We suck? No, James Dyson. It is you who suck – Bosch and Siemens Bosch and Siemens are taking legal steps "in Great Britain" against Dyson over what it terms the "false allegations" made by the British manufacturer that the German companies had cheated in vacuum-cleaner energy efficiency tests in "behaviour ... akin to that seen in the Volkswagen scandal". BSH Hausgeräte, the German parent …
"Surely to gain any meaningful conclusion you need to perform the same identical test with all the models concerned."
I don't think so. Dyson (the man) said that Bosch (the company) made that particular Bosch (the vacuum) and it uses a lot more power than it is rated at. Bosch (the company) said it doesn't. This can be tested without checking whether a Dyson (the vacuum) also does.
Maybe not as much as you might think.
Remember, The American Tobacco Institute for years did not lie that they passed certain tests with regard to tar levels in cigarettes. The lie was that the bits that caused differentiation in the tests would also cause differentiation when used by actual smokers. The reduced tar levels were primarily attributable to little holes in the paper on the filter which functioned properly in tests, but which smokers cover with their lips when smoking.
@Roland6 - Apparantly not.
The only published "data" other than weight, price and whether it's bagless is a 'star' rating for each of
* Carpet/floorboards/laminate - Refers to how well the vacuum cleaner picks up and retains dust from these surfaces
* Allergen retention - Refers to how well the filter retains small particles of dust and pet allergens
* Pet hair - Refers to how quickly the vacuum cleaner collects pet hair
* Noise - The more stars the quieter the vacuum cleaner is
* Ease of use - Refers to how easy the vacuum cleaner is to use on stairs, manoeuvre on carpet and wooden floors, empty or change bags and store away
* Brand Reliability
They don't even list the manufacturers published power data.
I suspect that tests are standardized and somewhat more rigorous than just "vacuum something".
That said, there is an obvious incentive for manufacturers to fiddle the numbers to get a better rating and either the test regime needs to change to stop them doing it, and/or trading standards should audit manufacturers by taking production models and independently testing them.
Any significant discrepancy should trigger a further test and if that fails, a full refund / recall at the manufacturer's expense to change their rating information.
"I suspect that tests are standardized and somewhat more rigorous than just "vacuum something"."
Indeed, they are actually less rigorous than "vacuum something". As Regs passim have mentioned, the test is specifically to vacuum something already clean. These vacuums have a special 'don't suck much if you are vacuuming something clean' mode, which means that their average power draw over cleaning a non-clean floor will be substantially higher than their rating. You might think the mode is a good energy-saving idea, and it is, but you then cannot reasonably say it uses energy at that lower rating when it only does that if you are cleaning something that is already clean.
>This is easy to check: buy one, plug it in, vacuum something, check power draw.
Not quite that simple: Bosch happily say that the power draw of their machine increases as its bag fills up. However, the Energy-Rating tests don't test that thoroughly, so are misleading. The issue is with the tests, not with Bosch.
Dyson has probably has the best facilities for testing vacuum cleaners - his competitors' products as well as his own prototypes - so I suspect he is correct about the Bosch product.
However, there is a difference to saying that energy-rating tests are flawed, and saying that your competitor is deceiving people.
The comparison was with VW.
VW cars also passed the tests so the situation is actually quite similar. Just replace the following [COMPANY X] with the respective company name and you will see that the following statement could apply to either situation (if' this allegation is correct).
"[COMPANY X] designed a product which used technology to pass official tests/standards designed to calculate its environmental impact. However its actual performance in 'normal' use was/is much higher."
Bosch does however differ in that you can 'use' the product (if you have little or no dust and keep the bag empty) whilst it is stated that the VW cars would struggle to pass in any real world situation. It all depends if having little dust is a real world situation for most users and how much more power it actually uses if it is an exact match or similar.
If it is all ok then Dyson will be clear to implement their own chip which changes the consumption during tests (sorry based on dust levels) which may defeat the entire point of the tests but will be the same for all but I imagine at this point the goal posts will mysteriously move again.
As the point of the EU regs is to reduce the amount of power that these things use in a sort of half-arsed effort to green things up a bit, then in the spirit of the regs, the cleaner should max power at the EU limit.
Should all be fairly moot anyway, as the cleaners in question are all being superseded by next gen devices where people have applied clean sheet ideas.
The robot vacuums are tested comparatively by magazines and in test standards by dumping a known weight of dirt into a test area and checking to see how much of it gets picked up during a cleaning cycle. That ought to be a standard test, regardless of suction power. Suck as much as you like provided you get all the dust up.
Let me fix that for you:
Buy one, plug it in, run it under the conditions stipulated by the EU testing which dictate the claims that the manufacturer is permitted to make.
The fact that the conditions under the mandated test do not reflect real-world use is not Bosch's fault. For that you need to look to the EU suits.
