Dyconn & Boann Faucets Review & Rating Updated: 07/12/23
Dyconn: 3 years
Dyconn: 3 years
Dyconn: 3 years
Law Requirements
Learn how to read and interpret faucet warranties.
This Company In Brief
Aok Group, Inc. is a California corporation that imports Chinese-made products, including faucets that it sells under the Dyconn and Boann brands.
The company sells through the company showroom and its proprietary retail websites, Luxor Outlet and Boann Style. It is also an active seller at hosting websites such as Amazon, Overstock, and Wayfair, and at auction sites such as eBay.
Both Dyconn and Boann faucet lines are of average to above average quality, using good quality valve cartridges.
Aok has chosen well-respected manufacturers with good reputations for quality. These faucets should give reliable service for many years.
The downside are the meager 3- and 5-year warranties offered by Aok Group that need to be greatly improved to provide better customer protection and rewritten by a lawyer to comply with federal warranty law.
The Company
Aok Group, Inc. was formed in 2003 by John S. Chen. It imports Chinese-manufactured products including faucets and sanitary wares that are sold under its private-label Dyconn and Boann brands primarily through the company showroom and its retail website, Luxor Outlet. It is also an active seller at hosting websites such as Amazon, Overstock, and Wayfair, and at auction sites such as eBay.
The company's chief competitors, with very similar business models, are
- Clawfoot Supply, LLC, trading as
- Northern Central Distributing, Inc., of Fresno California trading as
These companies sell similar home décor products including their own private-label lines of faucets.
The Manufacturers
Aok is an importer. It does not manufacture faucets. Its known manufacturers include:
- Wenzhou Haijun Sanitary Hardware Co., Ltd., a Chinese manufacturer makes Dyconn faucets.
- Haijun manufactures a large lineup of good to very good faucets, showers, and other fittings that it sells under its own Haijun brand faucets in Europe and Asia.
- Guangdong Yingao Kitchen Utensils Co., Ltd. makes Boann's stainless steel faucets. It is a sanitary wares manufacturer better known for its Yingao brand stainless steel sinks that it manufactures for Blanco. But, it also manufactures stainless steel faucets.
Design and Styling
Neither Dyconn nor Boann faucets are designed by or expressly for Aok. They are out of each supplier's and, while well-chosen and attractive, there are no true styling advances in these faucets.
Buying Rule for
Smart Faucet Buyers
Valve Cartridge
Never buy a faucet unless you know the type of cartridge used in the faucet and who made it.
Its cartridge is the most critical part of a faucet. It is the component that actually controls water flow. Without a working cartridge, a faucet is no longer a faucet.
Companies that use good-quality cartridges in their faucets usually disclose the cartridge source on their websites. Those that don't will happily identify the cartridge in a call to customer service.
If the company refuses to reveal the sources of its cartridges (because it is a "trade secret"), you can confidently assume it is not one of the better brands.
Chinese faucet designs tend to be conservative. China's manufacturers generally profit from selling mass-market faucets at low prices, and to reach the widest possible number of buyers, tend to stay well within safe styling boundaries established by European and North American designers.
A design that sells well in Europe or America will usually appear in Chinese faucets within 3 to 5 years. So, while Dyconn and Boann designs may appear fresh, they are usually a decade or more behind European and American designs.
Boann faucets are very contemporary while Dyconn faucets complement just about every style preference and are well-distributed among contemporary, traditional, and transitional designs.
Faucets are usually part of larger collections that include showers and accessories for a well-coordinated look.
Faucet Finishes
Aok finishes are the three standard finishes, bright chrome, brushed nickel, and oil-rubbed bronze, with some faucets available in antique copper.
Not every faucet is available in all finishes. The available finishes depend largely on which manufacturer makes the faucet and the finishes it can provide. Stainless steel kitchen faucets do not have an applied finish. The "finish" is the material of the faucet buffed and polished or brushed.
Aok does not disclose the processes used to produce its finishes. From inspection alone, however, we believe that chrome and nickel are the traditional way of finishing faucets.
Oil-rubbed bronze is probably a Powder coats are not as durable as electroplated metal finishes, and require more care in use and cleaning.
Faucet Construction
The ceramic cartridges used in the faucets are from Sedal S.L.U., a ceramics company chartered in Spain that does all of its actual manufacturing in China in two facilities: Sedal Technical Ceramics in Jiangmen and Sedal Kaiping.
