I appreciate the extra detail here. Having built small robotics platforms for more than a couple of decades I completely agree with much of what Dyson is saying, things really have changed tremendously in the last 5 years. Between $0.75 32 bit MCUs with 64K of flash and 8K of ram, to $3.00 6DOF IMU chips, to $5 HD video cameras, the ability to put high resolution sensors, better compute, and getting more watts per gram than ever before, it is a great time to take another look at what mobile robotics can and cannot do.
I should have known, robots have always been held back by the weight of power and compute.
Interestingly enough, for robotic vacuums _low_ weight is also a problem: the better your suction, the worse your ability to drive!
The tank-tread wheels on Dyson's model are meant to help mitigate against this, but I gather from (now ex-) insiders that this is still a buggy sticking point (ha!) that needs to be solved before release.
Wouldn't high suction give you better traction (ie. by adding an additional downward force to the force of gravity) and hence mitigate any disadvantage of low weight ?
Also with sufficiently well-controlled motors you should be able to optimize suction and drive, say to minimize power consumption or maximize speed/vacuum power.
Or better, modulate the suction based on your desire to adjust course. Suck more on the left, less on the right, and heave on the rudder for a hairpin. :)
It'd give somewhat better traction but at the same time you increase the likelihood of stalling your motors. How does the machine know if the motors are stalling because there's something jammed in the wheels or because the vacuum is sucking stuck to the floor? You can design algorithms or sensor mechanisms to try and determine this and also tune the motors but now you have even more problems!
I'm not sure the ability to drive is that much worse -- for constant curvature surfaces it should just increase traction. I guess the suction could be regulated if a certain varying inclide causes trouble.
Correct - low weight means you have less force to apply to the wheels and hence achieve grip. The design of the aperture where the air goes into the vaccum (the soleplate) has to be optimised between flicking the carpet fibres in the right fashion to achieve good dirt pickup and not impeding sliding across the carpet too much.
The design of the tyres is critical. If there is any slip in the tyres you have a problem. Even though the attitude and trajectory of the robot is governed by the information coming from the camera it does also rely on feedback from the wheel speed sensors. If you have slip on one side and not the other then you will tend to spin around and not drive in a straight line. Adding more power to the slipping wheel merely exacerbates the problem.
You'll notice the treads on the tank tracks are chunky. This is to give maximum grip on thicker pile carpets, however this kind of carpet tend to be "squishy" and allow the wheels to float somewhat on the carpet surface no matter what design of tyre. So this is probably where they are having problems. Also you'll notice the wheels are not rigidly mounted to the robot chassis, they have suspension. But unlike car suspension the bottom of the robot does take some of the weight and it touches the floor. If you have more mass in the robot it gives you more latitude to distribute it between the wheels and the soleplate.
Its a careful balancing act and all of these variables have to be tuned based on the amount of suction your vacuum motor is providing.
Add suction to the treads? A few air holes routed to the side of the tread where there's a vacuum pickup? I bet it would be tricky to get a seal that has low enough friction to allow the tread to slide past but still a good enough seal to get good suction from the bottom of the tread. Oh and it's got to last and last. Yikes... back to coding I go...
Not in a sufficiently predictable way. Also, over time, you might not notice but the beater bar wears away to the point that after a couple of years it no longer touches as much as it did when it was new. Worth replacing every year to maintain cleaning performance.
At the Homebrew Robotics Club we had a number of sessions on 'localization', which was as you might expect figuring out where you were in a room. Carpet was a real pain. One of my robots (wheeled) had excellent sensors and no wheel slip but I discovered that the 'weave' of the carpet would bias the whole robot to travel slightly sideways to the direction of travel, it was so annoying. I put 'pingers' in my lab, basically synchronized sources of sound and tried to do triangulation based on arrival time with limited success, the camera should be able to do much better than that. Especially if there are already 2 or three distinctive features (lights, doorways etc).
Look into methods like extended kalman filters to mitigate some of this. It's a smart way to blend multiple sources of information and checking amount of error in real time to weight / bias one source of information over the other.