He has basicly gone from long quiet rants about how his concept is more aesthetically pleasing from an engenering point of view to just yelling at the competition.
My problem with his asthetic argument was even if the filters on his compeditors do clog, the price difference is so great you could probably replace the filter with new ones dozens to hundreds of times before the price would balance.
Well, finally we have a lab for measuring differential craptasmal intensity, and power draw for cleaning it up, across some western EU members. Courts aren't usually this fun, and for once the argument won't be at all for the hearing.
If you like that, how about wet-dry vacs for use on Mars. Quite inexpensive as those things go if you buy locally.
Yeah, it was by listening to a Dysonophile like you I was persuaded to buy the one I have.
Piece of expensive junk. No loss of suction, but use it in a real house to clean anything other than spilled cat litter and you'll see it lose the ability to pick up dirt soon enough. The add showing someone "cleaning" pet hair off a chair has me in stitches every time. They never show the bit where you have to strip down the beater to unclog the roller. And how about trying to empty the cylinder once hair is in the thing? Christ, I wish the bloody thing used bags. I used to be able to empty the old cleaner without getting filthy.
Making everything out of plastic is another "good" decision too. Just cost me $50 to replace a part that should have been made of steel or aluminum. But it looked good. On paper.
I've never understood this sentiment and yet it's common amonst Dyson owners. Why would you replace something that fails prematurely with another? Vacuum cleaners shouldn't die every few years (cracked hoses seem to be common on Dysons). My grandmother's Electrolux outlived her, is older than I am (i.e. more than 40 years) and you can still get spare parts.
Objectively on Dyson upright DC cleaners.
In upright mode they are bloody brilliant on domestic carpet and quite good on hard floors.
Using the hose and wand attachments it is shite, the hose is awkward and the cleaner falls over too easily. The bagless and filterless idea is a godsend.
Customer service is first class. Robustness and durability on the two that I have owned has been good.
Would I buy another? Actually no, I'm interested in one of the cordless ones now available.
Fascinating 'debate'.
I've got a few Dyson cleaners. The main complaint? They are heavy but great. Never had one break, bar a power switch issue on a DC01 that was easily fixed.
However the battery powered one is excellent. The only change I'd make would be a two step trigger, as the suction on the first level (before it kicks into 'high gear') is more than enough, & it would save on battery.
We have a Dyson, it's great ( DC01 Animal ).
My only complaint is that it's a pain to clean the stairs with it. I'm not sure how it could be better except making the wand easier to hold without accidentally sliding the brush attachment into place, and the hose could be *much* longer so you can do more than three steps without having to balance the thing half way up the stairs.
I wonder if there are any hoovers that are better for cleaning the stairs.
I have a 12 year old DC04 upright, which is still effective in my mainly carpeted house, but as the little rollers have disappeared from the cleaner head, it is not so good on hard floors and the Flotex in the kitchen. It once blocked up completely, and I had to dismantle it and clear its tubes out, but then, I was using it to suck up building rubble after knocking down a wall. I also managed to throw it down the stairs once and break one of the bearings that hold the head to the motor body, so now it steers itself left when you push and right when you pull, but as it still does a perfectly adequate job, I will not be replacing it soon.
> Using the hose and wand attachments it is shite
Have an upvote for that, the hose arrangement is rubbish.
> I'm interested in one of the cordless ones now available
I haven't looked, but I bet any warranty excludes the battery. After earlier experiences with a Dyson cordless, I'd not buy anything they wouldn't guarantee the battery for for "a good few years". I look forward to seeing how enthusiastic people are for cordless when they find out that a) batteries tend to have short lives, and b) tend to be eye wateringly expensive when they are "custom" ones for that application.
"I look forward to seeing how enthusiastic people are for cordless when they find out that a) batteries tend to have short lives, and b) tend to be eye wateringly expensive when they are "custom" ones for that application."
And c) Only custom in the sense of being regular Nicads shrink wrapped and soldered in a glued and potted plastic case that can only be destructively removed.
@ Pompous Git
I must say that Mrs Git is a credit to the fairer sex. That kind of pluck and stoicism is what’s missing today. I am sure she could teach Mrs Coward a thing or two.
Equally, I thought it was rather decent of you to make the offer in the first place, it sounds to me there is plenty of life in the appliance and you couldn’t stop yourself trying to spoil her!
No doubt there’s a broom for her ready as a backup in the cupboard, but let’s not reverts to plan B unless it’s an emergency ehh?
Top bloke!
