Dyson claims Bosch paid mole to steal secrets

[beekeyknee]

And I hate those clunky hoses with that big thing on the end that has the power switch in it. It's too big and won't get into small spaces. And if the end of the hose is dropped that big chunk of plastic on the end of the hose can break or the stupid thing can come on when it hits the floor. Hate 'em.

We ain't talkin' about Dyson's anymore. Ran off the road.

 

[lordkenmore]

Thanks Sandy for your tips!

 

[lordkenmore]

We ain't talkin' about Dyson's anymore. Ran off

Or we are simply taking the "scenic route" road!

 

[mattl]

I believe in the right tool for the right job.  My carpets get cleaned with a good upright, above the floor I use a good canister.  Main floor I use a Kirby Omega, upstairs I have a Panasonic hard body.  I have a Hoover and a Kenmore canister plus a Royal Prince to clean the upholstery. No Dyson here, never will be...

 

[kb0nes]

So after the "Espionage", does this mean all the new Bosch products will be overly complicated and made from oodles of fragile plastic bits?

 

[Iowegian]

As one data point:

We have have a Dyson model DC-17 (? - It's gray and purple and clear plastic) that we bought about 6 years ago. I think we have had it long enough to give an honest review, though.

On wide expanses of carpet, its cleaning ability is excellent. We have a wiry-haired dog and it gets all the gook out of the floor. Better than any other machine we have owned, which consists of mostly Hoover machines. But its edge-cleaning ability is poor - to clean around the carpet around the baseboards requires deploying the suction wand, which is one of the machine's weakest points. Suction with the wand is good, but the attachments are not that great. And deploying/stowing the wand and attachments is not very good, either.

Cleaning on bare floors is mediocre at best. Chunky stuff like breakfast cereal spills tends to get propelled backwards by the brush but not caught by the vacuum part - frustrating. Poofy stuff like dog hair gets blown around by the motor exhaust and not picked up. Same with small leaves dropped by houseplants - they get kicked around but not sucked up.

The head of the vacuum has very little tolerance for things like bobby pins, paper clips etc. Stringy stuff can cause the brush roller to jam and strip the cogged drive belt. That happened to us once, but a local vacuum shop fixed it under warranty. We haven't had the belt get stripped since, but we are more careful about picking stuff up before we vacuum now - and I think having to do recon ahead of the vacuum cleaner is BS. Whereas when we had the Hoovers, we would vacuum without particularly looking for what might be in the way, even though the Hoovers had lightbulbs that the Dyson lacks.

Using the wand and attachments on upholstery and carpeted stairs is so-so at best.

Dumping the dirt chamber is a little more iffy. Sometimes you have to kind of scrape out the dirt chamber or whack it a bunch of times against the trash bin to get it to empty. Whacking the dirt chamber against the trash can introduces a bunch of dust into the air which kind of defeats the purpose of the hepa filter.

Overall I'd give it a B-, but given the price, it only merits a C-.

 

[arbilab]

Given your datapoints Iowegian I think your grading is entirely objective.

For what Dysons cost one could rightly expect no lower than "B" performance overall. I get that from my 1985 $100 used Hoover Spirit powernozzle. I spent another $40 updating it after 10 years. It does edges pretty well, on the right side anyway. The bags no longer sell at supermarkets but the HEPA bags direct from Hoover are not that expensive and work very well.

 

[jamiel]

yes, give me both an upright and a canister and I'm happy...that's what I grew up with (we were readers of Consumer Reports...can you tell). Currently I've got a Sunbeam Challenger canister (Electrolux-like--picked up at a rummage sale for $10) and Brian's old Hoover Elite in the basement, a garbage-picked Royal upright and my grandmother's old Electrolux (turquoise 1970 model with the automatic bag control) on the main floor, and a flight of fancy...a Hoover Z-vac (competitor with the Dyson from 6 or 7 years ago) which doesn't work any more as a canister upstairs (there's some flapper which has gotten stuck)...this is bagless and is my first and last experience with a bagless vacuum---they're unremittingly nasty.