Electric Engineering is certainly a good option. Another is Mechanical Engineering, if you're more interested in the motion, industrial aspects and the construction of robots. And a bit of Computer Science is another option, if you're interested in software aspects, firmware development, machine learning to understand where the robot is, etc.
I studied Manufacturing engineering and got a bachelors degree. This is very similar to ordinary Mechanical Engineering. I happened to be working on laundry products leading up to my time on the Dyson Robot. Its just a diverse enough company that they also operate in robotics. I now work for a medical devices company still working on motors.
My personal interests have been influenced by my father and elder brother who are both electronics engineers and I developed a keen interest in electronics and software from as far back as I remember and which I still have to this day. The ability for a mechanical engineer to fully understand the implications of the integration of mechanical systems, electronics and how they are prototyped and manufactured is key.
For instance when developing the wheels we were able to achieve minimal size by integrating the motors directly onto the PCB inside the gearbox and the PCB was an integeral part of the gearbox housing. This came about because all members of that part of the team understood each others domains to an extremely high degree.
This was a disappointingly light read. I was hoping for lots of fascinating technical details and a heartening, Apple-esque story of biding one's time with a product (along with an analysis of what technical advancements make now the right time for the Dyson robot vacuum). And there was exactly one paragraph about why it's launching in Japan first.
Everything except pricing information and independent verification of their superiority claims. Dyson's have traditionally come with a premium for their "technology". I'll be patiently waiting for the reviews to trickle in.
I have a cheap Roomba iRobot and I'm perfectly happy with it. I have hardwood floors so even if the Dyson has more power, I do not see a compelling reason to upgrade.
Yikes, what did they do to the page's "scroll" function?
Do people actually find that usable? It definitely made me think the page was broken at first... The slideshow seems like a 'play' (right-arrow) much more than a 'scroll' (down-arrow).
Is this a metaphor for Dyson vacuums in general? (Technically-clever, shiny, but not necessarily the most effective)
It worked very well on my laptop. Moving between slides felt very natural. Going back, I see that scrolling 'back' (up) didn't work as well. Interesting. I would never have noticed if your comment didn't make me check.
Why did you think it was broken? It said 'scroll to begin' on my screen so I suppose I knew I was expecting something when I scrolled.
When I flick my fingers up, I expect a smooth vertical movement of the view pane, exposing new content at the bottom. I can scroll fast and far if I want to scan for interesting content, and scroll backwards if I might have missed something. Every other web page does this, except this one. It subverts the conventional affordance of the scroll wheel / two-finger scroll.
It is basically, what I first saw at Apple's site for the new Mac Pro. Lately, Volvo has it with its new XC90. It seems like a new trend. Basically copying all those one page sites, which started with parallax scrolling.
With clicking it works fine. But some don't really like scrolling via touch.
Not only the scroll wheel, but clicking on the links at the top open up a different browser tab. Why do people like playing with standard browser behaviour like that?
And best of all, the "shop" link takes you to a shop where you can't buy it...
I find these round robots completely useless in Japan, because in most apartments, they are unable to move around because there's just too much stuff at ground level. There's a reason why normal vacuum cleaner ends are not shaped like landmine detectors, and unless you seriously address that point in your design, these robots will remain completely unadapted to most households.
This things are so popular right now in Japan. After going to the shops and seeing a demo of them, I'm also wondering how they work in a Japanese style apartment (most of which are tiny).
My friend got one (forgot the brand) because she didn't have time to clean.
I've seen them at work in Japan and they are far from being efficient because of the space constraints, and because there are usually carpets everywhere in Japan too so it makes the surface uneven. They are way too expensive too, yet they seem to sell pretty well. Sharp even has a funny model that say "Ouch!" ("Itai" in Japanese) every time it hits something. That's cute, but that shows how stupid these robots are.
Yeah, but it's one I found I often neglected in the past. I ended up buying a Roomba since it was on sale and it's worked out quite well. It's not perfect at vacuuming but on average the floor is a lot cleaner when I can run the Roomba every couple of days while I go out for lunch versus me getting around to vacuuming every few weeks.
Did you look at the Neato ones. Their new botvac can vacuum very close to a corner since the brush and vacuum head is placed towards the front and left.
