I can't believe I'm writing a review about a VACUUM CLEANER! (There's a good reason!)
Written: Jan 05 '05 (Updated Jun 09 '09)
Product Rating:
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Pros: Some brilliant innovations. Powerful suction. Easy-empty bin. No dust smell whatsoever. Easily removable parts.
Cons: Annoying stretch hose. No headlight... are you kidding? Lousy cord design. Frustrating on small jobs.
The Bottom Line: Mr. Dyson has done his homework, but he has failed in some major areas. Still, despite its flaws, you can't argue the fact that this is one serious vacuum cleaner!
heresmy2cents's Full Review: Dyson DC14 All floors Bagless Upright Cyclonic Vac...
First of all, let me just get something off my chest about this Dyson fellow. It bothers me more than a little to see a grown man on TV with a pained look on his face telling me how frustrated he was by his previous vacuum cleaners. I'm 41 years old and I have plenty of buddies... and never... not even once have I ever heard one of my male friends say the words, "I'm really frustrated with my vacuum cleaner." Never. Ever!
So I have to ask myself what's the real story here. I'm sure Mr. Dyson is a nice chap, and all, but seriously, what man would ever really be frustrated about, of all things, a vacuum cleaner? My wife... sure! She's complained about problems with the vacuum cleaner from time to time. I'm sure even my 10 year old daughter will one day find something wrong with her vacuum cleaner when she gets old enough to own one. But my 7 year old son and I are oblivious to the whole vacuum cleaner dilemma. Honestly, it escapes us completely. Oh, don't get me wrong, I use the vacuum cleaner... plenty. I'm not the kind of husband who expects my wife to do everything around the house. And I guess that's really sort of my point. I DO run the vacuum, but I've never spent one moment of my life worried about it. I plug it in, turn it on, vacuum the carpet, then I get on with my life. If it ain't belching smoke, sounding like it's going to lift off into outer space, or leaving stuff all over my floor, I figure it's working pretty good.
But then along came this Dyson bloke and messed up the whole thing. For crying out loud, now he's even got ME interested in vacuum cleaners!!! The fact that I'm writing a review about one must mean that the end of the world is near! I think the thing that got me interested was how everyone has been talking about this vacuum cleaner like it's the Second Coming for crying out loud. You know, going on and on about what an amazing new gadget it is; how they've never seen anything like it! Well, I'm a huge gadget freak... gotta check out the latest and greatest technological marvels and all, so when our old Hoover finally bit the dust (no pun intended), I had every reason in the world to check out this strange looking Dyson vacuum cleaner for myself.
Actually, I've given Mr. Dyson a hard time, but I have to be honest with you. I really DO like this vacuum cleaner... almost! (Don't tell my buddies I said that!) Dyson is, no doubt, a very smart guy who has finally had the guts to break out of the mold and rethink vacuum cleaner design from scratch. And, boy oh boy, has he ever done a great job! There's a lot I love about this machine, but amazingly, Dyson, brilliant as he is, has overlooked what I think are MAJOR issues. How a guy could, by his own words, endure 5,000 prototypes, and still miss some of the things he missed is nothing short of astonishing. So let me start out with the few things I really hate about this vacuum. That way I can end this review on a positive note by telling you what I do like about it.
WHAT I HATE First things first. If I pay $549 for a vacuum cleaner, it dang sure better have a headlight. If you've ever gone from using a vacuum with a headlight to using the Dyson without one, the difference is astounding! I was so used to our old Hoover's headlight that when I started running the Dyson for the first time, I actually went around the house looking for more lights to turn on in every room. Come on Mr. Dyson, this is a huge oversight on your part! Believe it or not, I almost returned the vacuum to Best Buy just because of this one missing feature. (It's a guy thing.) I just think this is ridiculous! If we're shelling out over $500 for your product, surely you could spring for a 50 cent light bulb!