The Sedal cartridge is a favorite of Chinese manufacturers making faucets for the European and North American markets. We judge it to be a good cartridge that should give reliable service for many years. But, if it does break, it is widely available and easy to replace with ordinary household tools.
The Dyconn faucets we examined were of brass construction but not every part was brass. Handles seem to be uniformly zinc or a zinc-aluminum alloy.
The spray heads on some of the kitchen faucets we took apart for inspection were plastic. Plastic spray heads have, unfortunately, become normal, found on even upscale brands like . because they don't get hot like metal heads.
Plastic, however, is not a suitable material for faucet components under water pressure, and plastic spray heads, in particular, seem to experience a lot of defects.
Boann faucets are 304 stainless steel, a type of stainless used to manufacture kitchen utensils, and well-suited to faucets. On these faucets, the spray wands are also stainless steel. There was no zinc that we could find.
Some Aok faucets include Neoperl® aerators from Switzerland. faucet aerators used to be simple devices that merely infused a little air to soften the water stream so it would not splash out of the sink.
Today, however, they are precision products used to limit water volume to the lower flows required by federal and state water conservation laws, and in faucets with pull-out sprays, to prevent back-flow that could contaminate household drinking water.
It is important, therefore, that this little device, often smaller than a U.S. penny, be the best available. And, that, almost by definition, is the Swiss-engineered Neoperl® aerator.
Boann and Dyconn Websites
The company's websites are basic but designed well, functional, and easy to navigate. The information about each faucet is adequate but could be more adequate. We would like to see
- Ceramic cartridges identified by manufacturer,
- The name of the organization that certified the faucet to North American standards and the listing certificate file number, and
- An exploded parts diagram for each faucet.
We also noted that some of the links to installation instructions did not work. On the plus side, however, most faucets were well illustrated with multiple images including front and side views and details of features such as spray heads.
Customer Srvice
Customer service is, as far as we could test it, very good. Our testers were unable to do a full anonymous customer service test series because we're pretty sure that the company's agents ripped to the fact that they were being tested, which invalidated the results.
The Better Business Bureau rates the company's handling of customer issues A+, its highest rating, on a scale of A+ to F. Aok Group is not BBB accredited, however, and should apply for accreditation.
Warranties
The company's faucet warranties are greatly sub-standard.
Dyconn faucets in residential use carry a three-year warranty, [1] and Boann faucets a five-year warranty.
The North American standard is a lifetime limited warranty that expires only when the original purchaser no longer owns the faucet or lives in the residence in which it was first installed.
A three- or five-year guarantee on what is supposed to be a lifetime product does not show much company confidence in the durability or longevity of its faucets.
A warranty can be a powerful marketing tool, something that companies like understand very well. The loyalty of Moen and Delta customers is legendary, in no small part because of the excellent lifetime warranties and unsurpassed warranty service they offer.
Aok's management is apparently unable to grasp its potential to boost sales. The company is myopically focused on lowering its warranty liabilities to the irreducible minimum – definitely the beancounter's perspective — and ignoring altogether the use of warranties as effective sales tools.
Neither warranty complies with the U.S. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2308), and most of the restrictions and limitations contained in the warranty would be struck down in any court challenge for non-compliance. If these warranties were drafted by a lawyer, he or she needs a refresher on Federal warranty law.
Testing & Certification
Comparable Faucets
Faucets imported from China and Taiwan comparable to Dyconn and Boann brands include most of the certified legal Asian faucet brands sold in North America:
Conclusions
Our takeaway is that Dyconn and Boann faucets are of reasonable quality, using good components in critical spots. The company has chosen well-respected manufacturers. We see no reason why these faucets would not give reliable service for many years.
While we would hesitate about their use in a busy kitchen or main bath, for a little-used powder room, bar, or prep station, they should serve well. The downside is the grossly inadequate warranties that need to be greatly improved to provide more customer protection and to comply with federal law.
We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with Dyconn faucets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please contact us or post a comment below.
Footnotes
- Faucets in the Dycon Signature Series are identified on the website as having a ten-year warranty1 but we could not find any mention of a ten-year warranty in Dyconn's online warranty documents. All links referred us to a three-year warranty. For example, specifications for the Barents & Wandel - Signature Series are as follows:
-
Model #: WM2H38-CHR, WM2H38-BN
- Solid Brass Construction and Polished Chrome Finish & Brushed Nickel
- Wall-Mounted Configuration and Single Lever Handle
- Sleek Contemporary/Modern Design
- Ceramic Disc Cartridge
- 10 Years limited Warranty.