Upright Vacuums Reviews

PRO:
- Light
- Modern looking
- It actually has decent vacuuming power
- The spinning 10" brush works extremely well (though unwieldy) in cleaning fine cat's hair in furniture fabric
CON:
- Short cord
- The main attachment (with 10" brush de-activated to clean floors) performs adequately on opened hardwood floors but poorly in the corners due to the bulk of its size.
- The main attachment (with 10" brush activated to clean carpets) performs poorly on medium height carpet because the air-driven brush does not protrude much beyond the attachment's plastic housing.
- The wand's sections kept getting detach especially when vacuuming on carpet
- The tool holder sometimes gets in the way when vacuuming under the sofa or cabinet
SOLUTION:
- I should have returned the darn thing but decided otherwise because of its cat's hair removal capability - which is WAY better than the heavy Sears' canister and its many attachments
- For Bare Floors: Use the Sears' 6" floor attachment (since both Sanyo wand and Sears' attachment have the same inner diameter, I had to go to Home Depot to find a plastic pipe to make a coupling section)
- For Carpets: Use the heavy Sears canister!
- Or maybe I would just get rid of both Sanyo vacuum and the cat

For the money (paid $80) this is a high quality product: modern design with decent suscion power, powerbrush, compact, quality product. Easy and convenient to use in a smaller place or as a second vacuum cleaner. It uses reusable bags if you do not want to invest in (pricey) paper bags. Thumbs up to Sanyo. Buy with confidence.

It does everything as needed. This is most likely to be the secondary vacuum at home. The first one usually is the heavy duty one (heavy machine as well). This one will be perfect for light duty job, clean under the bed or anywhere with limited access.

This item is not shipped as depicted in the pciture/described in the description.

Spin Duster: This item does NOT ship with a spin duster. On the side of the box was a sticker reading:
"Bonus items including SpinDuster(TM) are NOT included in factory refurbished models. To order, please call 1-800-282-2886" The replacement parts lists has the SpinDuster attachment kit for 29.99.

Turbo Nozzle: I can not find it in the box. Probably a "bonus item" Replacement list is $15

There were no extra filters to be found in the box. Replacement filter is $20.

Plus $5.50 S&H from Eureka, You're looking at 70 bucks to obtain the missing items.

Bottom line, buy this because you are OK with it missing half the "goodies"

A very good vacuum cleaner. Great for the office. Solid design ans simple operation. I will buy another.

We have been using it since our dirt devil quit. It has no problems with dog hairs (we have short hairs to deal with) and the bags are very very easy to find. Heavy duty and includes a spare belt.

It is no frills and has no attachments but a great performer on carpets..

This vacuum is great. Easy to clean the cannister. Good suction
and it is for comercial use. Looks like this vacuum would last
than any other vacuum I had (usually looses suction after only 3 months)

I have to agree with the other reviews, this is not one of the better steam cleaners. I had problems with the flex hose popping out of the tool caddy. It is very difficult to get the power cord and the flex hose wrapped around the tool caddy properly. I also noticed like others the dust bunnies being left behind. All in all, it did an alright job of cleaning the carpet ( I have only used it one time so far, so I'll have to keep my fingers crossed nothing goes wrong next time).

We have pets, to be specific, cats. Why, oh, why do we have these beasts that barf on the carpet, leave hair and do other atrocities that I am too delicate to mention here? Well, we love them despite it all. Our adopted kitties are rescue animals and not always so well-behaved when it comes to wall-to-wall carpet. So I bought the Bissel PowerSteamer Upright Vacuum to see if I could get my deranged beige carpets looking a bit cleaner.

Features

Upright vacuum
Long hose and hand tool
On board reservoir for diluted Bissel carpet solution
Removable reservoir for dirty water
Long (approx. 26 foot) power cord.

The hand tool is a small brush, like an upholstery brush, and it can be used on upholstery (check your manufacturer's instructions if you have a microfiber or special fabric on your chair or sofa.) The tool fits onto the long hose, a five-foot or so flexible hose that winds onto some clamps on the back of the upright. It is flexible and long enough to use in corners and places where the wide base cannot go, and on stairs as well.

The unit weighs about the same as an upright vacuum, maybe a bit heavier. The floor brush is wider and bulkier than most uprights. A middle-aged woman of average strength will have no trouble manipulating the unit but might have a bit of trouble to drag it up and down stairs, more due to the width and bulk of the base rather than the weight. An elderly person would most likely need help to move this unit up and down stairs but could operate it well, in my opinion.

How to get started
To put the Bissel PowerSteamer Upright together, you pull a handle out of the box, insert it into the vacuum body and secure it with a long Philips head screw that is taped to the instruction manual. Now the unit is ready to be filled with cleaning solution.

The cleaning solution and dirty water all go into a removable bucket that is cleverly designed with a bladder inside. The bladder insert is connected to the water inlet (a small hole on top.) To remove the bucket, push down on the foot lever which is the handle release, move the handle all the way down to the floor. Take out the bucket by the handle. Take this to the sink. Then fill the bucket first with about a half-cup of Bissel cleaner. A measuring cup is included for this. Then fill the bucket to the neck of the spout hole with hot tap water. Close the lid, bring the bucket back to the vacuum and insert. Press down the bucket handle to latch, bring up the vacuum handle and you are ready to clean.

Cleaning
You have a choice of pre-treating or deep-cleaning. Supposedly, the unit is to come with both a bottle of pre-treat and cleaner, but my unit only had the cleaner included. So I will cover cleaning only here.

