BISSELL Hard Floor Expert Bagless Canister Vacuum, 1154

The Bissell Hard Floor Expert Vacuum has been a cleaning dream come true! I clean A LOT and I highly recommend this product. Our house has over 2,000 sq. feet of hand-scraped hickory wood floors and tumbled marble that require extremely gentle care(they scratch easily). I had previously used all of the typical soft brooms and soft cloth “mops” on the floor until I got the Bissell. I was hesitant to use a vacuum cleaner on the floor because I was afraid that it would scratch the floor, but all of those fears went out the window after I used this vacuum. The floor attachment has these velvet-like coated wheels and soft pads on the bottom- it is amazingly gentle! In addition to being gentle, this thing has some serious suction. That annoying dust line that you get with brooms and mops is gone. It even got crumbs and hairballs that were along the trim/wall!

In addition to the floors it can also do carpet and upholstery/curtains. It comes with the attachments and they easily pop on so you can quickly transition from room to room. It actually has a lever that lets you adjust the suction which comes in handy when you are using the drapery/upholstery attachment. I used it on heavy velvet drapes that had gotten dusty and they look like new.

The machine itself is a pleasant change from my other vacuums because it is small, light, and compact. Also nice is that it does not have a bag- just a handy internal “cup” that you just empty into the trash from time to time.

Finally! Cleaning hardwood and tile floors is actually fun and rewarding instead of back-breaking and tedious!

This is a pretty good vacuum. It is comparatively quiet, lightweight and easy to drag around the house. The attachments are useful and you can clip them into a holder on the handle (although you do have to choose which “main” attachment you want to use), and the telescoping metal tube on the end of the hose is useful.

We live in a Manhattan apartment with wood floors and it’s great for us. If you have a much larger space I’m not sure I would recommend it, because:

– Canister fills up fairly quickly
– Cord is not that long
– Suction is good but not awesome; unless you’re super thorough and vacuum every square inch of floor, you will find bits of dust and detritus that you missed
– Does a passable job cleaning the sofa, but not a great job

It also puts out a lot of heat, but I think a lot of vacuums do. I would definitely buy it again, but could improve a few things – I guess fixing them would probably require a slightly bigger vacuum (longer cord, bigger canister, stronger suction), so it’s probably a conscientious design trade off.

EDIT: After a year and a half, this vacuum has lost a fair amount of suction. It’s still OK for doing corners and stuff, but needs to be fixed to be useful for general vacuuming as the main attachment with the brush doesn’t really spin any more (the brush’s spin is dependent on suction). I have replaced all the filters, purchased a new attachment, taken it apart down to the motor and there is nothing visibly wrong with the unit. It just didn’t age well. I suspect this would be a common problem.

It’s interesting – I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, a vacuum should last more than 18 months. On the other hand, it is pretty cheap and was used 2-3 times a week for a year and a half before starting to fail. I wish there was a way to repair it or tune it up for twenty bucks or something.

One more edit: This really just happened, believe it or not. After a couple months of dealing with the bad suction, I decided that I was going to write Bissell an email and troubleshoot that way. So I did. Not 10 minutes later, I plugged the vacuum in for another round of feeble suckage, and BLAM the thing went back to full power. How’s that for customer service? They didn’t even reply, just used their mental beams of service to fix the vacuum. Back up to 4 stars from 3.