Hoover WindTunnel Canister Vacuum, Electronic Bagless, S3765-040
by Hoover
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of Hoover WindTunnel Canister Vacuum, Electronic Bagless, S3765-040
Customer Review: Wish I had seen an accurate review before I wasted my money!!
Summary: 2 Stars
The saying is true..."You get what you pay for". Yes, this vacuum is not super expensive and there is a reason for that! I read all of the reviews and hoped this vacuum would work well for me and instead, I feel like I wasted my money. In the effort to give full disclosure, I will admit that before this vacuum I had never had a "bagless" vacuum and now I will never buy another one! This canister has to be emptied after every use. Yes, I do have a large house and four kids but no pets and with my other canisters, I changed the bags about once every other month. So, having to dump this vacuum almost daily is a GROSS pain in my rear! Sure, you can find the missing Barbie shoe or Lego piece easier but you also send up a cloud of dust when you empty it into the kitchen trash can and then you get to start the GROSS, time consuming, seemingly never ending job of trying to clean the filter that is in with the dust and dirt you have vacuumed up. Yes, I did order and extra filter because it too seems to need to be cleaned daily. And,yes...you can wash the filter in the sink and rinse it for about five-fifty minutes to get some of the dirt out but then it has to dry overnight and it still doesn't look or seem clean. Just emptying this vacuum and getting the filter to look like it won't do you more harm than good by vacuuming with it is super messy and time consuming! My weekly housekeeper who cleans houses full time also HATES this vacuum and complains to me about it all the time. It is a good thing that part of the hose is clear because it clogs very easily and when you have to shove a strected out hanger down it to unclog the too narrow hose, at least you can kind of see what you are doing. The first month I had this vacuum, the side front panel fell off and was a pain to find and put back on the vacuum. In second month of owning it, the writing on the handle that tells you which button is for off, which one is for floor/carpet and which one is for suction control writing completely rubbed off. Also, the suction control button is very easy (too easy) to accidently hit while vacuuming and then you are constantly going through the different levels to get it back on the level you want. Bristles are very stiff and increase the already high noise level of this vacuum on hard wood floors which, is what 98% of my house has. I definitely would not buy this vacuum again! I have owned Electroluxes, Kenmores and Hoovers before and have never been unhappy with them until they wore out after many years of use. Think twice before buying this vacuum; it looks good but performs terribly!Customer Review: Thanks to others who recommended this great machine!
Summary: 5 Stars
Our house is built on a hillside in four levels to take advantage of a great view, so we have six carpeted staircases to clean. We replaced an upright two years ago at a "Bed & Bath" shop, with a bagless canister vac, based upon the salespersons recommendations for using a canister with lots of stairs. We did find the canister was a good choice for the stairs, but it was not easy to clean the dust container and filters, and going from the carpet to bare floor attachment required shuffling the parts. While not particularly difficult, it was an annoyance to stop and retireve whichever attachment was needed, and it always seemed to be on the last floor I'd cleaned. When the spring loaded button that kept the attachments on the wand broke, we found no one local carried replacement parts. We tried the web and found thE part was not available anywhere. Since we've become regular Amazon shoppers, we decided to consult with other Amazon patrons opinions about vacuums before buying another.
After reading many recommendations, we settled on the Wind Tunnel Electronic and fired off the order. We have had it for about two months and we are more pleased with this vacuum than any we've had in the last 35 years. The powerful motor produces several levels of suction, which are controlled from buttons easily accessible to the thumb of the hand you are using to hold and direct the wand. Another button activates the carpet beaters, which allows the user to go from carpeted floors to hard surfaces simply by pushing the button. The canister has a handy compartment that contains a crevase tool and brush attachment. The metal wand detaches from the floor attachment with a touch of your toe to a release lever, making it possible to eaisly go from the carpet attachment to a brush to clean air vents, shelves, and tables; then reinsert the wand into the floor attachment from a standing position. The designer of this machine had obviously cleaned more than one house!
We have two cats and a dog, so every cleaning we are amazed to find SOOOOO MUCH hair and fur along with dander in the canister. We can not imagine how the pets haven't disappeared, since we pick up enough every cleaning to build another small cat. That said, there is no discernable odor from the air pulled into the canister and filters, which are easy to clean and are washable, so every time we begin to clean it's like starting with a new machine.
Hoover has made the perfect machine for us and we recommend it to anyone with pets, stairs, and mixtures of carpet, wood, tile and vinyl floors.
Customer Review: Solid, sleek, effective vacuum but a small stomach
Summary: 4 Stars
Good value, well-made, cool looks, terrific suction/air flow, heavy steel wand tube. The adjustable tube height is a plus. Friction fit attachments are not as good as the spring-loaded index pin type, but if you press and twist the accessory on tightly, it's NOT going to come off. We never have a problem with it tipping over; it pivots and follows you around like a puppy. Noise level is somewhat lower than others we've had, especially at low and mid suction settings which generally are plenty to get the dirt up. The air-powered rotary brush stairs/furniture head is nice, but not as nice as the old Kenmore electrically-powered head.
Why we rate it a 4 instead of a 5:
1. Only holds two miniature plastic cheap attachments, a crevice tool, and an upholstery brush. O.K. in a pinch, but hang onto your old full size attachments--they may fit. Our old Kenmore accessories did.
