Dyson vacuums started their advertising campaign with the idea that their vacuum cleaner never loses suction. While that sounds good, and was clever marketing, it has little relevance to how well a vacuum cleaner performs. There are 3 important factors in a vacuum cleaner’s performance. Suction power; airflow; and filtration. Of these three, airflow is the most important in actually picking up dirt. You have to move a high volume of air to pick up deep down, embedded dirt from carpets.
While it’s true that you have to have strong suction to get good airflow, you don’t necessarily get good airflow just because the suction is good. That’s where filtration comes in. If you have ever used a shop vac, you know that they have gobs of suction and good airflow but because they are intended for shop applications and outdoor use, they have terrible filtration abilities. In other words, they spew dust. If you increase the filtration ability that a vacuum cleaner as you will, in turn, degrade the amount of airflow. The perfect balance is when you can achieve the highest air flow and the best filtration at the same time with minimal loss of either. This is why a bagless vacuum cleaner is not usually a good choice. They don’t have a high-quality bag to catch the bulk of the dirt, so the filter has to do the job of a bag and filter too. This causes them to clog prematurely and blow dust around the filter instead of through it. The result is a very dusty, messy cleaner that performs poorly. That is why companies like Miele have put so much time into developing their high quality, AirClean bags. They filter most of the particles out so that the HEPA filter can do the job it was intended to do, which is filtering microscopic particles. This allows the machine to have peak airflow and peak filtration without compromise. Come check out our full line of Miele, Lindhaus, Sebo, and Riccar at Viewmont Vacuums.