My Dyson was cutting out (over-heating) after a few minutes, and I was sure the suction wasn’t what it had been. So I called the customer support number (for those without a Dyson it’s right there on the machine, no need to find the manual) and the nice woman asked when I had last cleaned the motor filter. It should be cleaned every month or so. Since I had been using the thing for a year without knowing it had a filter we surmised that this was probably my problem.
Cleaned the filter, sucked like new.
So: they’re not totally maintainence free but they’re much suckier than filter-bag jobbies.
Well, we’ve had ours for over five years, and for the first couple of years it worked pretty darned good. Then, we got new filters and had the belts replaced (we paid about $150.00 for the thing, then another $70.00 to have the filters and belts replaced), and it was good as new again. Now it’s probably needing another belt/filter replacement. So, I figure, if you add the price of the machine to the $70.00 in maintenance every couple of years, it doesn’t take much for it to add up to the price of a really good vacuum. . .a Dyson.
We desperately needed a new vacuum cleaner, and we were impressed with the very concept that the Dyson represented. But Pepper Mill is a regular subscriber and reader of Consumer Reports, so we checked out their issue on vacuum cleaners.
We were astonished at how low they rated the Dyson. It was way down there, with more traditional brands near the top. the Dyson, they claimed, was inefficient, noisy, and breakdown-prone, at least compared to other manufacturers. This lead to cognitive dissonance.
We went with our guts and got the “pet hair” model of the Dyson.
It works great! It picks up cat hair (We have three cats – this is desperately needed). It’s infinitely more quiet than our last vacuum. It picks up a huge amount of dirt and has given us no problems.
I’ve decided I don’t always trust CR anymore. I suppose it’s entirely popssuible that those other vacuums might be better than this Dyson. But I can’t believe they’re that much better.
I agree. CR also rated the RexAir RAinbow fairly low, and IME there is no better vacuum anywhere. It’s even better than the Dyson (although much more expensive. I bought a Dyson Animal and like it a lot; it’ll do until I can save my pennies for a Rainbow). Like you, I have cats, and am amazed at how well the Dyson pulls that fur right out of the carpet!
My husband got me a basic Dyson for Christmas. And he lived to tell about it! It’s a great vacuum. There’s something infinitely satisfying about seeing all that dust whirring around in the collector.
BTW, Costco has the pet hair (purple) version for $440 now, which is $60 than I’ve seen it anywhere else. Best Buy has the best price for the basic (yellow) version ($400) that I’ve seen.
We’ve been really impressed with the demos of the Rainbow we’ve seen, but it has a couple of drawbacks in my book. For one thing, the assembly time every freakin’ time you use it would bug me so much that I don’t think I’d use it as often as I should. For another thing, I think if you have a two-story house (which we do), it’s probably a certified PITA to get upstairs!
We, too, bought our Dyson just this week. We picked it up at Sam’s Club, but our version was the “Full Kit,” which they don’t carry any more. It’s just short of the “Animal” model and comes with everything the “Animal” does except the carpet care chemical kit. We paid $429 for it, which was the least expensive we’d seen anywhere retail.
Like norinew, we had a Dirt Devil bagless. Hated it. It worked really well to start with, but living in the Texas Hill Country, we have to deal with limestone dust. This type of dust makes regular dust look like gravel. It continually clogged the filter element after only about 10 minutes of use, and then the unit would overheat. I suppose that’s not really the fault of the Dirt Devil, but my mother had a Fantom bagless that handled the limestone dust wonderfully, and we figured most bagless uprights would be built similarly. Now we know we were mistaken, and having learned from our mistakes, we figured out that what made the Fantom different was the centrifugal action and no filter to clog. Since Fantom was out of business (I’ve since learned Westinghouse bought the technology rights from Fantom - there’s another company using the Fantom name now, but it’s NOT the same vacuum cleaner), that led us to the Dyson.
We cleaned the filter on the Dirt Devil and ran it over our carpet in the den twice, and it did pick up a lot of dirt. We then ran the Dyson and it picked up another cup of dirt and debris. We also used the “turbo-tool” attachment and vacuumed the upholstered furniture in the room. The amount of white “dust” (yes, skin cells) that it pulled out of the furniture was both amazing and disgusting; but we aren’t sneezing as much now! Gotta love that Dyson!
Dammit! I lust for a Dyson with the fire of, well, someone who wants a really good vaccuum. Perhaps I should hie me over to eBay and Half.com to see what’s on offer.
I want one! I have three cats who graciously allow me to co-exist with their discarded hair. This thing would be great.
Question though, how is it on tile? When I run my regular vacuum over tile most of what it should be picking up is spit out the back by the movement of the rotating sweeper bar in the front. Does the Dyson Vacuum of the Gods do this?
velvetjones,
The Dyson has a brush disengagement footlever. It allows you to vacuum hard surfaces or delicate rugs without the beater bar. Additionally, many of the Dyson models come with a hard-surface hose attachment.
I’ve had a basic yellow one for 3 years now - and I have had to replace the belt [twice, but they are very cheap] and you do have to clean the filter occasionally for optimum performance. But I agree that they are great - better than anything else for getting rid of dog-hair - and I love the way you can clean the whole way up the stairs while the cleaner just sits at the bottom.
We got one in Decemeber, thanks to my somewhat deranged inlaws. This thing sucks. We broke it out, and vacuumed merrily away. When we noticed it was picking up cat hair we were impressed. We’ve lived here six months, vacuumed somewhat frequently and most importantly, we don’t own a cat. Everyone should have a Dyson
I looked at one but became skeptical when the first 2 pages of the 5 page instruction manual covered how to clear, and where to find, clogs. If it never clogs, why is this necessary? Does this mean that it rarely clogs but when it does, you’re pretty well screwed?