That's slightly better but the size of these robots is what kills their use. So many times there's not even half the size of these robots between a table and a wall in Japan, they just won't fit there. Dyson should really do more market research before they think they can disrupt the market with basically the same form factor as the other brands. I don't have hard data but my guess is that most people are far from being satisfied with these cleaning robots.
They probably have more than I do because I have none, but I've seen very big companies being completely clueless at market research as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case as well. Seeing Dyson himself on Japanese TV yesterday saying "Hey, we come first to Japan because Japanese consumers love robots" sounded like he has no idea what he is talking about, seriously. But that wouldn't be the first for a CEO.
The title is almost click baiting. I was hoping to read an in-depth article for the 16years of effort in design the vacuum. Information on how the engineers solve massive problems that would have take many years to do.
From the general sense of the article, 16 years was the elapse time from their first version to their release version.
However, probably the right level of detail from engadget...
I was expecting a good argument on why it's launched in JA prior to US, UK or EU. Just the fact that Japan is a big adaptor for robotics doesn't make it. Roomba and others have established solid markets for that kind of product outside of Japan already. I hope Dyson can match the demand and will start selling the 360 eye globally soon.
I think the real motivation for a Japan-only launch is that, if things don't work out, they can quietly kill it without experiencing a costly PR fiasco in Western markets. Which is a bit weak for such a "revolutionary" products.
I wonder if part of the decision on the Japan-first launch was due to the Japanese market being the first to show decent interest in the original Dyson vacuums.
I don't know about the 360 eye, but the roomba has a little protruding spinner (http://bit.ly/1AdpUzs) that allows it to move things into the sweeping area. Works reasonably well on corners - it doesn't get dust right in the very tight part of the corner, but neither would a regular rolling vacuum cleaner.
The idea of the cleaner is that it reduces the overall level of dirt in your house. Its a "maintenance" cleaner as it can just continuously clean. Therefore the buildup of dirt in the corners will be less as there is less dirt around generally. However you will still need a secondary vacuum to do the corners, cobwebs, stairs etc.
Its aimed at people with plenty of cash, who might not blink at having one per floor of their house.
They didn't. The fan is integrated in the base. Actually the fan example is exactly what makes me look at any Dyson announcements with a lot of skepticism.
It's a bladeless fan, not a fanless fan. It works using an impeller in the base and it feeds the air through a thin gap in an annulus shaped aerofoil.
Strictly speaking you could argue that impellers have blades and all they've done is conceal them inside the base rather than remove them entirely. A truly bladeless fan would use something like an electrostatic fluid accelerator to accelerate particles with an electric field - but that's probably a little too sci-fi for a consumer electronics company!
Is the solution to a small robot vacuum really to increase the power of the motor above the competition?
On hard wood flooring I've never found rotary brushes to be better than side sweeps (what most of the competition uses).
And on carpet where rotary brushes do perform better, I can't help but think that instead of upping the suction power you could approach the problem from a different perspective... such as using a low vibration to shake the dirt and dust free of the carpet so that it's easier to pick up the material with less suction power.
I really like Dyson products, but it very much feels like they have a hammer (high powered suction in lower watt motors) and so every problem looks like a nail.
Some of their innovations over the past 5 years haven't impressed me...
Their hand dryers do a worse job than the classic World Dryer and look uglier over time and seem to be less performant over time (smaller clogged filters perhaps!?).
Their "fanless" fan of course has a fan, and whilst it shifts a good chunk of air at first it also suffers from degrading performance as the hidden fan gets clogged with dust over a season. And yet, the classic desk fan performs consistently well all the time.
And the problem with releasing highly-hyped products that turn out to be only average, is that it's hard to believe the hype in future.
Whereas I used to look at a Dyson as being incredibly functional innovation, I now look upon them as gimmicky innovation using their single core-trick.
And of course, they will successfully market and patent all of this (of which even the linked article is a part of that puzzle), such that people start to believe this is the best solution (not proven at all), and that Dyson will claim that no-one else can provide the best because of the patents (partly true, but who said this was the best?).
Years of buying and using Dyson products has left me greatly cynical. Their upright hoovers are still the business though.
