Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We had a Dirt Devil that we paid too much for. It was about as useless as a prophylactic dispenser at the Vatican. In a fit of rage trying to clean my wife's hair out of the rotating brush, I destroyed it maliciously and ended up shopping for a new vacuum. I thought I wanted a Dyson- but I figured that if I was going to drop $500 on a vacuum it had better sing and dance and make Martinis while it vacuumed for me. Alas, I did some research and this Hoover kept showing up as a good buy. I figured we'd give it a go seeings as how Amazon will let you return anything and pay to have it shipped back. When it arrived 12 hours later (thank you, Amazon One-Day Shipping) I opened it up and quickly threw the directions away... 22 seconds later I had it assembled and was vacuuming with even more pizzaz than my pregnant wife. I ran it through our bedroom where our other vacuum had been mysteriously destroyed the day before in the middle of the job. It took every ounce of strength to keep from vomiting seeing how much junk our other vacuum had been missing for the last 3 years. I was so impressed, I took a picture and sent it to my wife. Needless to say, this thing is a beast and it has just about as much sucking power (that is a scientific measurement, by the way) as my 6HP ShopVac as I used the hose to suck my face skin a bit and make some pretty legit faces in the bathroom mirror (also sent pictures to my wife). Besides being a 100% legitimate cleaning utensil, the vacuum is extremely quiet compared to our old vacuum. When you turned on our Dirt Devil, it sounded like a a Harrier Jet was about to land. Women and children would begin crying and screaming and the lights would flicker as the walls shook. This Hoover is significantly quieter and that is a good thing because I often task my pregnant wife with some light housework after she puts our 18-month old to bed and finishes making me a sandwich. The old vacuum would wake our kid up. This new Hoover did not wake him until I inadvertently ran the thing into his closed bedroom door. I am also impressed with how easy it is to get this thing disassembled. One of my least favorite chores in the whole world is having to dismantle the vacuum about once a month and clean 32 pounds of my wife's hair off the rotating brush. However, with this new vacuum, at least I will be able to get the brush off in under an hour and without a tool that I had to contact NASA to purchase to get the screws out of the bottom of the vacuum. Also, we have a border collie and she sheds like its a spiritual gift. Trying to get her hair out of the carpet is nearly impossible as it systematically leaves her body and proceeds to form some sort of super-human chemical bond with the carpet fibers in our house. There have been several occasions where I have been reduced to using a lint roller on our carpet before my mother-in-law's arrival, as if I live in some sort of third world country, to get the dog hair out. This vacuum has a nifty little attachment that is driven by the suction of the vacuum (Warning: Do NOT stick your finger it it) that picked up just about every last strand of dog hair off our couch, comforter and every corner I could find. A few things though that earned it 4 stars (I almost peed my pants) rather than 5 stars (I'm so impressed I peed): 1. The hose on this thing is so short I feel like it must be a joke. The Hoover people (no, not the FBI) say it's 8 feet long. What they fail to mention is that 3 feet of it are permanently intertwined with the vacuum body, leaving you with a whopping 5 feet of hose. There is an extender arm, but that is also too short. To that end, if you are wanting to get into the nooks and crannies really well, you're going to be doing it on your hands and knees. 2. The vacuum comes with a few attachments. They have rubber blades on them that blast through pet hair like Jet Li in some B-rate, made-for-tv Kung Foo flick. However, there is no attachment with the basic bristles that you typically see. So, this thing is no good if you own an antique shoppe or have a large Star Wars figurine collection, as there is no way to vacuum something delicate. 3. The cord retractor on this thing will kill you if you try to use it whilst standing with the cord anywhere near your feet or legs. However, I'd give this particular feature 5 stars as it certainly works. The first time I hit the lever and the cord started reeling in at about Mach 3.5, our boarder collie was laying near it and she about did a backflip. Our old vacuum had an auto-retractor feature and when you hit the button it reminded me of when I was a kid and a bottle rocket would fly 3 feet out of a beer bottle, land on the ground, sputter and die. All in all, this is a fine machine and I am very pleased with our purchase. I'm pretty sure that if Chuck Norris was shopping for a vacuum, this one would be on his short list. Update - January 12, 2016: Well, it's been 3 1/2 years and this bad boy is the Gold Box Deal of the Day, so I figured it was time for an update... First off, thanks to all of you good folks out there who have left comments over the last few years; 99.5% of you have acted like mature adults in utilizing the comment box. To the other 0.5% of you who have left sophomoric, callow or otherwise puerile mind drippings behind, congrats to you on being the coolest kids under the slide, and yes, I would like fries with that. Anyhow, our dear border collie has moved on to greener pastures and the wife and I have switched from a man-on-man to zone defense with three kiddos wrecking the house twice as fast as we can keep it clean these days. With three kids under the age of four squatting in my house, I can't believe I ever had the audacity to complain about a dog making a mess. This vacuum continues to perform top notch. Admittedly, without the need to be cleaning up dog hair 57 times a week anymore, it would be nice to have a brush attachment rather than the pet hair attachment. However, the pet hair attachment does do a great job loosening dirt in high traffic areas (like the stairs), so it still gets whipped out when I get assigned that miserable task. One thing that continues to impress me about this thing is that I can disassemble the whole thing in about 39 seconds. Alas, performing the task of cleaning the rotating brush without having to go to confession afterwards is just lovely. Anytime you can accomplish something like this without emotionally scarring your children as they watch you incoherently curse at an inanimate object is a win in my book. Additionally, since day one, I have literally treated this thing no differently than I would treat an old shovel. It has been abused in ways that even my son hasn't figured out to abuse his Tonka Trucks, and the thing just keeps on sucking. No broken parts, no weird noises, no loss of general sucking power, and the cord retractor still reels in fast enough that it can be used to snare small animals/children under fifty pounds without issue. In terms of general maintenance, about once a quarter I fully dismantle the whole vacuum and give it a thorough cleaning with warm water and dish soap. The filters get the same treatment and continue to perform just fine. There's really nothing more that needs to be done, and because you can get all the various pieces apart so easily, you can really get into all the small spaces of this thing to get them really clean. Great news for my fellow OCD-suffers out there. All in all, this remains a solid purchase. Of course, it will probably suffer some career-ending catastrophe next week now that I'm finally getting around to posting an update 3 1/2 years later, but at this point I'd still be a happy man. For what we paid versus what we've gotten out of it, I'd happily hop online and buy another one without hesitation.