Vacuums Reviews

I prepare my morning tea directly into a thermal carafe, using Melitta paper tea bags to hold loose leaf tea and a touch of sugar. All full of myself and this important morning ritual, I invested in an expensive Alfi glass lined thermal carafe. While it kept the brewed tea hot for the first few weeks, somehow this expensive carafe no longer keeps to the mission.

As a replacement carafe, this Artek is not only delightfully inexpensive, but it holds more tea than the Alfi AND keeps it steaming all day. By steaming I mean, when I open the pot as the sun sets in the west, steam arises.

I hope you enjoy the same experience.

STRENGTHS:
Suction power; light weight; easy to put in bags and filters;

WEAKNESSES:
Very small dust bag; replacement cost of filters; customer service; lack of attachments;


The Soleus VC-680 is a very nice vacuum cleaner for the price. It has very powerful suction and is more than adequate for a small apartment. However, the dust bag has a capacity of about 1.5L and NOT 3.5 L as advertised.

The quality of the hose is adequate albeit having much plastic. The lack of attachments is also a drawback. (It only has a crevice tool attachment in addition to the floor unit.)

The advertised carrying strap does not hook up front and rear as shown in advertisements, but only at the rear, which points the exhaust at the user's face.

Last, I found the customer service to be extremely lacking. My VC-680 came with only 3 paper dust bags as opposed to the 5 paper dust bags and 1 cloth dust bags that should come with the unit.

After more than 17 days, their customer service has yet to reply to my concerns in my email. They did send the 2 replacement paper dust bags (with no correspondence whatsoever), but have yet to send the cloth dust bag.

It sure does the work when it is fully charged, but the battery gets discharged in less than 10 min of use and takes a long time to charge fully.

PROS: Light,simple to use, and has good suction
CONS: Emptying reservoir is messy, must recharge daily

I bought this product because I had a $20 gift cert from Amazon, so I payed just a few dollars for it. It does work, does the job on tile and thick carpet,overall happy with this purchase. It is pretty noisy though for a hand vac.

Not bad if all you need to do is swipe your hard floor every couple of days. However, if you want a similar product that performs better, I highly recommend the Eureka Boss 96D "Quick Up" Lite Upright Cordless. I own both the Bissell Catch-All and the Euraka Boss and I have to say the Eureka Boss outperforms it in every way (the only caveat being that the Catch-All has the option of attaching a dry dust cloth to the bottom.. an option I couldn't care less about, since it doesn't seem to clean any better with the cloth on). Also, the Boss is cheaper right now (on Amazon anyway).
I am on my second Boss in 10 years.. they last from 5- 7 years with moderate usage.

BOSS VS Catch-All ADVANTAGES:
-The Boss is light and highly maneuverable. The Bissell Catch-all head is larger and clunkier, while the actual cleaning/suction area is the same size as the Boss
-Boss holds a charge for a fairly long while.. I've gotten up to 30 minutes on a single charge. Bissell Catch-all loses suction after 15 minutes
-Boss charges up fully within 6- 8 hours.. Bissell Catch-all takes 24 hours
-Boss has excellent to very good suction.. picks up everything from dust and fine crumbs to larger sized pieces of whatever. Suction of Bissell Catch-all is just not as strong, period.
-The Boss works great on both hard floors and area rugs.. and great on stairs. The Catch-all slows noticably on even the shortest of area rugs, and does not pick everything up. Its head is too large and clunky for stairs. It really is only for hard floors.


BOSS DRAWBACKS:
-sort of noisy! Catch-all is slightly quieter.
-works fairly well on longer rugs (although for a quick surface cleanup of the rug, the Boss can't be beat). Needless to say, the Catch-all can't pick up a single thing on longer rugs.
-Boss dust cup compartment is a little difficult to insert and remove.. although I think they are working on this, as the cup has become easier to manage on the newer model. The Catch-all compartment is easier to remove.. although, it's also much smaller than the Boss' cup.
-doesn't always get into the corners, and of course, you will have to get out your dustrag or mop for those pesky baseboards
-The Boss' battery does not remove.. you plug the whole unit into a large charger, which you then plug into the wall. The Catch-all's battery does remove, which you place in a small charger which you can leave on your counter as it charges. Keep in mind though.. the Boss is ready to go after 6- 8 hours, the Catch-all takes 24 hours.

These drawbacks are minimal and didn't stop me from giving the Boss five stars!! I love it that much. So consider carefully what your needs are before you buy!

This is better than my Swiffer since it vacuums up dust and pieces that the Swiffer doesn't. It is not the best for a heavy cleaning, but once you've done your heavy cleaning and use this every few days, the floors stay very clean anyway. You just have to remember to charge the battery the night before.

I like that it uses any brand electrostatic cloth so I can buy whatever is on sale. The little filter on the vacuum lasted me about a year before I had to buy a new one, and every once in a while you have to unscrew the brush cover to remove hair that has wound around it. I don't think this would be an issue if you have short hair that doesn't shed much or no pets.

My home has hardwood floors throughout, so keeping them dust free is a pain. Because I hate to drag out my big vacuum all the time I've come to rely heavily on my CatchAll. It's very light weight and does a fine job of picking up dust and dog hair. I like it so much I bought a second one for my cabin. Recently, one of them quit working. I exchanged the battery from my other one to see if the rechargeable battery had gone bad. When it still didn't turn on, I emailed Bissell to see if they could suggest something. To my complete surprise, they emailed me back that they are sending me a replacement at no charge even though my vac is out of warranty. Now that's a company I'll do business with anytime!