"Their hand dryers do a worse job than the classic World Dryer and look uglier over time and seem to be less performant over time (smaller clogged filters perhaps!?)."
Really? That's the exact opposite experience than I've had, the Airblade dries my hands faster and more thoroughly than any traditional hand dryer.
The Airblade db works, but not as efficiently as rubbing hands together under a World Dryer (not one of the cheaper imitators of them).
The Airblade V works extremely well, but tends to suffer from being put where old driers were, which is too damn high to be used comfortably... in motorway services where these and old traditional ones are offered you see people choose the older ones.
I didn't realise there were different models, I only have experience of the DB. In my experience the DB works better than the World Dryer or any other traditional hand dryer. I find it easier and more effectice to dip my hands in and out of the DB than rub them under a World Dryer, plus it's more efficient from an energy efficiency point of view. Here's a study by the University of Westminster that backs up the improved drying speed claim (check out table 2)... http://www.europeantissue.com/pdfs/090402-2008%20WUS%20Westm...
As for the V, it's hardly Dyson's fault if they are installed in an inappropriate way.
Dyson definitely does a great job at marketing, and giving their products a premium price and expectations.
I was at the store one day, and saw vacuum cleaners. Now, I have no interest in a vacuum at the moment, but they had a Dyson Ball, and I've seen countless videos of it, and had to take a look to see this high-end vacuum. I was disappointed from the first second, it just looked like a bunch of cheap plastic parts, and similar to something I'd find from a yard sale ten years ago. Photo below of my expectation from all the marketing, and a photo someone took of the actual vacuum.
I played around with it for a bit, and it just felt cheap, in every way possible. I was expecting the best vacuum in the world, and I was holding something that was entirely different. Now, I don't own one, it might work great for vacuuming, but it had no sense of luxury in person.
Another example, is the handheld vacuum, I'd see commercials on television, and then I saw one in the wild at a friends house. Comparison below is using slightly different models, but just look at the materials. In the promo image, it looks like glass and metal, and then in reality, it's some cheap stamped plastic that you'd expect from a bottom of the barrel vacuum.
As for the hand dryers, I find they work well and fast. It's a creative idea, and I think they're a success. I imagine they're more difficult to clean though, and get dirty with all the water dripping on them.
You really don't want things made substantially of glass when you have to hold them at arms length and bash them around nooks and crannies :) One of the nice things about Dyson vacuum cleaners is that you can take most of the important bits apart by hand - something other manufacturers don't seem to bother thinking about. Vacuums get blockages all the time, especially if you happen to have cat litter made from wooden chips...
I own the vacuum pictured in the first link. I bought it with high expectations and disappointment began to set in almost immediately. After 3 years of not-totally-clean floors and periodic struggles getting the rotating brush to work, I finally replaced it with a much cheaper competing brand. My carpets and floors have never been cleaner.
It appears that you are placing a very high value on how shiny things are and their presentation. In that case Dyson is probably not for you; they are fundamentally an industrial engineering organisation.
I own that model of vacuum you have photographed, and it's just.... good. Lightweight, easy to push around tight corners, and sucks up everything in my flat in under 10 minutes without ever having to fight it. It makes it very clear that ever other model I've ever used was not very well-designed.
It is not the kind of status symbol that you appear to be seeking. Kirby makes those and I think you'd be a lot happier with their products.
I don't care about a status symbol. I'm not in the vacuum market right now and already own a miele.
Based on all the hype Dyson tries to generate, their product renders, commercials, sales lingo, etc, I expected this to be the iPhone of vacuums, where it was priced high, because it functions well, and has a great build quality.
Instead, it just looked overpriced, and the quality appeared no better than the vacuums a third of the price. I was disappointed, that's all, it looks like they spent their budget on marketing and the quality of the product came second.
Agree with the GP -- I own this vacuum and it works great. If you're more in the market for a chrome-and-platinum vacuum and don't care as much about the performance, you're probably headed the right direction with what you have.
What may be worth understanding, though, is that there are people who are equally willing to pay money for good vacuums, but whose judgment of "good vacuum" runs much more to "suction power and functional ability" rather than "build quality."