The power cord, while it is nice and long, is just a pain on this machine. Every time you want to use just the hose by itself to maybe quickly dust the top of a cabinet, you have to unwind the ENTIRE power cord, which, as I mentioned, is very long! You're telling me that when they were testing those 5,000 prototypes, some genius in a lab coat never came over and said in a cute little British accent, "Pardon me, Lord Dyson, but don't you think it's a bit ghastly that one has to unwind the entire power cord just to use the hose? Not very 007-ish, is it sir?" Apparently that conversation, or anything remotely close to it never took place! Sure, use space-age plastics. Oh yeah, that'll make our job easier. But for heaven's sake, let's not rethink the power cord storage location!
And speaking of power cords on $549 vacuums... whatever happened to those awesome automatic power cord "rewinders" on the old canister vacuums? Seriously, that was a fantastic feature... (other than the fact that from time to time the cord would retract at about 180 mph and the tail end would whip around and sever the arteries in your leg. Still, that was a way-cool feature, and I'm willing to live with some scars just to have it.) I just think a machine this expensive and one that is being advertised as so "futuristic" should not make me still get down on one knee and manually loop the stinking cord around and around and around two little plastic hooks. Dyson may have created some great new features, but he missed the ball on this one! Come on, dude, your wonder machine should let me press a button with my foot and the power cord should automatically retract out of site. Ba-da-bing! Ba-da-boom!
I failed to mention that I actually started out with the blindingly yellow DC07 model, but I was really, really disappointed with one problem on that system. It cannot, I repeat, CANNOT pick up anything at all when vacuuming head-on up against a wall. In other words, when you push the vacuum across the carpet and push it straight up against the baseboard, the DC07 doesn't pick up anything, not even a tiny leaf! Two days after I bought it, I read about the newer model, the DC14, and how it supposedly had a deeper cleaning path for this very reason. So I boxed up old yeller and swapped it out at Best Buy for the "new and improved" DC14 model, shelling out an additional $149 bucks in the process.
So, does the DC14 solve this problem? Well... not exactly. It does seem to do a slightly better job picking up larger objects, where the DC07 tended to just "push" them along, but even the newer DC14 still does a less-than-acceptable job picking up tiny objects against the baseboard. Our old Hoover Bagless Windtunnel beat the stuffing out of the Dyson in this area! Hands down. No contest. I never once had to go back over the carpet along the baseboards like I do now with the DC14. Sorry Mr. Dyson, you need to go back to the drawing board on this one, dude. In this test, the Dyson sucks... and not in the way a vacuum cleaner is supposed to suck!
Finally, I cannot begin to tell you how much I hate the extendable hose on this vacuum cleaner. Dyson claims that this hose will extend 17 feet for easy stair cleaning. Um, can we get serious for a moment? The ONLY way this hose is going to extend 17 feet is if you get a second person to sit on the vacuum cleaner and hold it in place, then get a group of friends to play tug-of-war with the hose and stretch it out all the way. This hose is only good for one thing... to stay put in its retracted position. It fights you every inch of the way when you try to "stretch" it out for cleaning away from the vacuum cleaner itself. This is at least tolerable when using the "wand" to clean your kitchen floor, for example. But it will drive you completely batty if you try to use the hose by itself. Yesterday I attached the small, round brush directly to the end of the hose so that I could go around my office and vacuum all my bookshelves, computer equipment, etc. This task was a breeze with our old Hoover. It is extremely difficult on the Dyson, because the hose constantly wants to pull out of your hand and fly back towards the vacuum. It's like wrestling a python! Again, how in the world this could have been overlooked in product development and testing just boggles the mind.
Okay, enough already! You're probably beginning to think I don't like anything about this vacuum cleaner. Well now, don't be too hasty. I just had to vent all that negative stuff in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, someone from the Dyson company would read it and see the error of their ways. Not really. I just wanted to be totally honest with you so you're not ticked off when you buy one and see all these problems for yourself. After all, the way some people gush on and on about this machine, you'd think it was flawless. Not!
WHAT I LIKE Where do I start? There really is a lot to like about this odd-looking, funky colored vacuum cleaner inspired by our friends across the sea.
First, the box. Yeah, that's right, the box. The vacuum comes neatly packed in a wicked-cool box that tells you right from the start that these guys have gone to a lot of trouble putting the whole package together. Trust me, it's a guy thing. I can't even explain it.
