Eureka PowerSpeed Lightweight Upright Vacuum Cleaner for Carpet and Hard Floor, Powerful Bagless Upright Vacuum Cleaner for Home Pets, NEU181A, Blue

I needed a budget, lightweight vacuum with hepa and a sealed system that would do a thorough job on wool rugs, do wood and tile floors too, and be easy to use for above floor cleaning. I tried and returned the (lavender) Shark Navigator Lift Away, but am keeping this (red) Kenmore. It's not perfect, but it's strong and flexible, with a sealed system and hepa. I've been really pleasantly surprised at the difficult spaces I can get it into! It's to replace an old, beloved Dirt Devil Featherlite.Here's my take on the features that matter to me, with comparisons to the Navigator and old Dirt Devil.Hepa with a Sealed System.I have pets and allergies. My old Dirt Devil had hepa but wasn't sealed and left the house hazy. The Navigator was supposed to be sealed, and it did seem to keep the air pretty clean, but there was a ring of carpet fiber and pet hair where the hose meets the vac (my Dirt Devil gets a similar ring around the seam of the dirt cup). This Kenmore's seal seems perfect (!), so long as you don't inadvertently pull the hose out of the extender wand, which happened to me the first time I used the vacuum :-(, but hasn't happened again. Be sure those pieces are tightly fitted together when vacuuming. I'm pleased at how fresh the air feels after deep cleaning with this vacuum and I haven't needed my inhaler which is really great.Price.Hepa with a sealed system is hard to find in budget vacuums. But what's the point in vacuuming if the dirt goes back into the air? Might as well rake. This sealed hepa vacuum is about 50 bucks less than the Navigator.Longer Hose! But short Wand, unfortunately.I didn't realize the nice long hose on my Dirt Devil had spoiled me until I tried to clean above the floor with the Navigator. Although the wand on that is great, the hose is short, and since you grip the wand at its base, that hose is the whole distance you can move from the vacuum, so you have toy use the lift-away feature a lot. With the wand in one hand and the lifted away dirt cup in the other, I had no hand free to move or hold things. When I would try to use the wand without the lift away, that short hose would tip the Navigator over, constantly. Ugh. This Kenmore has more hose which really helps, but it has a less wonderful wand. The hose is 10 ft, but pulls the vacuum over if you walk 4-6 feet with it. Still, it's long enough to do 12 steps if you don't mind it tipping over. The wand is just a little short. If Kenmore could have added an extender attachment that would have been great. As it is, you can only reach about a foot and half, or two feet max maybe with attachment, beyond your reach.No Lift Away on this Kenmore.I thought I might like Lift away on the other vacuum, but I didn't, except for the stairs. It left me no free hand and gave me a back ache on the stairs. I think that has something to do with the handle on the wand of that other vacuum which seems to be at an odd angle. Personally, I prefer the longer hose to the lift away. This vacuum is light enough that carrying it upstairs isn't a problem for me.Strong Suction.Like crazy. But that's not all good. Both this and the Navigator seemed to me to suck up an awful lot of carpet fiber along with the dirt. My old Dirt Devil didn't do that. Still, we buy vacuums to suck and suck it does, with gusto.Attachments.The crevice tool is too short! That said, this has all the attachments I need, which is good because its wand end is kinda non standard and won't work with any of the Dirt Devil, Shop Vac, or other attachments I have around. I found all the attachments useful, but you can only store (any) one on the vacuum, so will need to keep the rest in a closet or something.Navigation.It's my favorite thing about this vacuum, which surprised me. It has kind of a big head compared to the Navigator, and it's an upright, so I expected clunky. The Navigator was my first experience with swivel steering and I liked it alright. When I first tried this Kenmore I thought it must be broken, the steering was so loose. It took me a few minutes to get the hang of it. It just wanted to wiggle all over the place, it seemed, with such a steerable brush head and so much power in the rotating brush. Very much looser than the Navigator. But in a few minutes navigating the machine becomes intuitive (I'm an older lady with little upper body strength, so don't be intimidated), and once you learn how it's really nice. I have a very small house with too much furniture and odd angles and nooks, and this vacuum, in upright mode, not using the wand, got into most of them. The brush head is wide, but it's so swively you can turn a pretty tight half circle to get it into tight spaces. That is very helpful around here.Lightweight.Very important to me! I find this easy to maneuver and to lift. The super swivel and long hose reduce the need to lift the vacuum too.Looks.Okay, so it's ugly. Ugly vacuums need love too. I've had uglier.Brush head.Pretty good. It's not height adjustable, but it moves easily on my rugs and between my rugs and floors. There's suction control on the wand that can be used to reduce suction if needed for very plush carpet, but I didn't need that for my mid pile rugs. It has a switch to turn the beater brush off for wood and tile floors. It's larger than the Navigator brush head, and might be slightly larger than my old Dirt Devil head. I thought I wanted a small brush head for navigability, but this brush head is the most navigable of them all in my opinion because the swivel is so great. A bigger head saves passes too.Effectiveness.It got my house clean and kept the air clean too.Dust Cup.Much like the rest of them. They're a little messier than bags, but seem more cost effective and sustainable to me.My overall impression is that this is a darn good vacuum at the price. It's got hepa and a sealed system. It's got a long enough hose and plenty of attachments. It's powerful. It's truly lightweight and it gets into hard to reach spaces. I wish the hose, wand and crevice tool were longer. I wish the wand locked onto place on the hose so they couldn't pull apart inadvertently. All in all, I'm happy with this vacuum.

