Upright Vacuums Reviews

I've had this for three weeks (this is why I'm only giving this 3 stars). My Eureka died on me, and I needed a vacuum immediately. I was hoping to afford and have time to order a Dyson, but didn't have that immediate luxery. I went to the local outlet store knowing I'd find something less than what I would pay for at Wal-Mart, to see what they had. I saw this "neat" thing...no cord to blow my small living room fuse forcing me to extend the cord to other areas of the house? This was good, Westinghouse has a pretty good reputation, and the price was less than I would have bought a "throw away" model at Wal-Mart anyhow. I conversed with several people in the store who've had experience with bagless vac's, and they all agreed bags were the way to stay...but still, curiousity peaked my interest and I had to have one. The 7 year filter? Who could beat that for the price? Imagine my delight when I searched the internet the next day and found what this thing actually retailed for! The initial instruction for "conditioning" the battery is wrong, had to go on the internet to find out how which took an extra 24 hours - it was worth waiting for. Like one recommendation said, I've saved my spare battery for some time down the road. Easy to move around and not a problem to re-charge. I really find myself having fun "testing" this vacuum daily! The noise of this machine is different, but not near as loud as other vac's. For my first bagless experience, I feel I've gotten a pretty good deal. It's been good, so far, at picking up dog hair as long as the container is kept clean. Very back breaking to do stairs, the bottom wants to constantly flip up to the handle because the springs are that good. When the handle is upright, it automatically turns the vacuum off - there's your obvious problem with the stairs. I had the roller bar motor shut off on me this past week, but somehow got it to work again. This is where warranty work would come in handy...but, as I said, I purchased this at well below retail price therefore viewed the purchase as a "throw away" if all didn't go well. I'm not really happy with the lack of "deep-down" suction power and edge suction, but I'm not convinced I've found a vacuum that will make me totally happy in that aspect (my old Singer came close). I'm very hard on vacuum's, and have used them in both the residential and commercial settings. I bought a Singer and Dirt Devil both on recommendations of a previous hotel owner, and used an Oreck to clean a school as well as very expensive cannister vacuum models...it all boils down to personal preferences. Hated the Oreck and cannister vac's, Singer was pretty nice, Dirt Devil and Eureka never really did it for me either, and the Kirby's were just too heavy with no real distinct greatness either. Yes, I'm picky...so, this machine is pretty good all except the previously stated complaints (and most models have lack of cleaning power to some degree), and the hose is tricky to get back into place. I will keep using it until I can try out a Dyson (still in search of that suction power), but I wouldn't count on spending upwards of over the $150 to $300+ I'm seeing this thing retail for unless you can get a 30 day refund if you are unsatisfied. If you are traveling in a motor home (which is what one of the other store customers - a loyal Oreck fan, I must add - was seeking out this machine for), it's actually a good idea as well! If you can't vacuum your area in 30 minutes, and be patient for a 30 minute re-charge ... well, you get a second battery to use.

I bought my Hoover Saavy one year and two months ago. The warranty lasts only a year - two months after its expiration, the motor burned out. I'm an engineer and know something about taking care of my vacuum cleaner and I did the maintenence to keep it running well. This thing performs well when it actually works, but it is a waste of money to buy a $300 vacuum cleaner that only lasts one year. Our local vacuum service person told me that this is not an uncommon problem with this type of vacuum because they used cheap plastic to make it. I just wish I had known that before I wasted my money. Consumer reports gave it a good review because it cleans well, but they didn't follow up on the vacuum's subsequent maintenence problems.

This vacuum worked great the first month we had it, as in amazingly clean carpet. From there, the reliability and performance suffered. I would vacuum my floor, and it pick up virtually nothing. Yes, I regularly emptied out the cannister, so this was obviously not the problem. I disassembled some of the bottom portion of the unit, and cleared out the vacuum tubes. I'm pretty sure I violated the warranty by doing this, as by disassemble, I mean unscrewing a dozen screws and removing half a dozen or more parts, not just snapping things apart(nothing here was in the instruction manual). After clearing the lines out, it worked decently again. However, now the main three-way power switch is hosed, so I have to really fiddle with the switch to get into the correct position for vacuuming. For $200+, this just isn't worth it. I wish I would have used that money to buy a Dyson. Hoover just isn't what it used to be.

What I like about this vacuum is that it's so easy to manuever, compared to the others I've had in the past, which include a wind tunnel Hoover, a Bissel and the Kirby I used at a former place of employment.

It just seems to float across the carpet and the floor.

I also like that it comes with 2 canisters, which you can change out, depending on if you want to use the bagless or bagged feature. Since I think bagless canisters are really gross, I've decided to use the bagged canister. But, I'll keep the bagless canister around, who knows, maybe I'll decide to use it once in awhile.

All the attatchments are stored securely on it. I always hated it with my old vacuums, when it seemed like I was always having to pick up and reattatch the attatchments back on. No problems with that here.

I also love the little dirt indicater light.

So far, I'm happy with it, and I would recommend it to anyone. The only reason why I'm giving 4 stars instead of 5, is because I've found that to get any "real" suction power on my tiled and wood floors, I have to put it on the carpet setting. But, it's no big deal. My carpets and floors look great, so I'm happy.

