Never been less satisfied than having bought a Dyson vacuum. Cheap plastic construction

I bought a Dyson vacuum, or rather I was given one as a gift from my wife after she saw a joke twitter post about a man being happier about a new vacuum than the birth of his own kids. She gave it to me on Christmas Eve because I was about to vacuum the entire house with our old vacuum - which was also a fantastic vacuum, for the record.

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.

I like mine ok. It's lightweight and gets the job done well enough. Are there vacuums out there nowadays that aren't cheap plastic construction?

My experience over the years.

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.

I never really thought much of any vacuum I’ve ever own until I got a shark one. It picks everything, to the point where you have to be extra careful you don’t vacuum over things you don’t want to be sucked up into the vacuum. It makes total sense, who needs such powerful suction when you can instead just put a roller on the floor to pick things up. Never going back to a suction-only vacuum.

Mirrors my experience with their airfilter/fan combination: Sounded smart with glowing reviews; ended up being loud, with horrible whining noises, on top of horrible aesthetics and being very expensive.

I had a dc03 animal for over 10 years, kept replacing bits.. this year replaced it with the modern equivalent as I didn't want a battery powered one.

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.

Parents got one years ago, and to date, it is the loudest household item I've ever heard. Never trusted commercials without sound after that.

My mum used to be a professional cleaner and she would often explain to people there's a reason professionals never use Dysons.

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.

We have the v15, best appliance we’ve purchased for our home.

You'd rather your vacuum be made of metal?

I was given a V6 and I bought an adapter that lets me use my dewalt batteries with the vacuum. Kind of a cool party trick but I think they were like $600 new which is bonkers.

I had the plastic trigger fail on mine. Took the whole thing apart and replaced it with a metal trigger from AliExpress. It’s been going strong since.

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...

It feels cheap plastic, true, but it's also light and resists a lot of damage.

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.

My wife often says the Dyson v8 vacuum is the best purchase I have ever made, that was 8 years ago.

Rubbish. All vacuums are plastic and Dysons actually use quite high quality plastic.

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.