Hoover Rush Pets TCR4233 Bagless Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner, 2300 Watt

Being something of a Dyson evanglist, I was curious to see how the competition is getting on and thought I'd give Hoover a whirl. This is a neat little vacuum, surprisingly powerful and comes in a attractivly designed plastic body.

The on/off button is nice and big and seems robust enough to cope with being kicked on and off. The wheels are also big enough to tow it behind you and not have to worry about any little steps along the way that can trip up some small vacuums like a Henry.
There is a big handle right on the top which is convenient for carrying. It's perfectly balanced about this handle so it's nice and easy to carry. I have a slight reservation in that the catch to release the dirt bin is also on the handle and it might be easy to accidentaly unlatch it, but even when I've been delibrately clumsy with it I've not managed to make that happen.

On first switching it on I was pretty unimpressed with the suction, but then I noticed the little power wheel. You can dial in the amount of suction you need, and I'd had it on the lowest setting. Crank it up full blast and it's very powerful indeed. Take the attachements off the end of the hose and you can stick it to the ceiling, though I wouldn't recommend doing so necessarily... The adjustable power is a very neat feature, as you can turn down the suction if you want to use it to dust, or are cleaning delicate carpets with tassels for example, without completely sucking it to bits.

I'm ripping out my kitchen at the moment, so that part of the house is full of dust and dirt and so this thing is getting a proper work out. It's equal to the task and does at least as good a job as my venerable Dyson DC03. Like the DC03 the Rush has a HEPA filter, and so should filter out pretty much everything that goes into it. That said, the motor exhaust also has a filter on it, after the HEPA, and particles of dust were visible on that after very little use so I'm not sure how effective the HEPA actually is. You can remove it and clean it though and in any respect it's much better than any bag-based method of dirt collection. It certainly picks up everything I throw at it on the first try anyway - no going over and over with this one.

It comes with a standard brush head, and very neat 3-way multi tool which combines a brush, a crevice tool, and a duster into one component. You can clip this under the wand and is very convenient. A turbo-head comes with it too, which has a rotating brush for cleaning up pet hair. This is very very effective indeed, but the downside is it's incredibly noisy. There is also nowhere to store this on the vacuum, so it's inevitably going to get lost.

So all-in-all, I'm very impressed. It cleans extrememly well, is manouvrable, is easy to carry, empty and clean, and looks good too. So why not 5 stars? Well, there are a couple of downsides too.
Firstly, its pretty loud. Add the turbo-head on and it's very loud indeed. There is a 2300 watt motor in there, so I'm not expecting whisper-quiet, but you'll not be able to watch telly in the next room if someone is using it.
Also, it's very hot. There is a noticable increase in room temperature when this is running and putting your hand over the exhaust outlet is like putting it in front of a fan heater. This thing belts out heat! That's not to say it's going to burn you or become too hot to touch - nowhere near, but you will notice the room you're using it in getting warmer.
Some reviewers have mentioned the short flex. It's not something I particularly noticed, but it is perhaps a little short. To be honest, this Hoover is obviously intended for small flats and houses - you're not going to notice this.
Small waste bin - it doesn't hold a lot, but again - it's meant for small houses. It's also so easy and clean to empty this isn't really an issue.
My main gripe is though the hose. It's very big and unwieldy, and it tends to kink when you're using it. The motor will suddenly go into overdrive as the airflow is blocked and it happens annoyingly often. Also it's difficult to store - I'd rather have had a slightly bigger body to the vacuum and had a way of wrapping the hose around it like the Vax VZL-7062 Mach Compact Vacuum Cleaner. As it is it's awkward, gets tangled up in everything in the cupboard under the stairs, and is generally a pain. It undermines one of the best features of this vacuum which is it's small compact size.

Despite my reservations though, this is a really good powerful vacuum cleaner. It will suck up everything you throw in front of it, is easy to use, clean and simple to empty, and a pretty good bit of kit. Recommended.

EDIT: It broke! It turns out there is a bit of a design flaw in this hoover. Unless you are religious in cleaning out the exhaust filter, it chokes very quickly. Eventually you'll inevitably leave it too long and the motor will over strain itself and die. Considereing that one of the selling points of a 'bagless' hoover is that you DON'T need to constantly worry about about bags, etc, this isn't ver good. Very disapointed, in the end this vacuum only lasted 6months brefore it died.

I have not owned an actual Hoover vacuum cleaner for quite a few years now having converted to Dyson a long time ago. So I was interested to see how well this compares to my usual brand.

Opening the box the first thing that struck me was the quality of the materials used to make this vacuum cleaner. The plastic feels very sturdy, the hose feels very strong, and the tube feels like it is made of scaffold poles. Yet despite this the device still feels very light and manageable during use. It comes with a standard head for cleaning carpets and hard floors, a reversible crevice / dusting type tool and a special pet hair remover. And the cable auto retracts into the device with the press of a footswitch.

The motor is fairly noisy, but no more so than other cleaners, and as you would expect from 2300 watts it does get quite warm during use. But the suction is excellent for the size of the unit, removing all but the most stubborn dog and cat hairs from our carpets and furniture. For that extra bit of hair removal a special brush is supplied which replaces the standard head and is designed specifically for the removal of pet hair. This brush is about half the area of the standard brush and makes quite an alarming noise during use. But it does a good job of cleaning those stubborn areas the normal brush has trouble with. It is light enough and portable enough for almost anyone to carry it up and down the stairs - not something which can be said about our previous device.

There are a few niggles which stop me giving this five stars. The first is that there is nowhere to store the pet hair brush on the machine, so you have to carry it with you when you are moving around the house. The second thing is that the dust container is quite small so it fills very quickly. This container is also a dark smoked colour, and being recessed into the top of the machine and covered in writing and the handle for removal so it is very hard to actually see when it needs to be emptied. You really need to remove it every now and again to see how full it is. And finally the cable is not long enough. The manual quotes a working radius of 8 metres, but this doesn't allow for obstructions so I had to unplug it to clean behind beds and so on.

Despite these drawbacks the Hoover is a very capable cleaner, and I think that it may well have converted me back to the brand after many years of Dyson.

As soon as I received this Hoover I started using it and tried all the functions with different nozzles - I loved it! A couple of reviewers here aren't happy with the length of the power cable, and the rating is not very high yet, but don't worry - this is a very good hoover! I agree that it might not be long enough for a huge house with several floors, but it's not so bad otherwise. It's understandable to keep the length of the power cable minimum to keep the hoover compact. For a single or two-bed-room flat, for example, I think the length of the cable won't be a problem at all! If you need a very long cable for your palace, you might need one for for industrial use rather than this compact hoover!

Despite it's compact body, the suction is very powerful, which I'm very impressed with. You can adjust the power using its dial on the body (although I used it at full power all the way).

This is my first bagless vacuum cleaner, and for this type of hoover many people may think of Dyson first, but I must say I'm really impressed by this hoover by Hoover, and I'm very happy!

The other thing I like very much about this hoover is that the dust container is transparent so you can see how much dust you've collected. So as well as it's useful to know when you should empty the container, it's also surprising to see how much dust you can actually collect in ten minutes of hoovering! It was a mystery when I was using a bagged cylinder 'Henry' hoover!

I've just emptied the dust container and have washed it and the filter, and it's clean and ready to use again! I now know exactly how much dust has been removed from my flat today, and I haven't wasted anything and it was so easy, so I'm very happy with this hoover and can highly recommend it to anyone who's thinking of getting a new vacuum cleaner (for a not so big house)!

Hope this helps,