Kenmore 81214 200 Series Pet Friendly Lightweight Bagged Canister Vacuum with HEPA, 2 Motor System, and 3 Cleaning Tools-Orange

Impressive vacuum that works like a champ
I’m nearly 50 and this is my first canister vacuum ever. I’ve owned upright vacuums made by Dyson, Oreck, Shark, and Hoover for the most part over the years. Dyson seems to put more money into marketing than performance these days. Shark is great until they lose suction which happens within a year or so for me. And Oreck is wonderful but overpriced.So, I did a lot of reading. I knew I wanted a canister to be more maneuverable than an upright. I knew I wanted a bagged vacuum because bagless, while convenient, ends up with a filthy machine and dirt flying when emptying it. I knew I wanted a power roller. And I knew I didn’t want to spend an absolute fortune. So, this Kenmore fit the bill.When I received it, I vacuumed with my existing Shark Rotator Professional. Then I put the Kenmore to action to see what it picked up. The Kenmore picked up about another half a bag of dust. For reference my house is a little under 1800 sq ft. As of yet I haven’t noticed any loss of power or suction as the bag fills up.I love that you can switch from hard floor to carpet/rugs with the slide of a button on the handle and also change the suction strength in the same spot. I have all sorts of flooring from tile to hardwood to deep shag rugs and it handled them all with ease. The hose length is plenty long enough to reach my ceilings and the onboard tools are easily accessible. The self-retracting cord is a nice feature too. I estimate that a bag should last me about a month and there are plenty of third party bags on Amazon that are far less expensive than the OEM ones.My one minor complaint is that the handle is top-heavy and has a tendency to fall over if you’re not very careful about how you store it. Otherwise I’m very happy with my purchase

Worst redesign Kenmore has ever embarked on to save money.
Every time I use this thing I tell myself I’m going to go back on Amazon and write a bad review. Today is the day. The ONLY redeeming quality of this vacuum is that it sucks and sucks with a lot of force. Everything else about it is horrible. The “convenient” silly trick way of connecting the floor tool on the go works maybe 30% of the time. The hose exits the canister vertically which leads to the thing not wanting to follow you. Instead when you tug it it flips onto its side. The tube part is made from paper thin aluminum and lots of plastic reinforcement, not the chrome plated metal you may be used to. This means you have huge cumbersome connections for your tools. They are really big too. Always loved being able to shove your vacuum between your fridge and cabinets? Forget it!! There is no way to bleed off suction like you may be used to either. Nope, instead, you slow the motor down with a slide switch, so you can bet you will still suck up and jam on those bathroom carpets! As a bonus, it is located right where you will constantly rub against it when you don’t want to. You cannot leave the vacuum standing upright like ALL the Kenmores used to do. Nope, the hose is either too heavy or the friction at the knuckle joint too light. It crashes to the floor every time. You need to stand it up against something. The knuckle, which would always rotate 180 degrees now does NOT. 100 degrees maybe. I lost my ability to roll the vacuum under the bottom shelf in my linen closet, rotate the handle and shut the door. I had been doing that since 1994. The connection of the tube for the knuckle is enormous. When you have (manually, because you got frustrated) attached the floor tool to it, it hits every thing. I used to be able to slide the floor tool behind my cat’s dishes and the wall gracefully. Now the huge plastic monstrosity swipes against the dishes, sending food and water spilling out. When trying to swipe along the toe-kick under your cabinets, you now scrape along the bottom of all the cabinet doors as you go along.All in all this is the worst experience I have had with a canister vacuum in my life. There is so much bad engineering in this thing that it makes an already mundane chore positively nauseating.

I’ve purchased and used a lot of much cheaper machines from Walmart and other stores. All of them performed just okay when new but none of them lasted very long due to poor quality plastics and pieces breaking. I remembered my mom’s Kenmore WhisperTone that she has had for 25 years and it is still running great and looks great too. Here in Canada, Kenmore was available at Sears but there are no longer any Sears stores in Canada. I looked at the Kenmore site and found that I had to buy it on Amazon to avoid paying duty charges. I chose the Series 700 Ultra Plush for its features such as the HEPA bags and filter, the powerhead that steers and does carpets and hardfloors and has a LED light, the tools all fit inside the canister, it has a bag-full LED, an extending wand (that locks at 4″ increments), and it comes with the small powerhead that is good for stairs and car floors and it fits inside the canister too. The bare-floor tool and the small brush tool have horse-hair bristles, not plastic. The machine looks very classy with the shiny champagne color. It has tons of suction without being too loud. The rear wheels are big so the whole thing rolls pretty easily. A word about the hose, where it plugs into the canister, it has a nice swivel joint. If you see photos or videos of older machines, the joint often is seen having an elbow, like a 45 degree bend in it and you can tell that it swivels. The photos of this newer version show the joint is straight so I was concerned that it did not swivel which I thought would be stressful on the hose. I’m happy to report that there is still a swivel joint so the hose will not tangle if you walk around the machine. The entire machine and the tools are built well and I expect that this machine will last for many years. Thank you Kenmore!

First day of use. Looks nice, suction is good, strong and durable wand. Negative so far is the floor brush is a joke, very small and when you go under furniture it tilts up so it’s not flat on the floor! Also dusting brush is also very small, too light and flimsy, will see how much a larger floor brush and dusting brush is?