The Best Vacuum Cleaner for the Money
Well, it’s about that time – our family vacuum cleaner is just about on its last leg :-(. There are so many parts broken on it, that it is hardly holding itself together. You have got to hold the carpet attachment on with your foot, the hose comes unplugged from the handle every 20 seconds, the cord won’t retract, and the hard floor attachment is cracked and falling off. Compound that with our dogs losing their summer hair, and my wife is getting a bit nervous! So, we started on a quest to buy a new vacuum and really spent a bunch of time trying to find the best vacuum cleaner for the money. Join me as I reveal what we came up with.
Our Old Vacuum Cleaner
As I mentioned, our old vacuum cleaner is really on its last leg. I’ve been trying to put off buying a new one for probably the past six months, but we’re really at the point where if the plastic cracks a bit more it will be completely unusable! I was hoping the whole process of purchasing a new vacuum would be very simple. We could just buy a new version of our old vacuum off of Amazon like we did the last time. Our current old model is a Hoover WindTunnel Canister Vacuum that has lasted us about 7 years. Just one problem – that model has been discontinued :-(.
No problem we thought, we’ll just buy the equivalent version that Hoover is selling today. From what I could remember, we paid ~$130 for our vacuum off of Amazon. Well apparently, I had a more expensive taste back then. I discovered while writing this article that we actually paid $229 for our old vacuum.
Anyhow, out budget this time around for a good home vacuum cleaner was ~$150. We had our sights set on a newer Hoover model, but it was worse in just about every way.
| 7 years ago Vacuum Cleaner | Today’s Hoover Vacuum Cleaner | |
| Model | Hoover WindTunnel – S3765 | Hoover WindTunnel – SH40070 |
| Price | ~$230 | ~$115 |
| Motor | 12 amps | 11 amps |
| Cord Length | 25 feet | 17 feet |
| Powered Head Width | 13.5 inches | 12 inches |
Those differences are completely understandable now since the vacuum of today is half the price of our older one. But, we were hoping to find a vacuum cleaner similar to our old one for basically $125. We had this feeling it could be done if we spent enough time researching.
Why Not Just Go with Dyson?
You may be asking yourself: “why is Derek such a cheap bastard? Just buy a Dyson, and you’ll be happy.” To you I would say: “are you crazy? Those things are $400 – $500!”
This is how I envision vacuuming when I think about using a Dyson vacuum cleaner – you’re taking the money and throwing it away!:
I equate Dyson vacuum cleaners to a Mercedes Benz in my mind. Sure Dysons get the job done, but they are 3-4 times more expensive than you really need to be paying for a vacuum cleaner. Surely there can be some middle ground here!
Let Amazon Reviews Guide You
OK, so Dyson vacuum cleaners were out of the picture. Back to our “value” vacuum cleaner discussion. Remember, our goal is to find the best vacuum cleaner for the money. The other problem with dishing out $115 for the current Hoover model was that it was only rated at 3.5 stars. Something about that made me a little uneasy. There were DOZENS of reviews where people were complaining of the vacuum cleaner smelling like burnt rubber and over-heating shortly before the motor would completely burn up. Umm….. no thank you! The overall rating was 3.5 stars, but this vacuum cleaner had a 1-star rating of 24%! A true gamble to save a bit of money if you ask me. My wife and I would both rather pay more than risk getting a self-destructing vacuum cleaner.
After a bit more research, we ended up in a pretty good place. It took us way longer than it should have, but sometimes that’s how it goes if you are trying to save money. I think we spent ~3 hours total trying to find the best vacuum for the money. If we would have just started with Amazon reviews and sorted from best to worst, then this process maybe would have taken all of 20 minutes. Live and learn I guess. So, what’s the best vacuum for the money? Drum roll please…..
This is going to sound crazy, but we found that the best vacuum cleaner for the money is actually a combination of purchasing two separate vacuums! Here are the two vacuums we selected:
Vacuum cleaner #1 is the number one best seller on Amazon for upright vacuum cleaners. Seems like it is hard to go wrong there. We plan to use this for our carpeted areas in the house (bedrooms). Here are some of the benefits/features of this vacuum:
- 4.3 stars on Amazon with more than 7,000 reviews – 66% of the reviews being 5-stars
- 12 amp motor
- bagless
- 25 foot cord
- 13.5 inches wide
- 2.27 liter dirt cup
- Only $78!
Vacuum cleaner #2 is the number eight best seller on Amazon for “stick vacuums”. This vacuum is the best combination of high ratings and low price that we could find. We plan to use this vacuum cleaner for our tiled kitchen/baths and wood floors around the house. Here are some of the benefits of this vacuum:
- 4.3 stars on Amazon with more than 5,200 reviews – 62% of the reviews being 5-stars
- 6 amp motor
- bagless
- 20 foot cord
- 11 inches wide
- Only $50!
So, in the end we found that the best vacuum cleaner for the money was actually a combination of buying two separate vacuums! The combined price of these two vacuum cleaners was $128. Not bad! That’s the same price as just one all-purpose canister vacuum of much lesser quality (3.5 stars vs. 4.3 stars) and will serve our purposes much better than an all-purpose model.
If you do decide to get two separate vacuums that are specialized for their end use (carpet vs. wood floor), this will give you the ability to really get a perfect vacuum cleaner for carpets and the perfect vacuum cleaner for wood and tile floors. We didn’t think the storage of these two vacuums would be a problem since they would generally take up about the same space as our old canister vacuum. I am also thinking we can store the kitchen vacuum in a corner behind the hutch so that it is easy to grab for those quick cleaning sessions.
The Best Vacuum Cleaner for the Money – Video Reviews
If you’d like to cut straight to the chase and check out my video reviews of these best vacuum cleaners for the money, go ahead and watch them both below! It might just be the most exciting 15 minutes you will have today :-).
Here’s the video unboxing and review for the Bissel 9595A Vacuum with OnePass.
Below is the video review and unboxing for the Bissel PowerEdge Pet Hard Floor Corded Vacuum 81L2A (same as 81L2T).
The Best Vacuum Cleaner for the Money – Final Thoughts
For me, this article goes to show that if you are willing to spend the time you can usually come up with a creative solution to save a bunch of money when buying home appliances. For us, as we were trying to find the best vacuum cleaner for the money. Surprisingly, the best vacuum cleaner for the money ended up being the combination of two separate vacuums instead of one “super-powered, all-purpose” vacuum. As a result, we were able to save about $100 through just a bit of online research! And if you are to believe Amazon reviews, we should end up with a better user experience with our vacuum cleaners in the long run since we are buying the top rated vacuums in their categories!
