8 ms·

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

dml2135 17d ago
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/147481 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Dyson+V11+Trigger+Replacement/1...
stuaxo 17d ago
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.
rebeccajae 17d ago
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.
IshKebab 16d 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.
- seanmcdirmid 16d ago
  I loved my Dyson but switched to Chinese robovacs because, even if stick vacs made cleaning the floor easy, I still sucked at consistency. Now I have three robot vacuums because my townhome is three floors.
Steve44 16d ago
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.
kmfrk 16d ago
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.
epolanski 16d ago
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.
duderific 17d ago
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?
- rootusrootus 17d ago
  I have a Sebo E3 that has been fantastic. Plastic, but still seems very durable. Very well thought out design, too. Miele also makes a good vacuum, but I prefer Sebo.
- wahnfrieden 17d ago
  Miele is plastic but excellent
- embedding-shape 17d ago
  > Are there vacuums out there nowadays that aren't cheap plastic construction? 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?
- jimnotgym 17d ago
  Yes. Meile vacuums are made out of quality plastic, and seem to survive bring dropped down the stairs better than my coccyx did. 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.
  - HPsquared 17d ago
    I like the bag style more as well. It's so much cleaner when it comes time to empty it, no dust cloud.
    - jimnotgym 17d ago
      My mum bought a Dyson, and my dad took her old Vax to use on building sites... and it's still going 20 years later...unlike the Dyson.
charlesfries 17d ago
You'd rather your vacuum be made of metal?
- al_borland 17d ago
  There are different plastics, some feel much better than others. 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.
  - Zanfa 17d ago
    When I first unboxed a new V15, I thought I got a cheap knockoff instead of the real thing. That’s how cheap Dyson plastics look and feel.
- 1659447091 17d ago
  > You'd rather your vacuum be made of metal? 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.
- nosioptar 16d ago
  Hell yeah! I've got a Rainbow from the late 1950s. It will probably outlive humanity and cleans better than anything else I've used.
  - dlcarrier 16d ago
    All the vintage ones I've seen are mostly Bakelite, which is pretty brittle, especially as it ages. What model is yours?
    - nosioptar 15d ago
      I think it's a d2 from '58 or '59. It does have some Bakelite, but is mostly metal.
kypro 17d ago
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.
danudey 17d ago
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.
- deleted 17d ago
  [deleted]
- jauntywundrkind 17d ago
  The trigger has a deliberate defect where it has the least possible amount of material right at the weakest most leveraged part. 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.
nujabe 17d ago
My wife often says the Dyson v8 vacuum is the best purchase I have ever made, that was 8 years ago.
- rootusrootus 17d ago
  I wish I could be that happy. I have two V8s and both of them are prone to becoming stinky. Changing out the filters doesn't help, and dismantling and cleaning out the interior does make it better ... for a time. Then the smell comes back. 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.
- tedtimbrell 17d ago
  I bought mine because my coworkers were over the moon about it. Apparently i had a far different experience
jstummbillig 17d ago
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.
einaralex 17d ago
We have the v15, best appliance we’ve purchased for our home.
move-on-by 17d ago
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.

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/147481 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Dyson+V11+Trigger+Replacement/1...

stuaxo 17d ago

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.

rebeccajae 17d ago

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.

IshKebab 16d 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.

seanmcdirmid 16d ago
I loved my Dyson but switched to Chinese robovacs because, even if stick vacs made cleaning the floor easy, I still sucked at consistency. Now I have three robot vacuums because my townhome is three floors.

Steve44 16d ago

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.

kmfrk 16d ago

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.

epolanski 16d ago

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.

duderific 17d ago

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?

rootusrootus 17d ago
I have a Sebo E3 that has been fantastic. Plastic, but still seems very durable. Very well thought out design, too. Miele also makes a good vacuum, but I prefer Sebo.
wahnfrieden 17d ago
Miele is plastic but excellent
embedding-shape 17d ago
> Are there vacuums out there nowadays that aren't cheap plastic construction? 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?
jimnotgym 17d ago
Yes. Meile vacuums are made out of quality plastic, and seem to survive bring dropped down the stairs better than my coccyx did. 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.
- HPsquared 17d ago
  I like the bag style more as well. It's so much cleaner when it comes time to empty it, no dust cloud.
  - jimnotgym 17d ago
    My mum bought a Dyson, and my dad took her old Vax to use on building sites... and it's still going 20 years later...unlike the Dyson.

charlesfries 17d ago

You'd rather your vacuum be made of metal?

al_borland 17d ago
There are different plastics, some feel much better than others. 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.
- Zanfa 17d ago
  When I first unboxed a new V15, I thought I got a cheap knockoff instead of the real thing. That’s how cheap Dyson plastics look and feel.
1659447091 17d ago
> You'd rather your vacuum be made of metal? 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.
nosioptar 16d ago
Hell yeah! I've got a Rainbow from the late 1950s. It will probably outlive humanity and cleans better than anything else I've used.
- dlcarrier 16d ago
  All the vintage ones I've seen are mostly Bakelite, which is pretty brittle, especially as it ages. What model is yours?
  - nosioptar 15d ago
    I think it's a d2 from '58 or '59. It does have some Bakelite, but is mostly metal.

kypro 17d ago

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.

danudey 17d ago

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.

deleted 17d ago
[deleted]
jauntywundrkind 17d ago
The trigger has a deliberate defect where it has the least possible amount of material right at the weakest most leveraged part. 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.

nujabe 17d ago

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

rootusrootus 17d ago
I wish I could be that happy. I have two V8s and both of them are prone to becoming stinky. Changing out the filters doesn't help, and dismantling and cleaning out the interior does make it better ... for a time. Then the smell comes back. 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.
tedtimbrell 17d ago
I bought mine because my coworkers were over the moon about it. Apparently i had a far different experience

jstummbillig 17d ago

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.

einaralex 17d ago

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

move-on-by 17d ago

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.