Bill (VacLab) said:
«Dyson Beats A Kirby, I'd Like To See That...»
ROFLMAO!!!
By all means, Bill, please suit yourself -- all you have to do is to show up in MA, I am pretty sure my neighbor will be more than glad to make you vacuum her living room with her Kirby and then come after you with her Dyson from 2010. I'm pretty sure she will love to see you flabbergasted just as she loved to shut up her husband. If you care, she has a berber carpet, over 20 years old. And cats.
I have no idea which Kirby she has or how well maintained it is. But hey, it's always nice to see someone seeing it with their own eyes, eh?
When you show up, I will also be more than glad to let you see any of my vacuums beat any of my other vacuums in any order you want to see it happen.
I have no skin on this game. I have more than 12 vacuums, which, again, is nothing compared to the people here, the (perhaps) only difference is how I ended up with all my vacuums. I came from the appliances side of this site because I wondered if there were better vacuums.
Each time I saw many people praise one vacuum cleaner or another, I eventually got very curious about it, went out and bought one, new in the box and tried it on my own carpets, rugs, furniture, floor etc.
Not *your* home, carpets, rugs, furniture etc.
Just like for a little while, I was in denial and surprised when people told me that a particular washer or dishwasher didn't work well for them when it worked really well for me. Or when I had a particular machine that did not work well at all for me but they claimed it worked really well for them.
Seeing is believing.
I started believing other people when I visited some who had *exactly* the same equipment I had, but either because the water chemistry in their particular location was different than mine, or the things they were trying to clean were not exactly the same things or same level of soil as mine, the machines did not perform the same way as mine. Sometimes they worked better than mine, sometimes much worse than mine.
So, when I showed up at this site, I already had some idea things might be different.
For example, the carpet. Some carpets have very airtight backing, which makes some vacuum cleaners more appropriate than others. I have several vacuum cleaners that are excellent at cleaning but can't clean well the rugs that I have that make the vacuum bog down even at the maximum height.
Every time I see people here be so freaking sure that *their* preferred vacuum is the *best* vacuum I keep adding in my head "for the particular setting you have" or else I may lose all respect for the person in question.
Every time I see tests on youtube, I keep thinking of other tests that particular configuration might fail badly.
So, sure, bring your DC25 here too. I dunno how you got it, maybe someone discarded it because it was bad and ill maintained? Maybe you bought it new? Either way, it wasn't the *best* cleaning Dyson by any organization that bothered to test it, but since I've seen a V8 clean dirt left behind by a Sanitaire and a Royal, I wouldn't doubt that a DC25 might under some circumstances suck up dirt left by some other vacuum(s).
I am not selling *any* vacuums and I'm not here to win a pissing contest or *any* contests.
These are my experiences with my own equipment that I got brand new from the store(s), in my own home with my own carpet, rugs, bare floor, furniture etc.
Each brand and model of rug or carpet has a best configuration for being cleaned. Some Persian rugs can only be vacuumed with pure suction, some carpets really benefit from agitation, some carpets can be best cleaned with strong suction (from a central vac, for example), some carpets benefit more from a very high volume of air instead.
Just ask anyone with a Hoover Convertible, for example. For some, it was the absolutely *best* vacuum to clean *their* carpets and rugs. For others, it was, meh, a decent vacuum, but they wouldn't write home about it. I know some people who hated theirs and were much happier with something different.
Not too hard to find three different opinions about the same machine. Without finding out if the machine was brand new, or well maintained, or on its last legs, one can't say much about it. One can't say much about it either or be too sure about anything if one doesn't know which particular carpets or rugs they were trying to clean.
I, for example, would absolutely *love* to know what freaking carpet the builder put in my own home. Because I intend to avoid it like the plague when I rip it out of my floors and get something new.
Until then, you or almost anyone is welcome to come here and bring your machines and we'll have a go at it.
I'll make this even more interesting. We will use a SEBO duo brush machine and we'll brush duo-P or Capture in, wait for it to dry (about 30-60 minutes) and we'll use several different machines in different areas and/or different sequences.
I can tell you right now that a Sanitaire or a Royal 8300 can not remove everything. Or any other vacuum cleaner I have. Different sequences of vacuums will produce different results, but none of them is enough all by itself.
You ask me today if I were forced to choose only one vacuum cleaner, I might say Miele. Tomorrow I may want a SEBO or a Dyson or a Hoover or anything else.
But I believed people here each time I've heard that something was the absolutely very best, and I bought a new one, and well, wouldn't you know it, it had pretty good features and pretty bad features and everything in between.
