Ugly, but does the job well, the Beardsley of vacuum cleaners (Dyson DC04)

Member Name: deets

Product:	Dyson DC04
Date:	02/08/05 (286 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: very powerful, good attachments, cheap (ebuyer.com)

Disadvantages: looks awful, very noisy, dont be tempted to degrade yourself with the attachments

Boy aren’t I becoming domesticated… first george foreman grills and now vacuum cleaners. I don’t know where it all went wrong, but I should be reviewing cool gadgets and 241 inch plasma screen TV’s. Oh well, I guess that’s what happens when you nudge towards 30. that looks very scary to write, im still a 15 year old kid at school, well that’s how I feel anyway! Oh shut up deets, we don’t wanna hear this…

Anyway, onto the cleaner :o


Well it’s a dyson. My second dyson actually, the first lasted very well but last week sadly passed onto the other side. It’s a little hard to review this as it kinda only does one thing, but ill do my best, don’t panic.

Okay, its your standard upright cleaner and as usually with dyson, it has no bag. The dirt and dust gets sucked up into the main chamber, which you just unclip and then tip into your plastic bag. Lovely! I know these have been around for a while now, but I still have nightmares about the bags on my very first cleaner, what a pain in the chump that was. One other side of the clear plastic container is that you can see just how dirty your house really is! I had to leave it a week for the new one to be delivered and when I did the cleaning on the first day, I wept when I saw just how much dirt me and the cat bring in.

Once the cleaner arrived from ebuyer, it was easy enough to setup. On principle I refused to read instruction manuals as you shouldn’t need to really for something like this. I was up and cleaning up all dirt withins minutes. The first thing I noticed was just how noisy this little beast is, although Im taking that as a positive as it means its very strong, the high whine was a little off putting and managed to cause a few bats to crash mid flight.

It’s a nice simple unit to use, just unwrap the cord from the convenient cord holder on the back, plug it in, push down on the front and off you go. The handle is also the extension pipe for doing the stairs and carpets. A very handy addition, no more having to go find the pipe, its built in. Just press the clip on the front, pull down the cover and attach your desired attachment. A nice touch is the molded attachment holders, you don’t need to go hunting in the cupboard under the stairs, your attachments fit snuggly into molded fittings on the unit itself, genius!

This one is a weird lime green and silver model. The old one was lemon yellow and silver. Both are hideous, but the lime green wins. Not that it matters though, you just use the thing to clean, its no lifestyle product, so all your powerbook owners will have to waste your money on something else, probably chrome and Swedish :P Its easy enough to move around although probably a little too heavy for someone with joint problems.

Overall im very happy, it cleans very well. The little touches like molded attachment holder and little plug clip are very nice. It is however very loud, more than the old one, and it looks awful. I really suggest you look at ebuyer.com as I got it for £120+delivery, which was a nice surprise.

It really does have a powerful motor and should handle whatever you throw at it, my carpets really do look kind of like new again!

Summary: powerful, convenient to use

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Cleaning/Maintenance: