Review: Dyson DC25 Blueprint LE

Dyson has clearly won the Death Star contract: its latest all-white upright vac looks made to match the battle attire of stormtroopers. Though unable to hit the side of a bus with a blaster, they might finally get a fighting chance against kitty litter spills.

For the rest of us, the Dyson DC25 Blueprint LE is set apart by its relatively light weigh-in, industrial styling, and the manoeverability created by the ball. Like all of its kin, it's a object of consumed art, easy to love and laden with an elaborate set of accessories and tools. Also available is the DC24 Blueprint, which is only 12lb but has half the suck.

Performance was excellent: it handled all the solid spills we set it against, collecting them without fuss. Wisps of dog hair spun like cotton candy in the translucent bin. The ball makes a big difference to manoeverability, but there is an apparent trade-off: it doesn't have the same forward pull that everyday vacs do. It's also loud, especially when the motorized brushes are turned on, and could do with a retractable cable stash.

Both models are available at Target, priced at $430 for the DC24 and $530 for the DC25 (the big one is also offered at Dyson's online store). In each case, that's $30 more expensive than the standard edition.

It's not really worth the premium (which goes up to $50 if you buy a standard DC24 or DC25 from Amazon), but it sure is pretty. Bottom line: get a Dyson ball model if you don't like the angular, hamfisted movements that a normal vac encourages, or if you want to get the house cleaned in record time without cutting corners--and think that the 5-year warranty justifies a higher price tag.

• [cycle23]

  I’d love to be the sub-minimum-wage earning maid at the home that shelled out the bucks on that sucker!

• [stegodon]

  i have a dyson and i really dig it. it was a gift from my lovely girlfriend – pitched as being effective at lifting pet hair (it is) she thought I’d like the deisgn (I do) but mostly i think she liked the name “Animal Cyclone.” ha. i enjoy vacuuming, i guess i’m easily entertained. besides, i think my dog would violently pwn a roomba, he has been expressing concern about the Singularity. i also have a “Scorpion Turbo” dust buster. if only someone would release a “Frenzied Barracuda” feather duster…

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    i also have a “Scorpion Turbo” dust buster.

    If it’s called that because it’s good at vacuuming up scorpions, I may get one.

• [Zadaz]

  I greatly enjoy my Dyson.

  And the fact that so many people hate it simply makes me love it even more.

  But it’s so much better to use than any of the mentioned alternatives that I just friggin like to vacuum now. I break it out for fun. I vacuum 2-3x as much as I did with my Hoover.

  And that means a cleaner house with less allergens, and a happier, healthier me. Well worth the price for me.

• [Anonymous]

  Sir James Dyson was featured in the September, 2009 edition of Runner’s World.
  http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-243-410–13263-0,00.html

• [Anonymous]

  Miles Bennett Dyson?

  • [Anonymous]

    nope – james – and he built a car that drove on water that had balls for wheels too… and a wheelbarrow. And so much other cool stuff besides. I even named my dog after him…

• [Anonymous]

  While I’m sure they work just fine, these vacuums just seem so over-designed. So many parts. Pick one up- everything feels slightly jiggly and loose. They don’t feel like they should cost that much. Simpler is always better.

• [LeFunk]

  It’s very handy, if you drop an urn with someone’s ashes.

• [Anonymous]

  “I’d love to be the sub-minimum-wage earning maid at the home that shelled out the bucks on that sucker!”

  Don’t be so sure. I know a lady with a cleaning business who hates Dyson vacuums. They are three times heavier than her lightweight and powerful Oreck vacuums.

  • [VoiceUXGuy]

    Hello, Oreck marketing intern…

• [relaxing]

  Doubt it would last longer than, say, ten $40 bagless vacuums.

• [relawson]

  call me crazy, but my kirby will beat the tar out of any dyson. ever.

  • [Anonymous]

    I’ll second that one – and guaranteed for life….

• [Neill S Mitchell Esq.]

  I can attest to the serviceability of Dyson vacs, designed-in is the ability to strip down & re-assemble the whole machine with minimal tools and just a bit of common-sense. So many consumer items are ‘sealed for life’ seemingly to encourage the ‘it’s cheaper to buy new than fix’ mantra.

• [Anonymous]

  Hose broke within 2 days. Customer service has been giving me the run around for over 3 weeks.

  Don’t buy this p.o.s. It’s selling on woot.com which usally sells overstocked junk.

  Get an Aerus Lux or Miele instead.

• [Ted8305]

  I sure hope your Kirby would beat the tar of out a Dyson. They’re cast from solid metal and mirror polished.

  Both vacuum brands, however, have issues with wacky cults.

• [Anonymous]

  my hoover is 30 yrs old. im a normal everyday non techie person and i can fix it most of the time with a screw driver and the schematics.

  i doubt that i could do that with this. if i want something utterly unsustainable for cheap geek credit shouldn’t i just get a roomba?

  • [Gelfin]

    @Anon#8: Actually, your doubt is misplaced. I finally ended up shelling out money for a Dyson when I realized that, unlike my old Hoover, I could field strip the entire thing and clear up anything short of a part failure not only without schematics, but without tools. I would consider this is a tragically under-marketed feature if I didn’t know full well how few people bother to maintain their own stuff.

• [Rob Beschizza]

  I have a kirby! Yeah, it’s basically a living antique.

• [tsdguy]

  Too bad the Dysons are always rated Meh by Consumer Reports. Nice looking but only modest on the suckometer. Many of the conventional models whip it’s big ball so to speak….

• [Tamooj]

  I’ll chorus what pinehead said; SHOPVAC. WTF would I spend ~$400 for a stylish vacuum cleaner when my Rigid shopvac has 5x the suck, is (surprisingly) much quieter and never ever breaks? Yes, I can get HEPA filters for it too. The only drawback is the lack of carpet-beater, but I’m sure someone makes an attachment. Really; 5x the suck! After the first time I cleaned my floors with the shopvac (the house vacuum choked on some pet debris) I vowed to never go back.

• [Guesstimate Jones]

  I think this Dyson chap would be the perfect person to re-invent the water-pipe, one of my household’s most used appliances, and a product category sorely in need of re-engineering…

• [Anonymous]

  Sorry, but after being spoiled by roombas for a couple years, I don’t think I could ever buy a vacuum cleaner that doesn’t *vacuum on its own*.

• [padster123]

  The person making comments about unsustainability should be aware that Dysons are superbly maintainable. It’s built into their design. The service you get from Dyson is amazing. Example: I dropped my (already quite old) Dyson down the stairs. Result: crack in the head. I phoned Dyson, they sent an engineer round for a very reasonable all-in price (£50, I think), he replaced the entire head, and the thing is as good as new. Our Dyson is a good 11 years old, and still works like new. Totally worth the money.

• [Ito Kagehisa]

  I own and use a Dyson DC-18, two roombas (named Gaston and Alphonse), a shop-vac which spends most of its time attached to the big bandsaw, and a Kirby Heritage II.

  I have completely dissasembled and repaired every one of those machines except Gaston. No one sweeps like Gaston, no one beeps like Gaston, no one cleans as incredibly deep as Gaston… ahem, sorry.

  Anyway, the Kirby is the most powerful. I had to replace the impeller blade because it picked up a 3.5″ long half-inch lag screw and pulled it down the entire length of the extension hose. The screw was moving fast enough that it shattered the thick lexan of the impeller when it hit it. The shop vac does not compare! There is no part of the Kirby which cannot be easily dissassembled with the single exception of the thin metal piece that holds the rubbery bit on the beater bar head. That is riveted and you must drill out the rivets with a drill press if you want to replace it.

  Despite the Kirby’s awesome power, it has severe disadvantages. It is insanely heavy (it is mostly made of steel, with a rock maple beater) and it sucks so powerfully that children and old folks cannot move it once it’s turned on. It literally sticks to the rug. Even for me it is more difficult and cumbersome to use than the shop-vac. Nobody else in the family is willing to use it at all.

  The Dyson, by comparison, is very manueverable and reasonably lightweight. The DC-18 “slim” model is considerably less bulky than the other Dysons, most of which are behemoths that are clumsy to lift and carry up stairs despite their reasonable weight and high maneuvabilty. However, the only mode where the Dysons really excel is as an upright. The hose mechanism is kludgy and difficult for kids to manage, the attachements are prone to being knocked out of their rube-goldberg storage housings, the top of the pipe slams into low ceilings and door thresholds when you are withdrawing it from the base, and the hose clogs quite easily, particularly when you suck up a used lollipop stick your kids left under the sofe.

  I also must strongly disagree with those who believe that the Dyson is built to be easily disassembled and maintained. There are several large pieces that can only be taken apart with a saw because they are permanently fused together at the factory. In my particular model, the DC18, there are also some subassemblies that are quite difficult to take apart even though I am something of an expert at this point.

  Despite these problems, the Dyson is still a great upright vacuum. It does not suck as powerfully as the Kirby, but it removes more super-fine dust somehow; when we first got the Dyson we tested this by vaccuming two carpeted rooms and we found that the Dyson could still pull dirt out of the rug after the Kirby was through. I am at a loss to explain this phenomena, but I did the experiment personally so I know it is true.

