Dyson DC-17 Animal - Finally a Vacuum That Doesn't Suck

So far I'm happy with my Dyson DC-17 Animal even though $500 does feel like a lot to pay. It's got powerful suction, a good design, versatile tools, and a robust brush that really gets the grit and hair out of my carpets.

Let's get the bad stuff out of the way. It's a little awkward and bulky. On flat floors it's light enough and moves fairly well on its quality wheels. But it's no good underneath furniture, even something like a futon with a foot or so underneath. It's just too bulky to lie down and fit underneath. The famous Dyson cyclone technology is based on a big cylindrical canister about 6 or so inches in diameter. Lie that down on its side, and add the 5 or 6 inches underneath for the wheels and brush, and you've got a vacuum 12 inches high. Not low enough for getting under furniture. It DOES have a low-profile hose attachments you can use (even one with a power brush) but... it's an attachment you have to stop and put on... then take off to resume going around the room... bleh.

My only other complaint is that it has trouble crossing any kind of edge or lip. Any minor "step" between uneven surfaces even half an inch in size is hard to get over. My house has lots of hardwood floors with area rugs. It's very hard for me to roll the Dyson DC-17 forward over a floor moulding, or up from the hardwood floor onto an area rug. The reason for this is the sharp angle of attack on the brush head. You store the DC-17 upright, like any vacuum, with the bottom assembly and the neck at 90 degrees to each other. When you tilt the handle back toward yourself, however, the brush roller assembly goes from parallel with the floor to sharply angling down at the floor. Perhaps this brings the brush roller into more direct contact with the floor, but it also bumps into any little thing you try to roll the vacuum over. The first time I bumped into this problem, I instinctively tried leaning the vacuum way backward to make the roller brush come up off the floor a bit, but I found I had to bring the handle almost all the way to the floor before the brush roller lifted up, and then only by an inch. I can still traverse the wooden seam in the floor between rooms, but only with this back-bending effort. The other alternative is to always go backward over lips in the floor, which is equally awkward.

That's it for complaints. Otherwise the vacuum is great. I replaced a Eureka BOSS which was not getting the hair up off my area rug anymore. The Dyson zoomed over the rug, scouring out all kinds of hair and dirt from it. I could hardly believe the amount of dirt that came up the first time I used it. But the again, I've never had a vacuum with a transparent bag, so I don't know how much is a lot, I guess.

The vacuum works well on hard floors - you have a switch to turn off the brush. Also, any time you stand the vacuum straight up, the brush automatically stops. Good feature. Suction over hard floors, without the brush, has been very decent. I may not ever have to sweep my hardwood floors again. I'll just roll the Dyson around then poke its wand attachment into the corners. A friend of mine asked, and YES it will pick up cat litter from a hardwood floor. I guess he had trouble with his other vacuum flinging the litter away before it was able to be picked up. The air flow on the Dyson points up, and with the brush disengaged this does not happen. It goes straight over dirt and dust and picks the stuff right up. I've even seen it pick up a small ant from a hardwood floor!

The suction is not the most powerful I've ever seen. It's robust and works well, but I think even my miniature shop vac has more suction. If you're expecting the Dyson to provide some kind of physics-defying suction, you may not get it. But it's strong and if its promise to STAY strong holds, it will serve me well for a long time.

The attachments are some of the best I've seen in a while. The hose is built right into the main column of the vac. You flip up a lid on top of the vacuum handle, pull out a rigid tube wand, and then lift the handle of the vacuum right off the neck. It comes right off once the wand is raised, and the hose is already attached to it. Switching from standup to hose/wand is really quick this way and there aren't any external hoses or tubes to fuss with. If you want to put an attachment on the END of the wand, like a brush tip or crevice tool, it works same as any other.

The wand itself could be longer. I am only 5'9" but when I use it I have to stoop considerably.

The DC-17 has a hose attachment with a brush roller, which is one of its main selling points as a vacuum for pet owners. I tried it out, and it works surprisingly well. The airflow itself is what drives the roller brush, which I found ingenious (although it sounds like an airplane zooming around when you use it). The brush roller is robust enough to pick up matted hair from furniture and on stairs, but also gentle enough to use on your clothing as a lint remover. I'd hesitate to use it on curtains. And while you can hold it in one hand comfortably, it's too big to get into crevices in furniture, or the corner where the top of one step meets the wall of the next step up. Pretty cool attachment overall, and can go places the main upright can't.

Emptying the vacuum is push-button easy. Pick the canister up out of the unit, hold it over the trash, and pull the "empty" trigger. The bottom flap falls down and the dirt falls out. Mind you - your garbage can needs about 12 inches of empty vertical space for this to work well. Otherwise the flap hits the garbage below, or dust swirls up and out of the garbage as it falls down.

Thanks to the cyclone canister, there are no filters or bags to buy. One small disc air filter does need to be washed in water once every six months, but that's it. I found the air quality coming out of the vacuum to be as clean as promised. It had no smell. If anything, it did seem cleaner than the ambient air.

Is all of this worth $500? That's a lot to pay for any vacuum. I'd consider your needs carefully. If you have a large house with wall to wall carpeting, pet hair everywhere, and an allergy sufferer in the home, I think the DC-17 will really help you out. Worth the money. Use it often and your house will be clean. If, like me, you have a few area rugs and mostly hardwood floors, it'll still clean quite well, but it might be overkill. We have two cats, and our house has been really dirty due to the lousy Eureka we had. It was time to upgrade, and I don't regret buying something that is made well, works right, and will last. But if the expenditure is a big one, and your needs are not that severe, consider another Dyson model or perhaps a competitor.