The idea that there is not a single axis of quality, and that different products can optimize for different axes, is not a new one, but it's one that many tech people in a post-Steve-Jobs era seem to have a hard time remembering.
If you're more in the market for a chrome-and-platinum vacuum and don't care as much about the performance
Is no one listening here? I said I care about performance, and build quality. Why can't I ask for both? Perhaps the Dyson performs well. I said I don't have experience with it, but the quality looks cheap. When a product advertises itself as being premium and top of the line, and asks for a high price, I expect both of the above.
Likewise, when I spend money on a phone or laptop, I expect it to feel solid. Don't sell me a $1,500 laptop that's built like a $300 Dell Inspiron.
People are listening, but they disagree with you. The build quality is good as well as the performance. It is made of plastic because that is tough and soft (see previous comments about banging into things). You seem to be saying it should be made of metal and glass because plastic is "cheap", but that would be a worse vacuum.
More than anything else, plastic is light for comparable strength. This is important for something that you're going to be pushing around a lot.
I had a Miele cylinder before this one. The experience of using it was that I dragged it around the flat and needed both hands to manage it. This Dyson model, I point at things, with one hand. It seems to be a combination of low weight, and the ease of pivoting on the ball that means it's rolling everywhere, but the difference is huge.
I suspect also that fewer people have used a Miele (or seen advertising for one) than a Dyson. They are not fancy, but are very, very well made and designed.
I think it might be instructive here to think about how notions of what kind of "build quality" and materials are best might tend to differ between:
a) a jewel-like, highly refined computer that you hold in your hand and touch gently to use
b) an industrial cleaning device designed to be banged into objects on a regular basis, scrub surfaces aggressively, and suck up dusty dirty things, without damaging what you bang it into
Kirbys clean carpet & mattresses extremely well... that's the appeal. I have a really hard time believing anybody sees a Kirby as a status symbol, as "cool", as anything other than highly utilitarian. I think this is why Dyson was so successful disrupting Kirby: they sold these based on function, not looks, and Dyson came in and competed on functionality AND price.
In you first picture, if both angle of view would be the same and if the user-taken picture would have been taken before actually using the vacuum, they would look much more similar... (the dust compartment looks full and hide components)
So you never actually used the vacuum, but you feel entitled to express on opinion on the quality of the product. Dyson is a design company. Design as in "how it works" not "how it looks." Perhaps the plastic you are complaining about here serves a purpose: keeps the vacuum light and allows the user to bump into things without damaging their furniture or the vacuum.
It's a vacuum. They suck up dirt. Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine that a vacuum's bin would therefore have dirt in it? The entire point of a clear bin is so that you can see how much dirt is in it and whether it needs to be emptied.
The marketing photos show a new, unused vacuum. Duh. The alternative would be as odd as a Johnson & Johnson selling bandages by using a photo of a gory, infected, pus-filled wound on the outside of the box. While that may very well be a valid example of its use, I don't really see many people wanting to buy anything marketed in such a manner.
Is the solution to a small robot vacuum really to increase the power of the motor above the competition?
On hard wood flooring I've never found rotary brushes to be better than side sweeps (what most of the competition uses).
And on carpet where rotary brushes do perform better, I can't help but think that instead of upping the suction power you could approach the problem from a different perspective... such as using a low vibration to shake the dirt and dust free of the carpet so that it's easier to pick up the material with less suction power.
I really like Dyson products, but it very much feels like they have a hammer (high powered suction in lower watt motors) and so every problem looks like a nail.
Some of their innovations over the past 5 years haven't impressed me...
Their hand dryers do a worse job than the classic World Dryer and look uglier over time and seem to be less performant over time (smaller clogged filters perhaps!?).
Their "fanless" fan of course has a fan, and whilst it shifts a good chunk of air at first it also suffers from degrading performance as the hidden fan gets clogged with dust over a season. And yet, the classic desk fan performs consistently well all the time.
And the problem with releasing highly-hyped products that turn out to be only average, is that it's hard to believe the hype in future.
Whereas I used to look at a Dyson as being incredibly functional innovation, I now look upon them as gimmicky innovation using their single core-trick.