What is good or adequate in my home could be the best for you and the worst for someone else.
And I'm also pretty jaded by the way people pick and choose every test just to win the argument.
Then again, I am a computer geek, and I've seen this over and over and over again in my field. Huge fights about which operating system or CPU + disk + memory + video card configuration(s) is/are best, and what makes a particular game have a fantastic frame rate, and when you go visit real people who use the computers for *real* business, what are they using to make their Photoshop or Premiere or FinalCut Pro perform their best? Not the "best" configuration, because their software and whatever they need to do for work run much faster and better with some other configuration.
So, I see your videos. I believe you when you claim that those are the results you get/got.
And I can tell you right now that that is not the same thing that happens in my own home, and I'm willing to bet it's the particular carpet, rugs and dirt I have here. I *could* poke fun at y'all and tell you those are not the proper ways to run the test(s) or even the proper test(s) to run, but hey, you are enjoying yourselves and to me that counts for something.
On the other hand, I'd like to see you all be honest here. Stop trying to shout people down with "the most important/impressive thing is inches of water lift!" or "airflow!" or "agitation!", because none of them in and by themselves can do shit. You can brush/sweep your carpet until it wears out and not remove a grain of sand without suction/airflow. You can beat a rug until your arms fall off and it will still have dirt in them without airflow/suction. Some carpets clean better with very high suction, some carpets with very high airflow. Carpets glued to the floor need different vacuum cleaners than carpets that are tacked around the baseboards and left floating on a pad and can be lifted by a cleaner. That one I found out when I was helping a friend clean the carpet in her apartment so the landlord could inspect it, and I brought a machine with a good beater bar (Sanitaire) and it got almost nothing off the carpet, and made a lot of noise and felt like it was going to break. Went home, got the SEBO upright, cleaned like a dream.
It's pointless and petty to come here and scream at people that only Kirbys, or Sanitaires or Dysons (or any other brand, really) are the best and everyone else is dumb and worthless of being listened to.
Each person here has a favorite or at least the potential to have one or a couple of favorites. This is a club for collectors, and each person has a right to be here and have their favorite(s), it doesn't mean that anyone's dick is bigger than anyone else's or that I or you or anyone can pee farther than anyone else.
Each person here should be capable and more than happy to say "this are the results I've got under these circumstances" and be happy when it can be replicated by others and be a decent enough human being and humble enough to understand when the circumstances are not the same the results might vary.
I see some here doing that *much* better than others.
Brandon (Kirbybb) came here and asked a question. I gave my answer, which, given that the premise was "I can only keep one machine" or "I'd like to keep only one machine", my best answer is to think about everything. Not many people will like to clean the entire home with a Kirby converted to canister mode, although the ones that do really enjoy it. Not many people will like to have only a canister machine, even if everyone else says it's the best machine.
A few years ago we used to have a very vociferous person here that used to say Kirby were the best vacuum cleaners, he used to sell a bunch back in the day etc etc etc. Then one day, he came back saying he got rid of his Kirbys and got something much lighter because his back was acting up.
We used to have some people who disdained anyone who asked anything about ultra-light machines, like the Orecks or the Riccar Supralites. Until they used one or the other in certain situations.
I, for one, am very glad that I have not badmouthed particular machines or claimed one or another were the very best. I do not want to be in the same situation my neighbor's husband was.
Anybody who doesn't mind looking like a fool in a few years when something else makes their favorite look bad in some particularly weird situation, suit yourself, we'll be here in the corner. Maybe we'll laugh at you or maybe we'll have pity or feel sad for you.
But I'm telling you right now, there is absolutely no need for that. Respect others and their choices. Answer things the best you can. And resign yourself to the fact that you may be right sometimes, wrong sometimes, somewhere in between most of the time.
Long and short of it, I stand by what I've said. I've bought more than 10 vacuum cleaners based on what people here were jumping up and down and shouting about and they were wrong for my situation. Based on that alone, I'm not willing to buy a Kirby, brand new or refurbished or even picked up for free from the curb. It *might* be the very best machine for my carpet, but I'm suspicious it will not be the very best for *everything* in my home and I'm sure (having seen how much they weigh at my local vacuum shops) that I will not be using it given my back. For those of you who can carry one up and down stairs and push it, more power to you and enjoy it while you can.
I will remind you all, however, to ask how many times a Hoover Convertible has won cleaning contests.
And no, I do not have one.
I just respect that that was the result for that particular configuration during the contest, and I think to myself "I wonder if it would do better or worse with my situation at home?"
Cheers,
-- Paulo.
