Excellent Deal for the Money

In the last couple of years I've become obsessed with vacuum cleaners. Not something that I gave a passing thought to in the past, but after getting a dog, things changed. Always was a hand-me-down vacuum user but no more.

The first vacuum that I purchased on my own was a Sanyo canister type. It would be fine for hard floors or carpets with no pets, but it was woefully inadequate for the hairy shedding monster of my dog and his two sidekick cats. They showed the Sanyo who was boss and off it went to a place where it could live peacefully.

Dyson. Yep, if you haven't heard that name already. Way out of my price range so I came across the Eureka 4870GZ upright bag vac. Reviews were mostly positive and a few hundred bucks less. We picked one up at Best Buy and brought it home to see what it could do.

My apartment is just over 1000sqft mostly carpet and a lot of dog hair. Kinky, dog hair that sticks to stuff like velcro. After some minor assembly, I fired up the vac and was instantly impressed. It felt and sounded more powerful than anything else I'd ever used. It even pulled weak strands of carpet up and made stains disappear. Then I rolled it over to the multi-color rug that the dog likes to sit on and ran it over the black stripe. On just one pass it picked up about 95% of the dog hair. Amazing. Cleaned the rug spotless in two passes. I even did the clean carpet test (since it's hard to see the tan dog hair on tan carpet) by rolling around with dark clothes on. Nothing. It didn't just line up the pile of the carpet, it actually cleaned it.

The 4870GZ comes with a Power Paw hose attachment that's pretty nifty for velcro dog hair on furniture. It's a passive mini brush roll that you can run over the tight bends of couches and chairs so you get the agitation of the brush and the suction of the hose. The hose seems to be powerful enough to handle most jobs, but I wouldn't expect it to be a shop vac. I still pick up larger debris before I vacuum. Everything but the Power Paw (unfortunately) stows on the vacuum body so no lost parts. The flexible part of the hose does feel shorter than advertised, but it stretches with use. Just enough to make it annoying when it falls off it's storage rail. But not a big deal.

I ended up filling one bag with just one vacuuming of the entire apartment. It now takes a couple or three passes to fill up a bag depending on how long I let the hair pile up. The bag keeps the dust pretty well contained and is easy to install behind the front hatch.

The vacuum comes with a belt installed and a spare. This is where I've had the most trouble. The second use of the vac had me replacing a broken belt after I noticed the brush wasn't spinning and there was a burning smell coming from the unit. I replaced the belt and had no problems for the next few uses. Cleaning the brushroll of hair and other debris helped, but still I broke another belt. I took the belt to Best Buy thinking they'll surely replace it on a two-month old vacuum that's seen maybe five uses. Well, I got a bunch of attitude and apathy along with a silly canned response. Can't say they get paid to make decisions. Instead they suggested I return the entire $150 vac instead of replacing a $6.00 belt. I ended up buying a couple belts elsewhere and contacting Eureka. Night and day customer service there. The rep on the phone sent out two replacement belts and gave me pointers on installing the belts to make sure it was good to go. No muss no fuss.

Aside from the belts, there's not much that would make me go running to Dyson. The handle could be a bit longer for us taller people. The knobs are a bit hard to twist and push but not finger-breakingly hard. And I'll agree that the build quality appears cheap, but it's held up after three months of banging into floorboards and doors so...

If the Boss gives me a couple years of the same quality output, I'll be totally happy with it. For $150 it's got outstanding power and pet owners should look to this as an economical alternative to a Dyson or other chi-chi vac.