Who gives a toss? It's a fucking hoover. You buy it because it looks nice, it sucks, and it costs an amount that is less than your ability to pay. Is anybody really going to choose Bosch because it has AAAA rating whilst Dyson may not? I mean for fucks sake does it make any difference? The sort of people who can afford Bosch or Dyson are the sort of people for whom saving less than a quid a year on electricity is probably not important
I'd never buy a Hoover, they're crapper than a Dyson. I had a Hoover back in 1992 and it fell to bits within months of purchase. Never again. My Mercedes has lasted me continuously since 1993 without fail, and happily vacuums the cellar and the back yard, and decades-old thick drifts of muck from inside the roof.
Look, we have to save the earth. I happily pay 5p for a shopping bag that used to be free and have noticed planet earth is a little less endangered. You must have noticed a reduction in global warming since we switched to environmentally friendly light bulbs. These AAAA vacuum cleaners have made the sky a bit bluer too.
i agree with you. i have been through a lot of Hoovers. dyson is good at removing pets hair on carpet, but sucks as "hose" work...
But henry wins it fair play... ive hoovered 2 tonnes of rubble/dust out the loft (left over from old roofing), plaster from walls, and pretty much anything from a house renvovation. Its fallen down stairs multiple times, its survived major wet weather after i forgot to bring it in at night following hoovering a car (i forgot)
So Henry for the win!
just win they had a decent pet hair carpet tool (they are air blown and not motored)
"and a smiley face for marketing"
that smiley face saved Numatic from bankruptcy. They were on their uppers, no sales, some shop floor worker painted a smiley face on one for a laugh. Someone in sales thought "why not.....?" and got a batch made. The rest is history
Personally I prefer Henrietta - the eyelashes are better
Did a networking job, jeez, must have been about 15 years ago, and I had a lot of cable strand ends on the floor, so grabbed the offices dyson and no matter how hard I tried, I just could not suck up those ends out of a carpet. Dustpan and brush did it in no time.
I do currently own a 'cylone' / bagless vacuum - samsung. I can put the hose on the ceiling and it will stay there. Brilliant suction.
On a side note, a few years ago I was contracting for HRG (Argos) and dyson had a tradein offer on vacuums. The savvy ones were buying brand new, dirt cheap vacuums and then immediatly trading them in for dysons. Not sure what the trade in value was, maybe £100?
The windings are driven, on or off, using Pulse Width Modulation. PWM.
That makes it digital.
It becomes 'more' digital' because the circuit that generates the PWM signals is probably based on a embedded controller.
No doubt it also becomes even 'more' digital because the embedded controller is capable of being interfaced to The Internet of Things.
"One of the latest Dyson adverts on TV has him saying his are the best because the motor is digital."
I would recommend that you put in a complaint into the ASA. At least they appear to be prepared to deal with blatant fuckwhittery.
"I would recommend that you put in a complaint into the ASA. At least they appear to be prepared to deal with blatant fuckwhittery."
If anyone was thinking of talking to the ASA.........I like the text on the side of the box that says lower carbon emissions, simply because if you read elsewhere on the box they have a brushless motor. That's not really what I'd think of as carbon emissions in the modern day. My pen has less carbon emissions than my graphite pencil under normal usage in that (pencil*) case.
*sorry.
I would recommend that you put in a complaint into the ASA. At least they appear to be prepared to deal with blatant fuckwhittery.
Or maybe they aren't. and I'm no fan of their '10% rule' either.
This post has been deleted by its author
There is no cheating on the vacuum tests. The test shows the typical power consumed under normal conditions not the peak power under restricted air flow conditions. If you don't like the results, make a better test. It's not easy to duplicate consumer usage of appliances or automobiles as authorities have discovered. Miles per gallon figures can vary 30% just by variations in driving styles.
As far as the VW scandal is concerned, the engines do meet emissions requirements when all of the emissions controls are functioning at appropriate levels. The software needs to be rewritten to comply with all laws however.
If you're technically competent a Dyson will last for decades. However, if you can't be arsed to have two washable filters (one in the Dyson, one drying), stick the cyclone in the dishwasher regularly and remember to replace the exit filter occasionally, then all its magnificent performance will fade to a whimper that makes a Hoover Constellation seem stellar in comparison.
My DC05 still sucks air better than a prospector with a cracked visor on Mars.
"If you're technically competent a Dyson will last for decades"
WTF needs to be technically competent to push a vacuum cleaner around?
All I want to do with a vacuum is plug it in and have it work. As for sticking it in the dishwasher, yep really hygenic, and I don't fancy abrading the guts of the washer with grit
"WTF needs to be technically competent to push a vacuum cleaner around?"
Exactly. We're not talking about a racing car engine or a musical instrument, where constant fettling for reasonable performance is to be expected. I want a vacuum that I simply switch on, use, and then empty every now and again.
@Jan 0: Interesting to hear of the irksome maintenance cycle you feel is necessary to keep your Dyson running.