We had a 20-yearold Eureka bagless that broke, and this was the nearest we found. Glad we did! It's a little larger than the broken one, but a bit less large, heavy and cumbersome than our old Hoover upright. And a lot lighter in weight! This one (somehow) came with the extra pet-hair mini roller brush, but I had to go look up the Bissell version on line to find out how to take it apart for cleaning the mini roller. Works the same, and the device is REALLY useful for getting into small places. We have a long-hair cat.With 8 amps, this thing really pulls up dirt! Seriously pulls up dirt! I set it to the low "Carpet" level, for an old shag carpet in the trailer house. I'm living here, but the owner's been here for a long time. I've been cleaning with that old Eureka, and it's (I thought) been pretty clean. I was getting a lot of fuzz, cat hair, and some fine dirt, but all in all, okay. Then I used this guy! Holy Cow!!The first pass after setting it up, there was almost an entire "bucket" container of something greyish-brown. Plus a lot of fuzz and a lot of cat hair. I asked the owner, who told me that many years ago, she'd had a flea problem and sprinkled diatomaceous earth all over. Fixed the fleas, but she never cleaned the carpets.Suddenly, I'm using this new Eureka and it's pulling EVERYthing out of the carpet! After only two times using it (back in April; it's now September), almost all that "dust" was gone. Now, I'm getting general dirt, cat hair, dust and carpet fuzz. Normal.1. After the first-time use, with the massive amount of "newly discovered" dirt, the roller bar was almost entirely clear! No wrapped hair or anything gunked up in the brush bristles. Amazing!2. Disassembling for cleaning, I found that the main vacuum body was almost entirely clean! No outer dust anywhere on the plastic. The only dust was at the connection hole between the body and the container bucket -- easy to clean with a swipe of a sponge or rag.3. Cleaning the container and filter was pretty simple, but a little bit of time involved.Cleaning:A push-button on the top handle releases the catch bin as a complete unit unto itself. There's another button near the bottom of that basin, which then releases a gravity-operated "lid." BE SURE TO KEEP THE BOTTOM OF THE BUCKET WELL BELOW THE UPPER EDGE OF YOUR TRASH CONTAINER!By pushing the release button to open the bottom of the bucket, you're simply dropping out ALL the crud you've picked up in the catch basin! It comes flying out, dust-cloud and all! Still, there's some remaining junk clinging to the clear plastic bucket walls.I like "BANG!" cleaner spray, which is cheap (Dollar Tree), and works very well. I also have a spray attachment on the kitchen sink, which makes it very easy to get water inside the bucket "tube." There's a plastic "clasp" or catch you pull on, to open the top of the overall basin. I'd imagine that catch will eventually break, but who knows.....none of the plastic on the 20-yearold ever broke.With the bottom open and the top hinged back, you can clean the entire catch basin. It's large enough (easily) that you can get your hand in there with a sponge. The BANG! makes it easier, and water rinses it all out.The entire filter section comes apart, which is why I bought this. You lift out the filter assembly (the instruction manual shows how), and there are several parts. The filter itself is foam with some sort of paper on top. It's there to prevent dust from blowing into the motor, and both the bottom (foam) and top (paper) got totally covered with dust. Being gentle with it, I was easily able to clean it under running water.I couldn't find these round filters anywhere in stores, so ordered a 6-pack of replacements on Amazon. Not all that expensive. I've used and cleaned this vacuum now probably 8 times (since April, it's now September), and the filter is still pretty together. I can see it's going to degrade, but if it lasts four months (or more), then I only need to replace it three times a year. Very cost effective. And this place has all the old micro dust along with the cat hair, so the filter has to get cleaned after each use. For "normal people" and their homes, I think you could use the cleaner several times without cleaning every single time.The attachments are all there, easily stored on the body of the machine. The hose attaches to the roller base during upright use, and comes loose to attach to the handle for portable use. DO follow the instruction manual! The places for the attachments, and how to connect the different hose operations aren't immediately obvious.Some people complain that the roller bar always turns. The old Eureka had a 2-way switch for upright (with roller bar), and portable (for smooth floors and portable use). This power switch only is On/Off. I don't care. You can raise the level of the roller for "wood floors," if it really makes you anxious.All in all, having sold vacuum cleaners in the past, I'd have to say this is one of the most powerful machines I've ever seen for its size, weight, and price! Yes, it's all plastic, to keep the weight around 8-10lbs or so, but today's plastics are pretty rugged. I'm thinking it'll last long enough to be a good investment.

I very much like this vacuum. It is lightweight and easy to move around. The ability to remove the handle to use as an accessory vehicle is vary handy; I only wish that the handle was a tad longer when used for accessories. It has a good length cord that allows me to vac without moving the plug very often. It is generally efficient for an upright model in cleaning the floor, whether on longer carpeting or bare floor. It is fairly quiet.The one thing that it lacks in my opinion to improve it is a headlamp. I need to rely on ambient lighting while using it.I recommend it.