First, you remove chairs, furniture, objects that can leave the room easily. Then you vacuum the carpet with your regular vacuum. This vital step removes pet hair, dirt, dust, and lint. Then it's time to use the Bissel. Plug it in, depress the spray button on the back of the handle, and the unit will spray warm cleaner into the carpet. A few passes is enough; you don't want to soak your carpet. Then you release the spray button and pass the unit over the treated area and watch the suction remove the cleaning water. When you see very little liquid sucked up into the unit, you have removed the dirty water and can go on to the next section. I did about a 3 foot swath at a time. Repeat this action, starting in back of the room and exiting the room at a convenient point--in other words, don't clean yourself into a corner or you will be walking over the wet, cleaned carpet. Let the carpet dry.

Results
FIRST: WARNING: YOU MUST VACUUM with a regular vacuum before you use the Bissell.

The unit does clean better than a vacuum; I got a bucket of dirty water from the carpet, a mid-gray color. However this is NOT steam clean; it's lukewarm water cleaning, and the brush is a standard spiral vacuum brush. Professional carpet cleaners use a rotary flat brush that hits all the sides of a carpet fiber--the best professional cleaning units have brushes that have 8 directional brushes as a carpet fiber is octagonal (8-sided) in cross-section. The spiral brush is by its very geometry, not going to hit all the sides of a carpet fiber unless you were to go over the same area in the 8 directions yourself. What does all this mean to you? It means that the Bissel PowerSteamer won't get your carpets as clean as the professional you might have hired in past. But it will wash down the fibers in a way that dry vacuuming cannot do. And the room does smell lovely and fresh when you are finished.

I had to refill the unit twice in a small living room (about 9X12.) The bucket was easy to empty; there is a pour spout-slit that allows you to dump the water away down the sink. For downstairs, the kitchen sink was easy to fill and empty ; upstairs, I had to refill it from the tub.


The Bissel folks claim that you can reduce allergens by using this cleaner. I suppose that can be true, because dry vacuuming, even with a HEPA filter, will leave some dust behind.

Summary
If you have light colored carpets and pets and want to freshen and clean your carpets oftener than you can afford a professional, you will most likely be very pleased with the Bissel PowerSteamer Upright Carpet Cleaner. But don't expect professional results or steam cleaning. For high traffic areas like hallways, home offices (which do seem to get dirtier) and stairs, this will keep your carpets clean and free of traffic streaks.

Very Good at cleaning. I like tha fact that it keeps the water hot. It did a great job of cleaning Coke out of a powder blue rug. It is very easy to use.

I have now owned 2 of these. The first one quit working after about 6 months, but it worked so well I bought a second one. It lasted about a year, and died with a flair, shooting sparks out the left side. Althought they work great while they work, I will never buy another. Caveat emptor!

I bought a similar machine to this one a couple of years ago and have used it three times total and just threw it in the trash. The first use seemed to go just fine. It picked up loads of dirt and debris from the carpets throughout the 1800 ft^2 of my home. It then sat in a closet for about a year before I pulled it out again. When I went to run it, next to no fluid would come out of the main nozzles on the base. I next tried to use the hand unit and found it working perfectly. Plenty of fluid and suction. So I tore it all apart to find that the lines connecting to the main nozzles were completely gunked up with what looked like lime (I guess my water is quite hard and this is a problem). After purging the lines, cleaning out the nozzles, etc, I put it all back together and got it to work. Not as well as it did fresh out of the box mind you. I just pulled it out the closet today to use one last time before selling it (we are moving) to find the same problem...No spray from the main nozzles. Remembering what happened last time, I proceeded out to my garage to tear it apart to find the clog. To my surprise, there was no lime deposits but was instead completely clogged with mold and fungus. The lines were teeming with black algae-like residue. I tore the lines apart, purged them, put it all back together again but this time had no luck. No spray at all. I've finally had it with this product and decided to toss it in the trash and call a professional. I would recommend this approach to anyone considering buying this. I know the price of a professional can be steep but compared to the irritation of tearing apart a machine to make it work properly, it is quite fair.

This mediocre-machine has a container within a container. The bladder type of container holds the clean water while the dirty water goes out-side the bladder. The problem is the bladder opening often falls in, mixing the dirty & clean water together. Customer service who readily replaced my tank was prompt and curteous.

Suction is okay. Brush is okay. I haven't checked the outlet temp, but it supposed to raise my water temp by 25�F, but I don't think that's happening.

Overall, it's an average machine from the wally-world. It works compared to the Hoover that brokedown, so I guess that's a plus. Just a few more months of these and we're getting hardwood floor, so bu-bye stinking steamers.

I bought this vacuum based on the many positive reviews I had read, and the suction was good. However, it was so cumbersome to use that the great suction didn't really matter to me. Because so many parts (like the handle, the dust attachment) are attached after you get the vacuum, they are constantly falling off, which makes it very difficult to use. Added to that, because the vacuum is heavy and there is so much suction it's difficult to use around tables and the edges of the room. And the attachments are basically useless.

So if you want a vacuum that will do a fabulous job for the center of your room, or for a room that doesn't have any furniture in it, this is the perfect vacuum. If not, then it isn't.

I returned the Dyson and bought this since the interchangeability of the attachments are easier on this one.

Cons:
Expensive to change HEPA filter every 6 months.
Difficult to manure.
Spiral tube is not long enough.

Pros:
Easy access to attachments and quick interchangeability ( unlike Dyson DC_07).
Cleans well, good all round Vac.
Cheep.

I just bought this vacuum from my local Wal-Mart. I could not believe how powerful it is. It is a little heavy, but I am a small person and have not really found it all that hard to use. There is a review about the vacuum not staying together, and I have to say that if you buy it in a box you have to tighten 3 screws. Maybe that person missed that part. I thought it was easy to put together, and it seems to be very sturdy. When I vacuum along walls and furniture it sucks up dirt to the side and in front of it. It is awesome! I would definately recommend!