BISSELL PowerGlide Pet Bagless Upright Vacuum with Lift-Off…

Our other vacuum is a Dyson. I like the Bissell PowerGlide better. It is lighter and easier to use. The control to switch from bare floor to carpet and engage the rotating brush is located high on the handle of the Bissell and it’s a push button. On the Dyson, the switch is on the base, you have to bend over and turn a knob which is hard on the back. Also, the Bissell is lighter and swivels in the middle so it is much easier to push and control. Both are bagless with an easy to dump cannister and I have noticed no difference in the power of the suction. We have mostly laminate flooring and I do the barefoot test. When I can no longer feel the sand on my feet, the floor is clean. The Bissell is just as effective as the Dyson but is much easier to use.

One of the features I like best on the vacuum is the TurboEraser tool. It’s a rotating brush that lifts pet hair from furniture. It is far more effective than any attachment that comes with the Dyson for lifting hair off of upholstery. Also, the cannister and hose lifts from the base so that you can clean stairs, on the Dyson you have to pull a long tube out of the base and attach a cleaning tool and then move the heavy base down the stairs which is very inconvenient. My back hurts thinking about it.

We have three dogs and three cats, all strays. (We live in a rural area where people dump their unwanted pets.) This makes for a very “danderous” situation. The Bissell has a sealed system so that the air that passes through the Allergen Media filter eliminating pet dander and other allergens and keeping them inside the vacuum. This makes for healthier breathing and clear sinuses.

Finally, my wife has rheumatoid arthritis and was told by her physical therapist not to use the vacuum, it is too hard on her joints and back so I do most of the house cleaning. I can attest to the fact that house cleaning is hard work and sometimes it seems that a sore back is my only reward for hours of work and vacuuming since a clean house is as ephemeral as a weedless garden. A tool like this that makes that job easier is priceless especially if it holds up over the long haul. Now if I can only adapt it to pull weeds!

My house has both hardwood and carpeted flows. It has many many stairs (carpeted) and strange nooks and crannies and spaces most vacuums can only enter via hose. I also have many pets who shed a mountain of fur on a daily basis.

I own a Dyson, and it is a very powerful effective machine. It was expensive. I will probably leave it to someone in my will. But it is very heavy and can be hard to maneuver.

Enter the Bissell PowerGlide Pet Bagless Upright Vacuum with Lift-Off Technology 2763. It is an awesome vacuum. Why?

1. Operating it is intuitive. I’ve had vacuums that came with instructional DVDs. Can I say that that isn’t first on my list of things I want to watch after a long day? The only instructions you need are on the box (and on Amazon, once you’ve tossed the box in the recycling). Or look at the vacuum. It has little icons (big enough to actually see) when you need a hint.

2. Carpeted stairs. Ooh, baby. The vacuum comes apart so you’re not hauling an upright up the stairs. Using the pet attachment, you can easily suck up enough fur to make yourself another dog.

3. It swivels. I don’t know why no one thought of this sooner, because life is full of corners and angles and twists and turns, and most vacuums go forward and backwards and that’s it. This one swivels, making it easy to maneuver around corners.

4. The head fits into the kick space beneath the cupboards in the kitchen. My cupboards apparently hang too low for most vacuums. The Bissell sneaks in there nicely.

5. The switch to turn on the brush attachment is up by the handle, so you don’t have to get on your hands and knees to switch when going from carpet to hardwood to linoleum to tile.

6. You can see how much dirt you’ve sucked up. I know, I know. It gets gross. But I like to be able to see that I’ve accomplished something.

7. It appears to be self-propelling. Instead of having to forcibly move the vacuum forward, it seems to go forward on its own.

8. No bags!

9. The attachments it comes with are actually useful. The Pet TurboEraser Tool works beautifully for cleaning up all varieties of dog and cat fur.

10. It only weighs less than 20 pounds. And the detachable portable vacuum weighs even less — approximately 8 pounds.

11. It costs half as much as a Dyson.

What can I say? It sucks in a very good way.

With 3 cats I really needed a good vacuum and this Bissell really is a life saver. It has great suction and good maneuverability. It sucks up cat hair like nobody’s business!

My favorite things about this vacuum:

* barely any assembly required, a real snap to get started, you just attach the handle and the hose
* suction–it is way better than the canister vac I replaced
* maneuverability–easy to turn
* pet turbo eraser attachment–great for the furniture and the cat trees, very powerful if not a bit loud
* removable canister for handling stairs or going out to get the car done or reaching up on tall cat trees
* brush on/off switch to do hard surfaces
* easy to dump bagless canister, just a push of a button to remove from the unit and another push to swing open the bottom of the canister right over the trash can.
* washable pre-motor filters

Some minor annoyances:

* power button needs to really be pushed, it doesn’t like my half-hearted attempts to turn it on
* slightly heavy if you spend a lot of time leaning it back to get under things
* a little small on the width even though it is a “full-sized” vacuum, just a little wider would have been appreciated
* power cord attaches at the bottom and just will not seem to stay in the clip up under the handle so I am constantly holding the cord up off the floor
* the bagless vacuum curse– dust that looms up from the trash can after you dump it (it is washable, but I am lazy!)
* 27 foot cord is a little shorter than what I am used to

A little bigger concerns (but not deal breakers!)

* multiple trips to the trash can. I only have about a 1400 square foot space to vacuum and I run back to dump the canister at least a few times. The full line is only 3 inches up from the bottom of the canister. I just think I am burning more calories this way.
* occasional clumping up of cat hair inside the canister which decreases the cyclonic flow. I have to tap the side sometimes to get the stuff moving in there.
* I did not get an extension wand as listed on Amazon, and it is not listed on the box either

I have used it for a full month and I haven’t touched my old vacuum again. Pet lovers will be most pleased with this and I recommend it over a pricey Dyson. Overall, I am very happy with this vacuum!