I used to have a Dyson. The women in the household hated it because it was so heavy. I disliked the stupid arrangement with the wand stowed in the handle, and I didn't find the performance very impressive. It had to be repaired about every two years.
When it died for the last time I bought a Miele. It's light, easy to use, and intelligently designed. It may use bags instead of James Dyson Magic Cyclones, but even with the bag full it sucks far better than the multi-coloured plastic wonder ever did.
Jesus Dyson, you don't even need lawyers.
If Dysons hover is any way power efficient, then it should have just go a chap to use a Dyson and a Bosch AAAA rated hover, to clean up an equal amount of the usual crap on a floor and digitally show their published and real power consumption in watts as subtitles and the time it took. If they then had a point, then make the video viral. the publicity in itself would force the European regulator to respond to Bosch's and/or the rating agencies misconduct.
get taken in by this bollocks.
At best they are a mediocre engineering company with an excessive marketing budget paid for by the high price point. A colleague of mine recently recounted how his 90 year old mother was talked into a £20/month warranty/service contract on a vacuum by a Dyson 'Engineer' (had the van and everything!).
Anybody seen 'The Blade' ? Please...... what's wrong with a paper towel or a conventional fan?
I hear he is reinventing the wheel next week, they will probably call it the Circumvolution or some other crap once his bright young things get hold of it. He wants to sell you the concept and lifestyle by repackaging the mundane....
The Dyson Airblade is an interesting hand drier.
It's a typical Dyson pseudo-invention. All other hand dryers, from the feeble things you find in the toilets of Oriental restaurants, to the high-powered ones that you can hear in the next room, work faster when the user rubs his/her hands together during the drying. The Dyson proposition seems to be that he can "scrape" the water off with a "blade" of hot air. The result is a drier design that prevents hand-rubbing.
That just proves you are a muppet.
Until the Dyson Airblade came along, all hand dryers were anemic and crap. Suddenly, after his hits the market, even the crap manufacturers have been forced to up their game, some even going as far as to add fans and heating elements! (That last bit is sarcasm)
Anyway, the newer version is the V shaped one, that does the same as the first one.
I say thanks, Mr Dyson, for saving me hours of my life with hand dryers that work in seconds not minutes!
I may be wrong but I think Warner Howard Airforce dryers have been around since before 2006 when the Dyson appeared. Very, very powerful airflow and as someone pointed out they allow you to rub your hands together to help the process along. Very loud too but not as eardrum piercing as the Airblade. Think the first one I came across was in Borowski on Prager Straße in Dresden ages ago - early 2000s maybe. The Airblade is an ergonomic disaster and simply doesn't do the job.
Question: Why does my fan need to be Internet-connected? £200 for a desk fan? £500 for a column fan? Bog off!
Yep! Colourful device with 2 counter-rotating drums IIRC.
One of my clients had one, it was in an alcove near where her computer was. When it was on it was so noisy I couldn't work at the computer - the exact opposite of our Miele. I don't know it's on until it reaches the 15,000 rpm mode on the spin - and then I can only tell if I'm in the same room.
From what I remember, the Dyson shook itself to bits.
A Miele or a Henry, last a 100 years?
Because they are 100 year old tech.
The cleaners might last but your carpet won't.
The Henry is a DIY cleanup machine, but hopeless on domestic carpets - even if you pay the extra for the air driven turbo head with the wimpy beater brush.
The Miele like the Sebum and the other similar one is far from no nonsense, it's an old fashioned filter and bag faff-fest.
These type of cleaners and the upright Dysons too are becoming obsolete.
I don't know exactly how all these standards are made, but what I did notice is that most vacuum cleaners Dyson produces have "maximum input power xyz W" in the technical specs, but the ProPerform one doesn't. It instead states "rated power 700W". So, in legalese, what does that mean exactly?
My folks bought a Dyson DC02 (or 01, whichever was the cylinder type one) when they first came out.
Over the years it gradually kept going wrong. Power switch, cord retract and numerous other parts simply failed at quite a young age.
In the end it was replaced by a bog standard Henry. That thing just kept working, despite my mother insisting on using it "bagless". In the end it died due to the motor bearings failing due to dust ingress after my mother managed to vacuum up a hot ember and set the filter on fire (she kept using the machine for years afterwards with a holed filter). It was replaced by a Hoover of such gargantuan crapness that it lasted barely six months before being swapped for another Henry.
I've always thought that the only reason Dyson cleaners didn't 'lose suction' was because they never had much to begin with. We bought a cheap 'bagged' cleaner a while ago and find that having the rubbish all bagged up ready to go in the bin when it's full a real advantage (it doesn't fill the kitchen with dust, for a start). Also, the new bag is also a new filter and thoroughly affordable at 50p a pop. I'd suggest a patent, but I gather it's rather an old idea...
Dysons are style over substance.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