  The roombas are wonderful for releasing into an area while you do other things, such as prepare for arrival of guests. They have tiny little bins that quickly fill up and must be emptied, and they get stuck on certain types of steel floor vents and thresholds, but they don’t fall down stairs or suck up the corners of rugs. They have loud audible signals that let you know if they are stuck, need emptying, or are heading for their recharging bases. The biggest problems with the roombas are short battery life (expect to replace the packs every 2-5 years) and the spinny brushes constantly breaking off on chair legs and hearths. They do not clean deeply, which is unsurprising since the whole machine weighs less than the Kirby’s drive motor.

  Minor roomba maintenance should be performed every time you empty the bin; unwind all the strings and threads from the whirly bits and clean the brushes. Other than that you only have to deal with major malfs, such as large heavy objects falling on Alphonse. I found the roombas to be extremely easy to work on, although some of the parts are certainly no stronger than necessary, and it’s easy to accidentally strip the threads where iRobot has used self-tapping steel screws on polyethylene.

  The shop-vac is brutally simple, powerful, bulky, clumsy, and loud. Its sole virtues are the ability to suck up liquids and small animals. I am forbidden to take it into the house unless there is a large liquid spill.

  I’m not planning on getting rid of any of these vacuum cleaners. They all have their uses and they do not replace one another. I particularly like the way the Dyson does not require a lot of replacement supplies; the main filter is washable and once it’s been thoroughly dried (takes a day or two depending on humidity) you just load it back into the machine.

  Meanwhile, my mother is still using her 1958 Hoover constellation. She’s paid for a lot of filter bags but they are cheaply available everywhere. It is a hovercraft, and not only has she used it to vacuum the house since it was built, but she also uses it to defrost her old freezer.

• [Yogi]

  As far as I am concerned the whole purpose of a vaccumn cleaner is to clean, and to do so at the lowest possible cost. As long as it does the job it was purchased for anything else that adds to the cost is simply expensive window dressing. I own a Hoover bagless that I got on sale at target for under $35.00 with the basic attachments and it works great for me.

  My wife, however, is a hairdresser and finds that her Oreck upright is the best one at picking up human hair clippings from her salon floor on the rugs, mats, and hard surfaces. And the best performance for the lowest price still applies here since none of the lower cost units she has had really did a good job but the Oreck is nowhere as expensive as some models available.

  Now if I were to win the lottery I would worry a lot less about cost and go with a more expensive unit if I thought it would be easier to use or more efficient at picking up dirt.

• [WalterBillington]

  Henry. Hoover. Does. The. Biz. Best.

• [pinehead]

  The other day, I found an old Hoover upright in the shop. It looked like hell, all stained and held together with tape. But it still worked, and worked pretty well, actually.

  I also have a $50 RIGID brand shop vac. Fifty bucks, man. You remember “Alien: Resurrection?” Remember that scene where the freak gets sucked out through that hole in the window? Yeah. My shop vac will do that if you get too close to the dangerous end. Fifty bucks.

• [Anonymous]

  I have a shop vac, a dyson, and a roomba. My dog hates the roomba and and it doesn’t 1) pick up pet hair 2) pick up bigger things 3) deal well with rugs 4) clean my couch or tight spaces or 5) have very much dirt storage capacity or ability to deal with long hair. If you have simple furniture, short hair, and no pets, it’s for you.

  The shop vac does a great job in THE SHOP. It doesn’t do a good job with pet hair or dirty rugs. It picks up screws, though. that’s fun.

  My dyson is amazing. It goes everywhere, it all comes apart and cleans easily, it get everything, it holds enough debris and doesn’t leak dirt, empties easily. that said, i definitely didn’t spend $500 for it. I bought an older model.

  And it’s not white. Why would I want a white VACUUM? It seems obvious to me that this is illogical. it’s literally a dirt magnet. it’s going to need constant cleaning.

• [Anonymous]

  I just purchased this Dyson through my employee accommodation program and I absolutely love it. I have been through two vacuums within the last year, one was a bissell and the other was a hoover. I would recommend this dyson to anyone, it is absolutely amazing

• [Anonymous]

  Home Dyson vacs are a big ripoff. You are paying for the design. Like pinehead said, a $50 shop vac will blow it away with suction power, and an Oreck works just as well, probably lasts longer, and is much cheaper.

• [Vintage Vacuum]

  You think this vacuum is over done…. wait until you see the original vacuum before they started improving them. Have a look here and see what I mean, it’s really interesting stuff. http://www.vintagevacuum.com