And of course, they will successfully market and patent all of this (of which even the linked article is a part of that puzzle), such that people start to believe this is the best solution (not proven at all), and that Dyson will claim that no-one else can provide the best because of the patents (partly true, but who said this was the best?).
Years of buying and using Dyson products has left me greatly cynical. Their upright hoovers are still the business though.
This is a valid point. What better way to convince people that your product is superior to the competition? "Why are we so late to the robot-vacuum game? Great question. You see, we spent 16 years perfecting our robot, whereas our competitors rushed something to launch to capitalize on a trend."
It does look very impressive and I'm sure it picks up more dust and dirt than the Roomba, but my Roomba neatly fits under every piece of furniture I have.
The extra height of the Dyson means it wont make it under our sofa, the TV stand, into the gap between the kitchen floor and the cupboards (well, perhaps Roomba doesn't fit there either, but the side brush does), under the chest of drawers in the bedroom etc etc..
I'll have to wait for the next iteration (and hope I'm rich by then).
86 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadI should have known, robots have always been held back by the weight of power and compute.
The tank-tread wheels on Dyson's model are meant to help mitigate against this, but I gather from (now ex-) insiders that this is still a buggy sticking point (ha!) that needs to be solved before release.
Also with sufficiently well-controlled motors you should be able to optimize suction and drive, say to minimize power consumption or maximize speed/vacuum power.
Reminds me of the F1 Brabham BT46B "fan car" that sucked itself down to the road using a large engine driven fan at the back of the car:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46#Brabham_BT46B.C2.A...
them bumps
Correct - low weight means you have less force to apply to the wheels and hence achieve grip. The design of the aperture where the air goes into the vaccum (the soleplate) has to be optimised between flicking the carpet fibres in the right fashion to achieve good dirt pickup and not impeding sliding across the carpet too much.
The design of the tyres is critical. If there is any slip in the tyres you have a problem. Even though the attitude and trajectory of the robot is governed by the information coming from the camera it does also rely on feedback from the wheel speed sensors. If you have slip on one side and not the other then you will tend to spin around and not drive in a straight line. Adding more power to the slipping wheel merely exacerbates the problem.
You'll notice the treads on the tank tracks are chunky. This is to give maximum grip on thicker pile carpets, however this kind of carpet tend to be "squishy" and allow the wheels to float somewhat on the carpet surface no matter what design of tyre. So this is probably where they are having problems. Also you'll notice the wheels are not rigidly mounted to the robot chassis, they have suspension. But unlike car suspension the bottom of the robot does take some of the weight and it touches the floor. If you have more mass in the robot it gives you more latitude to distribute it between the wheels and the soleplate.
Its a careful balancing act and all of these variables have to be tuned based on the amount of suction your vacuum motor is providing.
My personal interests have been influenced by my father and elder brother who are both electronics engineers and I developed a keen interest in electronics and software from as far back as I remember and which I still have to this day. The ability for a mechanical engineer to fully understand the implications of the integration of mechanical systems, electronics and how they are prototyped and manufactured is key.
For instance when developing the wheels we were able to achieve minimal size by integrating the motors directly onto the PCB inside the gearbox and the PCB was an integeral part of the gearbox housing. This came about because all members of that part of the team understood each others domains to an extremely high degree.
/etc/hosts:
0.0.0.0 techcrunch.com
It's all shit anyway, garbage.
https://www.dyson360eye.com/
Do people actually find that usable? It definitely made me think the page was broken at first... The slideshow seems like a 'play' (right-arrow) much more than a 'scroll' (down-arrow).
Is this a metaphor for Dyson vacuums in general? (Technically-clever, shiny, but not necessarily the most effective)
Why did you think it was broken? It said 'scroll to begin' on my screen so I suppose I knew I was expecting something when I scrolled.
The recent NYTimes article about ISIS in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers ( http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/03/world/middleea... ) is a much better treatment of the scroll.
If I'm going to be subjected to lengthy animations between slides, I generally expect arrows left-and-right to click on.
The whole 'scroll to begin' language on an otherwise beautiful page is a usability smell. See http://www.harmoni.ca/blog/affordances
[1] http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
With clicking it works fine. But some don't really like scrolling via touch.
