago
What is "Which" in this context? As used here it appears like a proper noun.
2earth|7 months ago
I wanted to explore how the focus on tech-centrism impacts the product design and styling. I do think Dyson makes compromises on cost and ergonomics to uphold their brand values. Does that mean the products are bad? No - but I think they could be better. Do I think a lot of other products on the market are far, FAR worse? yes. But Dyson asks us to hold them to much higher standards (and pay a lot more). So I think serious design criticism is warranted.
Dryer time - there is a huge spectrum here. There are many dryers which cost a fraction of an airblade and dry with similar speed. My real point is that dry speed is a key factor but not the only factor, and that I believe other manufacturers have set their design decision-making with a different set of priorities.
You make a good point about colour-coded interaction points - and the consistent application of those colours across the vacuum product range is good as well. I intend to update the article with some feedback and I'll be sure to mention that for balance.
Regarding James Dyson and the invention culture: I worked with senior ex-dyson designers some 6 years ago so have some 2nd hand awareness over the IPR culture and JD's oversight of design reviews. I agree that I don't think the public literally think that it's JD himself inventing things (though, he is certainly more involved in design than a typical CEO). Yet the objective of the Dyson branding is surely to ensure that the name James Dyson is firmly in the public consciousness as an inventor extraordinaire. I think that is a conscious choice by Dyson and that it has a sizeable influence on societal perceptions of the design profession.
Cheers!
lucideng|7 months ago
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."
buran77|7 months ago
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.
detourdog|7 months ago
No sense charging top dollar and using less than state of the art batteries.
m463|7 months ago
sort of like the humdinger, which I think I wasted my money on trying to replace a dc34
m463|7 months ago
The humdinger should be a more modern replacement, but it sucks. No trigger, no fun.
theturtle|7 months ago
It has a headlight.
leonroy|7 months ago
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.
wetpaws|7 months ago
[deleted]
reaperducer|7 months ago
[deleted]
tomhow|7 months ago
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
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
rancidcrab|7 months ago
ivell|7 months ago
nancyminusone|7 months ago
9/10 would trash pick again. I don't think I would ever buy one new though.
calmbonsai|7 months ago
zeroxfe|7 months ago
mostly_harmless|7 months ago
tristor|7 months ago
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.
jayd16|7 months ago
_dain_|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]