9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
DC14 Low Reach: Good vacuum, still room to improve
Date of Review: Jan 4, 2005
The Bottom Line: It's the right size, looks cutting edge, has decent power, and a HEPA filter. Go for it.
I'm a vacuum novice. I've only owned one other even though I'm 34 years old.
I just bought this vacuum today - a new red one. I had been doing some drywall work and some fine dust escaped the work area and was spread around the house. The main reason I bought it was because it's HEPA, which means it should capture the fine dust in the carpets instead of blowing it through the house even more.
HEPA
First, a small diversion. Whether you have pets and allergies or not, you should get a HEPA vacuum. Non-HEPA vacuums capture the dirt that you see, and make your carpets look clean, but blow the finest dust out their exhaust vents and into the air. This is not healthy. The finest dust lingers in the air the longest waiting for your lungs to filter it out.
Sucking Power
It's good. I have to say that I have had better. My old Eureka "The Boss" vacuum was a simple thing with no attachments. With a clean bag it would practically stick to the floor. Of course, with a full bag it was useless. The DC14 compares well to it. It has decent power out of the box, visibly cleaned my carpets, and put a good deposit of dirt in its chamber. Watching the chamber fill with dirt is fun.
Price
I paid $430 for it at Sears. I'm not sure why other people are reporting higher prices. This price was comparable to other HEPA vacuums in its quality range. (It seems it's easy to make a cheap, lousy vacuum.) Since Dyson is a UK company I assume we're taking a beating on the Dollar-Pound exchange rate right now.
Size/Weight/Maneuverability
Is it just me, or are vacuum cleaners starting to look like giant five foot robots? I live in a small house without much storage space and it seemed like there was a time you could buy a light but powerful vacuum. Not anymore, I guess -- you can have a light, wimpy floor sweep but the next step up is to bulk and hugeness. I balked at the DC07 because of the size and weight of it. The DC14 shaves off weight and bulk and I think it makes a huge difference. I think it's very reasonable.
Someone else mentioned that the attachment hose is pretty taut and extends for only about 4 feet before you wind up pulling the vacuum around. It's true, except that it extends upwards (up stairs) really far without getting knocked over. So I don't mind that, and maybe it'll loosen up over time.
Sucking up Rocks
Or should I say, chunks of plaster. I punish my tools. I drive my lawnmower right over tree branches and expect it to chop them up. I expect my vacuum to suck up rocks. I shouldn't, but I'm just lazy that way. I ought to buy a shop-vac but I don't want to own two vacuums. This one seems to handle them, so far up to about 1/2" in size. No complaints. Ask me again in 6 months to see if I've destroyed it.
Attachments
This is my first experience with attachments. Can you tell I'm a male yet? Anyway, I liked them. The edge-sucking one has a little hole on the side which might be for airflow, but it turns out to be great for going sideways to get dust off the wallboards. All three are versitile. But I don't have much use for the low reach attachment. My couches have only 2-3" of clearance and the attachment is too big to slide under them.
The attachment stick comes straight off the vacuum. Older Dyson sticks have to be detached from the vacuum and flipped around. This is a big improvement and is easy to use.
Great Engineering, with Room to Improve
There are a couple things that I've seen so far that the engineers ought to work on. The ratchet noise happened to me once when I hadn't fully switched it's "mode" from attachment to floor. It's a loud, unpleasant noise that kicks in when the motor is trying to protect itself.
The power cord is really long. I suppose that's good, but with my old vacuums I used to unwrap the cord only partway when I was just cleaning a small room. With the DC14, the power cord wraps around a hook on the attachment stick, so you can't use the attachments unless the power cord is all the way off. It'd be cool if the power cord auto-retracted into the unit like my tape measure.
No tracks. My mother was always very proud of the track marks left in the carpet after she'd vacuumed. It made the room look clean. I was not allowed in the living room because my feet marks would ruin the nice vacuum tracks that she wanted permanently preserved there. My old vacuum did this, which evoked that sense of vacuum-pride. But the DC14 isn't leaving any tracks.
Also, I'm fond of the kickstop on the back of most vacuums that lowers it into pivot mode. This one doesn't work that way. You have to step on the front edge of the vacuum to get it to pivot. I think I prefer the backstop method.