2. The "automatic" height adjust of the carpet head is really a "fixed" height setting designed for medium nap carpet. If you try to use it on indoor/outdoor carpeting (very low nap) the head tends to walk away from you at about 5 mph like a self-propelled mower. You actually have to pull back on the wand handle to restrain it. This is because the suction pulls the head into the carpet and the rotary brush digs in. It helps to use low suction on low nap. For most carpeting this is not a problem--air leaks through the looser nap and prevents a tight suction seal on the carpeting. A real(manual)height adjust would be helpful.
3. We miss the "air bleed port" at the top of the wand that you find on many vacuums that allows you to vacuum throw rugs and drapes without sucking them into the nozzle. Even on low suction setting this baby still tends to suck up throw rugs unless you hold them down with your foot. An air bleed would also help control the suction when vacuuming low nap carpeting (see 2 above).
4. MOST of all, the little dirt collection cup is a bore. Yes it's easy to access the cup, and yes you can empty it in less than 15 seconds, BUT especially if you have pets with lotsa hair, you're going to be making numerous trips to the waste can. Plus, you have to be comfortable with digging out hair and fuzz from the filter inside the cup every 2 or 3 dumps. Duhhh, it's why disposable bags were invented. My wife doesn't think it's a big deal. I do. If the cup and filter were 3-4 times larger I guess I would give it a pass. Still it would be a lot closer to perfection if it had a bag.
Customer Review: Boy, was I wrong! And I'm really, really sorry
Summary: 1 Stars
I deeply regret any positive remarks made in my 2008 review. We've consigned this vacuum to garage/car-cleaning only -- and we can do that because we found other attachments that work on this abominable product. The thing might be okay in an all-wall-to-wall carpet environment with no need to clean under any furniture. It's totally inadequate for hardwood floors with rugs, even those without the fringe found on most Orientals. The hard floor attachment is too wide to manuever through anything but wide-open spaces. The bristles on the small hand brush attachment are too short and stiff to clean items such as shutters. The crevice tool falls off readily for want of a "lock" button. After a few weeks of use the stiffness of the hose and tiny dirt cup become annoying beyond (non-profane) words. Cleaning the filter is ... well, we're not supposed to use profanity, right? Its suction seems as good as my shop vac and it's easier to manuever than that behemoth; otherwise, I'd have exorcized my frustration with a sledgehammer or given it to someone I dislike ... if I knew anyone I dislike THAT much. My original, premature, misguided review (and I'm sorry. really, really sorry): My wife wasn't thrilled about the weight of this product, which really was surprising (I told her she ought to be ashamed!) but we do agree that it's well designed and versatile and that it cleans rugs as well as any of our uprights (we have three; one for each floor) or old canisters (also three) for hard surfaces,furniture, etc. Indeed, we retired both a canister and an upright after getting this vacuum. We both felt compelled to look at the instructions before using it -- a first for both of us. The dirt cup seems a bit small, and cleaning the filter is a bit of a bother -- but it beats searching for and buying bags, especially since any bag I need frequently seems to be out of stock at one or more stores. The hose is a lot stiffer than a standard, non-power-brush canister (it's more like a shop vac hose). My biggest complaint: the power brush does not have a reliable, secure lock up position like a good upright and that poses problems when cleaning rugs with fringed edges (that up position is needed on the back stroke to avoid damaging the fringe) and when carrying it (the power head always flops down when it's lifted, and that's really annoying). The controls are all on the handle and easy to use, and that means you can turn the brush off and on to ameliorate that "fringe problem" ... but the no-lock-up remains a drawback for us.Customer Review: Powerful modern vacuum cleaner
Summary: 4 Stars
We're approaching 400 reviews here so there isn't much more I can add. This replaced a Hoover upright vacuum that lasted 30 years (!) so I don't have any modern vacuums to compare this thing with.
The first surprise was turning it on and feeling the vacuum pull itself down into the carpet. I could hardly move it before I turned the brushes on. This is tremendously powerful suction. It cleaned the carpets nearly as well as my steam cleaner. I had been sandblasting during the summer and it found all the sand that the old vac had been missing. After vacuuming my wool carpet, the canister looked like I had vacuumed a sheep. Modern vacuums let you get very very low under furniture -- this can slide under a three inch gap. I had been moving furniture to vacuum before this.
I agree with one reviewer's complaint about the dusting attachments. The wide brush is not much good for dusting. You need a narrow circular brush. Fortunately all my inexpensive ShopVac attachments friction-fit and work perfectly so that was no problem for me. With these attachments I've been able to get everywhere and with the powerful suction you don't have to get too close to clean a surface.
I personally don't mind that the body doesn't have a place to store the attachments. Why carry them around when I'm not going to use them? I like that the body is light and can easily be carried. It doesn't need more dead weight.
Yes, the canister is very small, yet my house is large and was filthy and I only emptied it twice. If you had more carpet than me, I could see it filling up a lot more quickly. I like that it's transparent because it's great at finding those screws I keep dropping into the carpet.
I've found the controls are too convenient. I'm constantly hitting the suction or off buttons when maneuvering it around. Maybe I'll stop doing that.
It should surprise no one that this vacuum is much much quieter than my 30 year old upright. The noise does increase as the canister fills and the filter gets clogged but clean those and it's back to normal.
Although I've had no problems after a month of heavy use, I'm taking the complaints about the vacuum's durability seriously. Unlike my previous antiquated vacuum that would not die, this is a mostly plastic appliance and the long cables in the plastic hose as well as the connectors are certainly potential weak spots. I would not throw this thing around like a commercial appliance.