And best of all, the "shop" link takes you to a shop where you can't buy it...
My friend got one (forgot the brand) because she didn't have time to clean.
http://img1.lesnumeriques.com/produits/601/20289/Neato_Botva...
They probably have more than I do because I have none, but I've seen very big companies being completely clueless at market research as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case as well. Seeing Dyson himself on Japanese TV yesterday saying "Hey, we come first to Japan because Japanese consumers love robots" sounded like he has no idea what he is talking about, seriously. But that wouldn't be the first for a CEO.
From the general sense of the article, 16 years was the elapse time from their first version to their release version.
However, probably the right level of detail from engadget...
The idea of the cleaner is that it reduces the overall level of dirt in your house. Its a "maintenance" cleaner as it can just continuously clean. Therefore the buildup of dirt in the corners will be less as there is less dirt around generally. However you will still need a secondary vacuum to do the corners, cobwebs, stairs etc.
Its aimed at people with plenty of cash, who might not blink at having one per floor of their house.
We thought we'd need a second vacuum cleaner, but we really haven't.
Good to see other Dyson people on here.
On hard wood flooring I've never found rotary brushes to be better than side sweeps (what most of the competition uses).
And on carpet where rotary brushes do perform better, I can't help but think that instead of upping the suction power you could approach the problem from a different perspective... such as using a low vibration to shake the dirt and dust free of the carpet so that it's easier to pick up the material with less suction power.
I really like Dyson products, but it very much feels like they have a hammer (high powered suction in lower watt motors) and so every problem looks like a nail.
Some of their innovations over the past 5 years haven't impressed me...
Their hand dryers do a worse job than the classic World Dryer and look uglier over time and seem to be less performant over time (smaller clogged filters perhaps!?).
Their "fanless" fan of course has a fan, and whilst it shifts a good chunk of air at first it also suffers from degrading performance as the hidden fan gets clogged with dust over a season. And yet, the classic desk fan performs consistently well all the time.
And the problem with releasing highly-hyped products that turn out to be only average, is that it's hard to believe the hype in future.
Whereas I used to look at a Dyson as being incredibly functional innovation, I now look upon them as gimmicky innovation using their single core-trick.
And of course, they will successfully market and patent all of this (of which even the linked article is a part of that puzzle), such that people start to believe this is the best solution (not proven at all), and that Dyson will claim that no-one else can provide the best because of the patents (partly true, but who said this was the best?).
Years of buying and using Dyson products has left me greatly cynical. Their upright hoovers are still the business though.
Really? That's the exact opposite experience than I've had, the Airblade dries my hands faster and more thoroughly than any traditional hand dryer.
The Airblade db works, but not as efficiently as rubbing hands together under a World Dryer (not one of the cheaper imitators of them).
The Airblade V works extremely well, but tends to suffer from being put where old driers were, which is too damn high to be used comfortably... in motorway services where these and old traditional ones are offered you see people choose the older ones.
The tap based one I've not seen in the world.
As for the V, it's hardly Dyson's fault if they are installed in an inappropriate way.
I was at the store one day, and saw vacuum cleaners. Now, I have no interest in a vacuum at the moment, but they had a Dyson Ball, and I've seen countless videos of it, and had to take a look to see this high-end vacuum. I was disappointed from the first second, it just looked like a bunch of cheap plastic parts, and similar to something I'd find from a yard sale ten years ago. Photo below of my expectation from all the marketing, and a photo someone took of the actual vacuum.
http://i.imgur.com/bs1ygfM.jpg
I played around with it for a bit, and it just felt cheap, in every way possible. I was expecting the best vacuum in the world, and I was holding something that was entirely different. Now, I don't own one, it might work great for vacuuming, but it had no sense of luxury in person.
Another example, is the handheld vacuum, I'd see commercials on television, and then I saw one in the wild at a friends house. Comparison below is using slightly different models, but just look at the materials. In the promo image, it looks like glass and metal, and then in reality, it's some cheap stamped plastic that you'd expect from a bottom of the barrel vacuum.
http://i.imgur.com/RZ8sFxq.jpg
As for the hand dryers, I find they work well and fast. It's a creative idea, and I think they're a success. I imagine they're more difficult to clean though, and get dirty with all the water dripping on them.
