Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption
91 comments
·July 7, 2025bredren
Ambroisie
I have to say, I don't see what makes it handle the criticism from the OP. It looks exactly the same as every other Dyson product I've ever seen.
hermitcrab
Dyson has not made himself very popular in the UK by advocating loudly for Brexit, then moving the HQ to Singapore, then firing almost his entire UK R&D department. Someone I know was fired by email while on holiday. Bastard.
2earth
Please, James, don't sue me. It's just my opinion as a fellow Design Engineer... and in my defence, I probably wouldn't have written this if your company didn't constantly proclaim how amazing all your products are. And besides, these days, I can't exactly opt-out of a Dyson-altered existence, given that you're systematically making public washrooms everywhere louder, wetter, more expensive and more confusing. I don't really like your products, James, I don't like what they stand for and I don't like you either, for that matter. Anyway, here's (just some of) the reasons why. But please, James, don't sue me.
detourdog
The germ spreading of the circulating air always creeps me out.
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echelon
The particulate aerosolization worries me.
In the future we're going to regret breathing bad air. It's the accelerant for so many health problems.
eddythompson80
> In the future we're going to regret breathing air. It's the accelerant for so many health problems.
A non-oxygen dependent energy system for the human cell is the only option moving forward. We need to utilize a clean energy source like sunlight and dump that oxygen dependency once and for all. Cyanobacteria was a crutch dependency that helped bootstrap that whole life thing pretty quickly for the demo. We have a proven concept now that we know work. Can we leave the idea to use oxygen back in the GOE era where it belongs now? Building all this complexity on top of a fundamentally flawed bases like oxygen reactivity was the main mistake.
pedalpete
I feel this completely ignores the role of brand in the equation.
Dyson's brand is to be technologically forward. It is supposed to look like the future, which is why the angular mix of colors works for the brand.
Bosch, I have no idea what their brand aesthetic is, or what they are trying to say.
This doesn't mean that the Dyson is better than Bosch, or any other competitors, just that brand does come into the equation as well.
randycupertino
For hairdryers particularly dyson is very trendy. People wait in line for limited edition hairdryer cases, it actually crashed sephora's website for one of the limited edition case colors, I think it was rose gold. And the hot pink dryers are very statement making pieces for salons. They are definitely great at marketing and partnering with influencers. Per my hairdresser they aren't the best products on the market but they have great branding.
mkj
It didn't include the terrible battery pack design of the vacuum cleaners either. They could have added a few resistors (already supported by the battery management chip they're using), but instead they didn't so the battery packs just fail. https://old.reddit.com/r/18650masterrace/comments/tifbgr/dys... and the eevblog original linked there.
rej696
I had a terrible experience trying to replace failed battery packs for a family member's dyson handheld hoover. They seem to fail every 2 years or so, and the first time around we ordered the wrong part (all the different models seem to have slightly different interfaces). Dyson wouldn't allow us to return either the failed or functional but incorrect batteries, so now we have a pile of 3 or 4 hoover batteries in the cupboard!
ok_dad
Jesus, they have a battery handshake? We truly do own nothing.
wpm
Sadly, the lack of good sense and typical selfishness and shortsightedness of a human being means that when you don't, you get the spate of e-bike battery house/apartment/highrise fires that were hitting NYC. You kinda can't fuck around with li-ion.
I don't like that my Bosch e-bike batteries have closed-source schematics, software, and chargers (i mean really, what the fuck am I going to steal Bosch), nor that the software that runs on the bike is utterly locked down to the point where I can't even pay for a copy (it's available only to e-bike dealers and none of them have leaked it as far as I can tell), but unfortunately, I have no trust in my fellow schmuck to not accidentally or negligently build bombs when they rebuild their battery packs, nor would I trust them not to do stupid shit with the e-bike software like remove speed limiters.
I barely even trust myself to rebuild packs, and I kinda-sorta know what I'm doing, which is just enough to get myself into trouble. I still look at the two packs I have rebuilt with a side-eye, months and years on from when I built them.
AlexandrB
This kind of comment is ridiculous in light of the last hundred years of transportation which worked on gasoline, a highly flammable liquid fuel that can even explode under some circumstances. Why do we trust people to handle gasoline safely, but Li-ion batteries are a bridge too far?
I'm tired of being treated like an idiot consumer because someone, somewhere, fucked up their Li-ion battery.
bitmasher9
> nor would I trust them not to do stupid shit with the e-bike software like remove speed limiters.
I’m not going to lie, this is the first thing I would do if I could flash e-bike software.
nancyminusone
This is hardly unique to Dyson. Pretty much everything that has multiple lithium ion batteries does the same. It sucks but that's the price you pay for lithium ion.
ToucanLoucan
This shit should genuinely get your company hauled into court and fined significantly. Render batteries unrecoverable to save, what, a penny on your BOM? Fucking pathetic.
Engineers need a union. I'm sure this was a bean counter decision and not something they wanted to do.
bboygravity
As an EE I feel this was either extreme incompetence (unlikely) or deliberate planned obsolescence.
Battery packs can be expensive and have huge margin if you make them (mechanically) fit only 1 year of 1 model of 1 brand. Which is exactly what Dyson seems to be doing.
Designing BMS'es so that the batteries (safely) fail as quickly as possible is not hard.
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svelle
I have a v12 and I couldn't be happier. Best cordless vacuum I've owned. Had an aeg before that was about half the price. But it sucked.
Still some of the criticism holds, such as the terrible wall charger.
spandrew
I dunno about this; that greenlight vacuum they brought to market a few years back is dope af. My first little orb Dyson is still kicking almost 15 years after I bought it.
I think their brand isn't just about tech itself, but the utility exploring novel tech can drive.
m463
I had a dc34 and loved it. cost about $190? Point and shoot cleanups with the edger attachment.