It's easy to handle, has easy-to-change accessories, it's lightweight, and fits all my vacuuming needs.

As a minister that believes in working for an income and before I succeded in investing ... I owned a small house cleaning service that cleaned homes of numbers of wealthy people in our City. I have owned perhaps 6 of the same model ... Panasonic MC-V9644 [Branded by Kenmore] These were by far the best vacuum on the market [at the time] for heavy duty daily abuse. I doubt that there is better even still for the bagged canister style model ... yes even now.

1] Potent suction
2] Solid hose and connection strength and life
3] Excellent dual motor system [12 amp main, 3 amp power head]
4] Works best with micro filtration bags to reduce airborne dust {that a professional cleaner doesn't want in the house they just cleaned.}
5] I bought 6 in 9 years using them 60 times a month times 2500 sq ft. [Thats a lot of mileage, abuse, and beatings ... hence I broke what could break]
6] Never had a bad motor in either the main unit or power head.
7] Hose cracks and/or wand retainer coupling cracks happened at around vacuum #500 ... or after 1,250,000 square feet of vacuuming.
8] Power Head Belt would break at about every 100 Vacuum sessions. [Or every 50 oriental rugs]

I moded all of mine to be backpack models and used a 50' cord in addition to their 25' cord and essentially backed my way out of a clean house with a nice light purfume scent and a "printless" fan pattern quality vacuum job.

Price to value ... even retail is fair compared to all of the cheaply constructed competition. However a heafty percentage off or a couple of pricing breaks make this one a winner. [I would have bought it for sure this time if its price to value was even close to the Hoover S3639 WindTunnel]

I did not however buy this one for my home on my last 2 purchases. [I simply hate the sound of a vacuum cleaner now ... btw]

I bought a bagless 12 Amp 15" path Eureka Upright. [I like it but won't use it. My wife doesn't like bagless due to the extra work of cleaning the dust container and stage 1 filter. She helped in the Business for 7 years.]

Hence I bought the Hoover S3639 WindTunnel Canister bagged vacuum and am expecting it to be 3/4 as good as the Panasonic at half the price and be 1/2 as durable but used 1/20 th as much ... so price to value on the hoover was a sweet deal.

a couple weekends ago my wife was vacuuming our basement stairs when our vacuum(an older model Hoover windtunnel,the green one with the clear debris chamber)exploded, it was clearly in self destruct mode and considering I bought it in 2001, five years of use is not bad. but anyways on with the review:
The weekend the vacuum went out, the fridge did too.
so I was way strapped for cash,So I looked around for a vacuum that was good and under $100 which is quite a feat considering all the dysons and other kick-a** models that easily run about $300. So I needed something that would get us by for a while.
I'm only hoping for a year of use but going on my last hoovers track record I'm sure this will last longer.

Pros:

easily assembled, took me about 15 minutes to assemble.
pretty lightweight, which means easier lifting up stairs.
Many attachments, 3 attachments and 2 hose extenders.
Self Propelled, This thing does the vacuuming for you.

Cons:

takes a non-reusable vacuum bag Hoover type Y.
mostly plastic,which seems easily breakable.

I would suggest this vacuum for the young couple whom are buying their first home together, this vacuum will probably last you until the student loans are paid off.
then you can afford a more hardcore vacuum.
to anyone whom needs a new vacuum on a budget like I was when I bought mine, I suggest this Hoover.

The Roomba is a great floor sweep and outstanding robotics. However. when caught on tassels of rugs, builds up stress in the gear box that drives the brush and cracks the gear box cover. This plastic cover is unncessarily precut at three places full-length across the plate and each connected only by one flimsy plastic edge. One cut in particular crosses a screw-hole so that overtightening of the screw at the factory assures that the plate will crack with use. The company does not sell this piece of plastic and insists on factory repair. There is no apparent reason for the gear box cover to be precut except to get the Roomba back to factory periodically if they want it to.

Roombas are brilliant, but iRobot's customer service is astoundingly bad in my experience. They took 2 months to ship most of my order, which was not listed as out of stock (but secretly was), then shipped it to the wrong address, incomplete. Once all these issues were solved, they shipped the last parts, again to the wrong address. Phone service that followed this was downright rude. If I were buying one again (and I might), I'd buy through a 3rd party, not directly from iRobot.

When my husband bought me this item I can't say I was overjoyed. I was thinking how he bought it because it looked like a remote control car for him to play with! It took me a few times to really appreciate this baby.

How I use it:

I first lift the few throw rugs up off the floor, and then tuck the ends of the bigger rugs under so the Roomba doesn't drive up the rug. I turn on the Roomba and go upstairs. I found that I didn't have much sweeping on my own after the machine completed it's cycle. It was like having a "helper". My husband found this model on sale at a B&M store, so bought me 2 more. I now have 3 running at once, and have found the machines clean every square inch of the downstairs.

The machine is pretty heavy duty as well. My 3 year old will sit on the thing while it's running or place cups or other items on it to humor himself.

The only complaint I had was the battery life. The standard batteries that came with this model would not hold a charge after a while. We bought the new batteries for the units at Fry's for $49.99 each, and that fixed the problem.

What will they think of next??? Oh Yeah, the Scooba!