I own that model of vacuum you have photographed, and it's just.... good. Lightweight, easy to push around tight corners, and sucks up everything in my flat in under 10 minutes without ever having to fight it. It makes it very clear that ever other model I've ever used was not very well-designed.
It is not the kind of status symbol that you appear to be seeking. Kirby makes those and I think you'd be a lot happier with their products.
Based on all the hype Dyson tries to generate, their product renders, commercials, sales lingo, etc, I expected this to be the iPhone of vacuums, where it was priced high, because it functions well, and has a great build quality.
Instead, it just looked overpriced, and the quality appeared no better than the vacuums a third of the price. I was disappointed, that's all, it looks like they spent their budget on marketing and the quality of the product came second.
What may be worth understanding, though, is that there are people who are equally willing to pay money for good vacuums, but whose judgment of "good vacuum" runs much more to "suction power and functional ability" rather than "build quality."
The idea that there is not a single axis of quality, and that different products can optimize for different axes, is not a new one, but it's one that many tech people in a post-Steve-Jobs era seem to have a hard time remembering.
Is no one listening here? I said I care about performance, and build quality. Why can't I ask for both? Perhaps the Dyson performs well. I said I don't have experience with it, but the quality looks cheap. When a product advertises itself as being premium and top of the line, and asks for a high price, I expect both of the above.
Likewise, when I spend money on a phone or laptop, I expect it to feel solid. Don't sell me a $1,500 laptop that's built like a $300 Dell Inspiron.
I had a Miele cylinder before this one. The experience of using it was that I dragged it around the flat and needed both hands to manage it. This Dyson model, I point at things, with one hand. It seems to be a combination of low weight, and the ease of pivoting on the ball that means it's rolling everywhere, but the difference is huge.
a) a jewel-like, highly refined computer that you hold in your hand and touch gently to use
b) an industrial cleaning device designed to be banged into objects on a regular basis, scrub surfaces aggressively, and suck up dusty dirty things, without damaging what you bang it into
The marketing photos show a new, unused vacuum. Duh. The alternative would be as odd as a Johnson & Johnson selling bandages by using a photo of a gory, infected, pus-filled wound on the outside of the box. While that may very well be a valid example of its use, I don't really see many people wanting to buy anything marketed in such a manner.
On hard wood flooring I've never found rotary brushes to be better than side sweeps (what most of the competition uses).
And on carpet where rotary brushes do perform better, I can't help but think that instead of upping the suction power you could approach the problem from a different perspective... such as using a low vibration to shake the dirt and dust free of the carpet so that it's easier to pick up the material with less suction power.
I really like Dyson products, but it very much feels like they have a hammer (high powered suction in lower watt motors) and so every problem looks like a nail.
Some of their innovations over the past 5 years haven't impressed me...
Their hand dryers do a worse job than the classic World Dryer and look uglier over time and seem to be less performant over time (smaller clogged filters perhaps!?).
Their "fanless" fan of course has a fan, and whilst it shifts a good chunk of air at first it also suffers from degrading performance as the hidden fan gets clogged with dust over a season. And yet, the classic desk fan performs consistently well all the time.
And the problem with releasing highly-hyped products that turn out to be only average, is that it's hard to believe the hype in future.
Whereas I used to look at a Dyson as being incredibly functional innovation, I now look upon them as gimmicky innovation using their single core-trick.
And of course, they will successfully market and patent all of this (of which even the linked article is a part of that puzzle), such that people start to believe this is the best solution (not proven at all), and that Dyson will claim that no-one else can provide the best because of the patents (partly true, but who said this was the best?).
Years of buying and using Dyson products has left me greatly cynical. Their upright hoovers are still the business though.
Because that's how Dyson marketing department spins it.
The extra height of the Dyson means it wont make it under our sofa, the TV stand, into the gap between the kitchen floor and the cupboards (well, perhaps Roomba doesn't fit there either, but the side brush does), under the chest of drawers in the bedroom etc etc..
I'll have to wait for the next iteration (and hope I'm rich by then).