The humdinger should be a more modern replacement, but it sucks. No trigger, no fun.
ubercow13
>Dyson hand dryers are very fast, but as a result, they fling water everywhere
Isn't that the whole point of them? Instead of imparting enough heat energy to evaporate all of the water on your hands, they just push it off which is much faster and more energy efficient. How would they work better than regular dryers without doing that?
aag
I have never found a hand dryer that works better than the Dyson ones. They actually dry my hands quickly, and they don't deafen me in the process unlike some of their competitors.
danpalmer
Agreed, but most people don’t use them correctly, they treat them like an awkwardly shaped transitional hand dryer.
When used correctly I find they don’t spray too much water around and dry my hands almost immediately.
wpm
If the goal is to optimize the singular task of "get water off hands ASAP", sure it probably solves that fairly well.
There might be more to the task though. What affect does it have on the user? Getting splashed with water, usually at crotch height, is a nuisance and is somewhat embarassing. The loudness of these dryers is also a nuisance, and can be downright painful depending on how many are going at the same time in a large public bathroom. Long enough for permanent damage? Probably not for the average hand-washer, but for the people who have to clean those restrooms all day, perhaps an occupational hazard.
Also, the trough shaped ones are disgusting.
justinrubek
The trough ones are such a poor design. Carefully try to wiggle your fingers in there, and then they blow with force such that you touch the wet dirty surface that everyone else has touched. I don't understand why these things exist, let alone why people choose to put them in a bathroom.
MangoToupe
Perhaps evaporation?
IshKebab
I used to work for Dyson and I think this is quite off in many ways.
* The industrial design of Dyson products is generally great. I don't think they poke you or anything like that. They even have nice affordances like all the things you can use being red. Contrast that with my terrible Shark where everything is black. Took me a good few seconds to find the bin release button. It also has an atrocious UX - a slow on/off button instead of a trigger, and an amazingly useless "smart power" feature that just varies the power almost completely randomly as you vacuum.
When I worked there all the vacuum guys were worried about Shark because their pickup is apparently better. They needn't have worried because their UX is so abysmal. Although I guess in fairness Which doesn't know UX exists.
* Some of the criticisms of the tech are valid, e.g. the hand dryers spraying water everywhere (they easily erode painted walls and now they generally install them only on tiles). But those are just flaws of the tech, they don't negate the fact that the hand dryers are much better than the standard cheap ones. He quotes the claimed hand drying time for a cheapo dryer as being close to an air blade but anyone that has ever used one knows how much of a lie that is. The washing machines did damage clothes but apparently the main reason they stopped making them was a manufacturing issue with the drum.
* I don't think anyone really believes that James Dyson is personally inventing all Dyson products now. That doesn't mean he has no influence. When I worked there (about 10 years ago tbf) he still had huge influence over the designs, especially the ones he cared about.
The one thing that is true is that Dyson won't make anything that isn't patentable because James Dyson dislikes his products being cloned so much. So even though though could make really good versions of normal products, they don't.
Also they are way too expensive. Though in fairness my shitty Shark was expensive too.
Don't buy a Shark.
lucideng
As an owner of a Shark, I don't agree. The ergonomics are great, controls/buttons are grey, everything else is red or black, sounds like you just made a poor choice in model and/or colors. Mine is a corded vac and just works. Replaceable, washable filters, switched power, handles egregious amounts of pet hair (Husky) and a lift-away tank. We replaced a cheap Bissel vacuum with the Shark, and the Bissel was great, it was just really hard to clean stairs with it.
I think of a Dyson as more of a status symbol, like the latest Mac Book, a watch collection, or a Porsche. Dyson owners like telling people they have a Dyson. Most people just need things to work well for their use case, be reliable and affordable.
The saying goes... "Fast, reliable or cheap. Pick two."
accrual
> Although I guess in fairness Which doesn't know UX exists.
What is "Which" in this context? As used here it appears like a proper noun.
buran77
> has an atrocious UX - a slow on/off button instead of a trigger, and an amazingly useless "smart power" feature that just varies the power almost completely randomly as you vacuum.
Contrast that with the Dyson v15 which has a trigger I have to hold continuously while I twist and turn the vacuum so I can't change the grip without it turning on and off as my finger slips off the trigger or inevitably gets tired. Or the amazingly useless "smart power" feature that just varies the power almost completely randomly as I vacuum an otherwise perfectly smooth hard floor.
Or the peak of uselessness, a display to tell me how many particles of dust it thinks it vacuumed, and their estimated sizes. Because I needed to be told I vacuumed 20 million dust particles of one size but only 1 million of another size. Counted twice just to make sure.
m463
> has an atrocious UX - a slow on/off button instead of a trigger
sort of like the humdinger, which I think I wasted my money on trying to replace a dc34
detourdog
My only complaint about the Dyson products is that they compromise on battery tech to help margins. I would expect such a design focused company to use the best batteries despite the effect on margins.
No sense charging top dollar and using less than state of the art batteries.
colesantiago
Would it be best to make an open source company to challenge Dyson?
Everything will be worker and independently owned (bootstrapped and no VCs), no patents (we don't care about clones)
Just make great product that is open has free software.
If there would be significant interest Dyson could have a direct competitor just like many other open source companies like System72 and Red Hat
phoronixrly
I find it perplexing that the new Dyson urinals are not present as an example of what good design is...
This piece doesn't mention the fluffy cones next gen replacement to the dyson stick vac: https://youtu.be/ve6JuJV17FQ?si=aCq_qwtpAhRyS0by&t=159
It was announced a month ago and seems to handle the design criticism in this blog entry. If it works as well as demonstrated will put it in a new class of vac.