Dirt Devil Featherlite Ultra Compact Bagless Upright Vacuum, UD40285

This is my second Dirt Devil Featherlite vacuum. I had to leave my old one in Washington when I moved to Alaska, and bought a different dirt devil product which was HORRIBLE! So, after not being able to find a Featherlite bagless in my town, I went on over to Amazon's site and said "SEND ME ANOTHER FEATHERLITE!" I can't tell you enough how nice this vacuum is for the price. When compared with $150 vacuums, it beats most of them HANDS DOWN. Sure, the dirt cup is messy to empty--I have had SEVERAL bagless vacuums, and every single one I have looked at or have owned is a bit messy to empty. It's the nature of it--you have dust, it'll be messy. That's no reason to lower the rating on this vacuum. If you don't want a mess to empty, buy a bagged vacuum. If you want convenience, frequent emptying to increase suction, and not having to find bags in an area (like Alaska) where getting the exact bag ordered can take quite a bit of time waiting on an order, buy a bagless. It's that simple.This vacuum lives up to its name. It's LIGHT! I have had surgery on both arms and can pick it up one-handed! It's perfect for small spaces (such as apartments) or narrow spots like hallways or stairs. The handle even folds down so its handle can be used to carry it, even while running! And storage is a breeze, because the fold-down handle doesn't get in your way. The wheels turn freely and it has good suction without being difficult to push.If you want a super-wide path vacuum or a vacuum for larger spaces, this might not be the vacuum you want to go with, since the brush path is a little narrow (but that's what makes it take up less room--you can't have it both ways!). The cord is a perfectly adequate range for me, it reaches all without having to unplug in my 1200 sqft apartment.I looked this up on Consumer Reports, too, they rate it VERY highly, especially compared with how much it costs. The only vacuums in its quality range cost MUCH more. Want a great starter vacuum or a supplementary vacuum for a different zone in your house? BUY A FEATHERLITE!

I picked this unit up after our cleaning lady dumped our old Dirt Devil down the stairs a couple of times. I figured I would find something cheap, light and hopefully it will work... so I went to Amazon and Dirt Devil. Well it is cheap, it is light and it does work; she may have to work twice as hard doing the same amount of floor space as my old Dirt Devil... maybe she will not dump this one down the stairs. The only thing I do not like about this cheap and light unit is the hot (sucked in) air shoots out above and forward of the vacuum rollers in the direction of where you are vacuuming. If you had a real dust problem or had spilt flour on the floor... just vacuum backwards... problem solved. It is Cheap, Light and effective... small e for affect.

The moment I received this product, I put it to the test! It was time to get rid of my smaller vacuum that had survived years when leaving in apartments. Now that I am in a house, an upgrade was encouraged.It works great! I forgot what it was like to have the hose with extra handy utilities to vaccum, makes the world of difference. You can bet i "sucked" up every inch of my house and stairs and it lived to see another day.I am very satisfied and its fold down feature makes putting it away in my laundry east and organized. Highly recommenced if you have minimal rug and are not in need of something outrageously huge to cover a small part of your home and even then, if you do have lots of rug to cover I'm sure this compact machine will do the job and do it well.Easy to use and versatile.One con: I found it at Wal-mart... cheaper...and you won't have to wait for it to be delivered.But still Happy :)

This sucked everything up great on the first run. Unfortunately, it has big clunker plastic wheels that only go straight back and forth, whereas on their old featherlight model they had swivel wheels. It makes this vacuum feel like it weighs 60 lbs, trying to push it around the house. My 5 year old used to love to help vacuum, but he can't even push this thing. The canister is also the MOST RIDICULOUSLY complicated bagless canister EVER. There are THIRTEEN steps in the manual for what you have to do every time you empty this thing. My old featherlight was just the one canister with the one filter to tap out! It's SO frustrating! The suction also went way down once ANY dirt got in there. It's never worked again like that first time. It also spits things back out when I try to use it on hard surfaces, which is so frustrating because my old one worked great to pick up kitchen crumbs, etc. The extention wand/tools that hook into this back snap-in spot FALL OUT while you're vacuuming! And LAST but not LEAST, the customer service at Dirt Devil is AWFUL. I was on the phone several different times with different people, with them telling me they'd have someone 'from corporate' call me back to organize the refund process. TWO MONTHS go by, calling them, spending at least 2 hours on the phone cumulatively, waiting for this refund process to start, when finally I get them to direct my call STRAIGHT to corporate to stop all the mess. 'Corporate' tells me they DON'T GIVE REFUNDS. All they can do is direct me to one of their repair affiliates, which, conveniently for THEM the only one is OVER AN HOUR AWAY from my city! But I don't even WANT a repair, I just HATE the vacuum. I cannot believe they'd rather have a person out in the world ranting about how awful Dirt Devil is, instead of just refunding my $69.99. For crying out loud. NEVER AGAIN!

Need to get a new one, not this one. Very hard to keep clean. After cleaning the canister it is hard if not impossible to get it back together. Sorry I wasted my money. Have bought this brand in the past and always loved how good they worked. This is just a poor design. And I don't' have time to clean all 3 filters after EVERY use, and wait for 2 days for the filters to dry out. Will send mine off to the thrift shop and look for a better one.