We just moved into a small apartment in the city (1200 sq feet!) which has all hardwood floors. We have a few throw rugs, but more importantly, a cat that seems to shed much more in the city than where we lived last.
At any rate, we left our old upright vacuum at our old house and moved into this place with nothing. We knew that we didn’t have the need or the space for a full size upright and set out to find a smaller version that would be easier to store and actually work well enough to put into the cleaning rotation.
After several fruitless trips to WalMarts, Targets, Sears’, Macy’s, etc, we happened upon this little gem at Costco. I have probably tried 10 or so of these lightweight units and have yet to be impressed with the suction power of them. I mean, if they can’t pull my skin hard enough, how are they going to pick up dirt. Unfortunately, there was no way to test it out at Costco. I was at the point where I didn’t care and because Costco is so cool about returns, I just bought the thing and headed home to try it out – I know, what an exciting day! 🙂
It is with great pleasure that I can say that this baby rocks. It does everything we need, and it does it very well. The heart of the unit is a “DustBuster” type of handheld vac that you need for small jobs. Cleaning it out is simple and easy, and the bagless design lets you sidestep having to replace bags and the like. There are replaceable filters, and the package comes with 3 of them. Each filter is supposed to last for about a year, so if I’m still using this thing in 3 years from now, I’m sure that whatever the filter costs won’t be a problem.
As you can tell, the handheld element of the unit snaps into an upright unit that you can puch around as you’d expect to. I can’t really notice a difference in suction power, plus the full size unit has rolling brushes like on a “real” vacuum to help gather dirt. It has high and low speed settings, but I’ve never bothereed not using the high powered setting. I mean, what’s the point in low power cleaning?
Probably the single most convenient feature is that this guy is cordless! When you aren’t using it, it sits on its charging station and is ready to go when you are. I haven’t had an occasion when I run out of juice, so I can’t speak to how long it will go on a charge.
It works great on the hardwood floors, it gets everything off the throw rugs that I’ve thrown at it (yes, I’m a tester), and the handheld part hasn’t let me down the few times I’ve turned to it.
We got this at Costco for $85, but it looks like normal retail is $99. I may not have paid that much for it sight-unseen, but if that’s the best deal you can find, it’s worth the premium you have to pay.
Good luck, and I hope this has been useful.
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