The instruction manual is brilliantly designed and very easy to follow. The vacuum snaps together easily in just minutes. The pieces fit together really, really snugly which lets you know it is made well and no air or dust is going to "leak" out while vacuuming. The attachments snap right onto the vacuum so you don't have to search the house every time you need something. Nice. Also, you can very easily remove all the pieces that make up the "vacuum path." If anything ever gets stuck and clogs up the vacuum, all you have to do is pop off any piece and clean it out. This is a HUGE advantage over other vacuums! Whenever something clogged up our Hoover, it was like doing open heart surgery, shoving coat hangers down through all the pipes and curves trying to free the blockage. Dyson deserves a pat on the back for thinking of this.
The vacuum is light, well-balanced while carrying, and easy to handle in general. The shape of the handle is very comfortable, although I think the on/off switch should have been positioned as a trigger-type switch inside the handle itself so it could be turned on and off with one hand instead of having to lean over to reach the power switch.
The handle on the DC14 is something you'll just have to see for yourself to understand. It's a really cool design, and a major improvement over its younger brother, the DC07. On the DC07 you had to completely slide the tube and handle out of the unit, flip it over and reattach it to the hose. I hated that. Apparently, so did a lot of other people, because this has been totally redesigned on the DC14. Now, all you have to do is extend the tube up out of the handle and you're ready to rock and roll. This is the biggest improvement on the newer DC14 model. After using this just once, I'm glad I didn't keep the DC07. I'd never be able to live with having to do it the "old" way.
The noise level on this vacuum is lower than our old Hoover Bagless Windtunnel. It is actually MUCH quieter. At first, I was concerned by this, fearful that its suction power could not possibly be as great as the Hoover. Wrong. After placing my hand on the end of the wand and nearly having it sucked inside, it became abundantly clear that this Dyson has some very serious suction power.
After seeing this, I decided to try a little experiment. I grabbed the small stair cleaning device (The Rug Rat) that we used on our old Hoover and popped it onto the end of the Dyson wand. When I used this with the Hoover, the motor inside the Rug Rat whirred at a nice, brisk pace, but if I pressed it too hard on the stairs, the brush inside would stop spinning. Well, those days are gone! After hitting the power switch on the DC14, I thought the Rug Rat was going to spin off into orbit. It was rotating at what must have been twice the speed it ever did before, and was whining so high I was afraid it was going to explode! My wife even came into the hallway and said, "What is THAT?" I grinned and said, "THAT is power, baby. Power!" She gave me that look that wives give when their husbands are acting like idiots, and walked back into the kitchen. Honestly, I was totally astounded by the enormous increase in suction power this Dyson has over our Hoover! By the way, no matter how hard I try, I cannot get the brush in the Rug Rat to stop spinning on the stairs. (That's more than I can say for the stair/couch cleaner attachment from Dyson. Go figure.)
The DC14 comes with a serious filter that apparently stops every single dust particle from getting through, because when you vacuum with it, there is NO dust smell whatsoever in the air. None. This is a very noticeable improvement over the Hoover.
Finally, the bagless canister on the DC14 is just fantastic. It is made of clear plastic, so you can easily see when it needs to be emptied. And emptying it is as simple as it should be on all vacuums. It can all be done with one hand. Just grab the handle, press the release button and head for the trash can. Hold the canister over the trash can and press the button to make the bottom of the canister swing open. Everything drops directly into the trash can as easy as can be. Our old Hoover was also bagless, but you had to tip the canister upside down to empty it, and, frankly, it was a real mess. The canister on the Dyson is a pleasure to work with. It couldn't be easier.
SUMMARY Well, I've already talked more about this vacuum cleaner than any man ever should. So I'm going to wrap up by saying that if you're looking for a new vacuum, I would definitely recommend checking out the DC14. If you need a headlight, you're out of luck. If you use the hose by itself an awful lot for dusting and so on, you'll probably get very frustrated by this hose. But otherwise, you'll really love this vacuum cleaner. Despite my complaints, its benefits far outweigh its shortfalls. It truly is a great product!
Hopefully, none of my buddies will recognize me from reading this review. If so, I'll never live it down. But then again... if they're out reading vacuum cleaner reviews...
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