I first wrote a review on this product while I just had bought it. Now that I'm using it for a couple of months, I can give you a better insight:
I have had another Bosch vacuum cleaners (not bag-less though) for years and I was extremely satisfied with them. This one is no exception to those in general, the device is clearly "engineered", and the designers have done a great job putting each pieces in proper location and making the usage easy:
- The four 360-degree rotating wheels works like charming (This one is obviously a most for every vacuum cleaner, yet I see many without it!, and my advice: do not buy any of those under no circumstances);
- A place on the device to put the wand (This might be a tinny point, but yet is quite useful. I hate it when the hose and wand either get a lot of space on the closet, or keep falling down because you are moving stuff there);
- The telescopic wand is easily extendable/compressible. As a matter of fact, you don’t need to do anything, just grab the handle and either push forward or backward!
- The Floor-head is heavy, it will cause it to stick the ground, yet it’s easy to move it (well, may not be that easy on the carpet. Honestly, I haven’t tried that so far).
- The hose rotates in a 360-degree in the place where it is connected to the body (can’t explain it better! Sorry :p)
When it comes to the “noise”, I should say that although the engine noise is quite fine (not the lowest, but pretty much low), when you vacuum some solid things (be it a cherry core or a coffee bean or anything similar), then you should definitely stop vacuuming and empty the container, or you will get a headache from that thing spinning in the container, making a very irritable sounds. This is mostly because of the “bag-less” nature of the machine that I will get to it later.
The suction power is great. Although mine is 1.8KW, it doesn’t have anything less than my previous 2.4KW one (again Bosch but not bag-less). And just to give you a hint on that one’s power, you can hold the device floating in the air if you blocked its airway by your palm! (I even did it with a 2KW version of that!).
Another point worth mentioning is that the exhaust is designed in an “upward” way rather than the traditional “backward”. This means that when you are cleaning a floor with lots of dusts or bread crumbs, they will not spread over by the heavy blow out of back of the device. Again I personally love this (viva designers). However, there is a downside to this, and that is when you step close to the device while it is ON, the hot air flow blowing to your face would not give you a perfect sense. Especially if it is in summer)
Well, well, well. Is everything perfect about this machine?! Of course not. The fact that I love it doesn’t mean it’s flawless.
There are two major weakness about the device with the latter one might just be for some users (including me!):
The first is the weight! Which I mentioned in my previous review too. The device is heavy. It is heavy. I seriously don’t know why, but it is heavy! (Did I mention enough?!) OK, but what does it mean? While the wheels are completely capable of supporting the weight and you can move the device easily but pulling the hose (and the hose seems very tough and strong, so don’t worry about it) it would be a problem when you want to lift the device up, be it for the purpose of going up/down the stairs, or even going through some minor uneven surfaces (like the bottom of door frames). The latter ones might not be a problem for everyone, but my wife for instance, can’t really do it easily. Even by pulling and not lifting.
The next drawback is all about being bag-less I believe. Although being bag-less had let this machine to have many advantages, but it also had brought some disadvantages. The first one is about the noise which I already mentioned. The container is designed in a way that solid particles which are sucked in, would remain in the bottom of the container and are not supposed to rotate inside it, but that doesn’t work always. So many times when you are happily cleaning the surface, you will hear an irritating noise which is caused by those particles hitting the outer surface of container while rotating in it.
Then, although you don’t need to be worried about having enough spare bags, buying the proper one (Finding the correct bag would become a pain in somewhere, especially after some years that your machine is not the newest one in the market), checking if the bag is full and all other similar issues, there are some other things you need to be worried: When I was using some normal vacuum cleaners, I (personally) didn’t need to be worried about vacuuming anything. And this “anything” included some small juicy things, like pomegranate seeds or other small fruits, some small pieces of chocolates poured on the floor (chocolates would melt inside the container because of high air flow temp), or even some small insect which I preferred not to smash! (Lizards or big spiders!?), but with this one not having a bag, I don’t have a good feeling about these anymore. I preferred the “through away” model of “bagged” cleaners over “wash it, it is free :D” of these bag-less ones. After all, you need to take care of the container itself. It needs to be cleaned one a while (haven’t done it so far! Not sure how easy/hard it is).
All in all, am I happy with this device? Hell yes! I love it. And here is my final verdict:
Do you have stairs in your place? Do you come across the pieces of fruits or other stuff your kids/guest have poured over the floor? Or do you live in places where there are a lot of soot/smut on your floor? Then think twice about buying this one (or even any other bag-less ones). Otherwise, I seriously doubt if you will wind anything better than this machine.
Hope I could help. Cheers.