The Dyson Airmuscle Pet Vacuum

A message from Kitai the dog: Recently I was offered a Dyson Airmuscle pet vacuum to have mom use and review as part of a focus group on Dogster.com. A lot of you are probably aware that mom doesn't do very many product reviews. She's a stickler for only reviewing something if we actually needed and used it. Because I shed year round like a team of Huskies it didn't take me long to convince her to accept the vacuum. When it arrived I put her to work cleaning up after me and here's what she had to say:

Never in her wildest dreams did she know that vacuums could ever be this amazing.

To start with she loved the box it came in... Mom's never seen such a well designed package before. Ever. The box was easy to open and way easier to remove the vacuum from then she had expected it to be. Too bad more products don't put more effort into their packaging. Mom took this as a good sign that if the box was this well designed the vacuum would be even better.

Assembly was easy. Mom took a few peeks at the diagram and had the whole thing put together lickity split.

We have two kinds of carpet in our house. A low shag and a berber. The shag was easy to vacuum. The berber, even on the low setting was really hard to vacuum. The drag made it so that mom had to use two hands to move the vacuum over the berber carpet. While that's a drag (no pun intended) mom says it's good and her arms are going to get really toned from vacuuming the living room carpet from now on.

Emptying the canister was very easy and much cleaner then the vacuum she had been using. Mom was literally stunned at how much this vacuum picks up. She's guessing it picks up a good 70% more dirt out of the carpet then our other vacuum does. After barely vacuuming what looked like a clean area of shag carpet the canister was practically full with way more "dirt" then she typically sees in the old canister. She was also surprised by how much more "white" the newly cleaned carpet looks. It looks like it was shampooed and cleaned, not just vacuumed.

The hose is not super flexible but because mom says she is freakishly strong for her size she didn't have any problems manipulating the hose any direction she needed it to go. And thought she hasn't used it yet... Mom is in awe that the hose seems to be designed to knock out any blockages with a built in feature. Too many times she's found herself with a long wire coat hanger trying to dig out blockages from hoses in the past. She can't wait until she has the opportunity to unclog this new hose with a simple push back in of the retractable tube.

The furniture attachment brush is great! It does seem to work better picking up the dog hair then cat hair and cleans the seat area with just a few passes. The trickier part is the crevice between the seat and the chair back on our fabric covered dining chairs. That requires switching attachments to clean that narrow strip but all in all she is thrilled with not having to use tape or pick most of the hairs off of the couch cover by hand anymore.

She also tried out the attachment brush on a small fleece cat bed Squash sleeps on in the window. It was old and dirty and kind of lumpy. A few passes with the brush and it literally looked new again. The bristles not only removed the embedded cat hair but fluffed the fleece back up again making the bed soft and puffy again. A lot of fluff was then embedded on the brush attachment roller but just took a few minutes to remove by hand.

The only thing mom doesn't care for is that the release to lower the handle area is located on the front of the machine instead of the back. It is slightly awkward. What more then makes up for that though is that one of her favorite button features is the selections for floor surface types is located at the top instead of near the bottom of the front of the vacuum as it's been on every vacuum she's ever owned before. With 2 types of carpet, linoleum in the kitchen and stone tiles in the main hallway and one bedroom with hardwood... This makes the whole process SO much easier to use the correct type for each room and area. The rest reminded her a lot of her mac computer that was designed to be very intuitive so that manuals and diagrams are not needed. Just simple steps to get you up and running.

From Mom: The price is steep enough that to be honest I'd have to say I never would have purchased a Dyson on my own. But now having used this one? I can't imagine not having one ever again. There are times when a high price is reflective of a trend or "name" and other times when a high price is reflected in the quality and capabilities of how an appliance performs. I'd definitely say that this Dyson Animal Pet Vac falls into the latter category. Having used this one and being able to see firsthand what an amazing job it does, when the time comes to replace it I will definitely go with another Dyson.