Oreck XL Commercial Vacuum - Powerful for Carpets & Hard Floors | Lightweight & Auto-Adjust | Office & Home Use

The Oreck Vacuum is the best there is! This purchase is my 4th one. My first one was 25 years ago, and it would still be running if the kids had not vacuumed toys with it while cleaning their rooms. I think except for the wider XL21, and the newest models with a Dyson-style swivel hinge, which I would not want, that all the Orecks are basically the same great design and performance. The home models have headlights, two speeds, and shorter power cords. The commercial models have one speed, low profile for getting under furniture, and much longer and better power cords. My Berber carpet is 20 years old. I vacuum it daily. I see some aging, but people still comment that the carpet looks like new! The Orecks are noisy with the 6500 rpm brush-roller speed. The speed and quality of the brush-rollers are key to its excellent cleaning performance. I read about all vacuums before buying Oreck #4. They all indicate they are loud. I wear soft foam earplugs when doing many household chores, including vacuuming. The coffee grinder, the blender, the lawn mower, and several of my carpentry and auto tools are way louder than the Oreck. I wear ear plugs for all of those noisy tools. But back to the Oreck, to me, it's performance that counts, and I wouldn't buy anything other than an Oreck! This new Oreck is the lowest price I have seen at $179 on Amazon. I paid $325 + tax for it's red predecessor at a vacuum store. The two vacuums are identical except for color!!! My Oreck's #2 and #3 are still like new with maintenance of the belt and brush roller (very inexpensive parts on Amazon, three times the cost in a vacuum store). I gave them to my now adult children as they moved to college apartments. Now about the filter bags. Oreck makes the best filter bags made. The commercial bags do a good job, but my daughter has asthma, and I prefer the Oreck hypo-allergenic bags. They are referred to as HEPA by some. The commercial bags are good, they are blue, and less expensive. The hypo-allergenic filter bags are greenish, and they have layers of filter media in the replaceable filter bag. I think the hypo-allergenic bags are the greatest. Oreck commercial vacuums take bags "without filter docks". Those "docks" where the filter bag attaches are a special contraption that showed up on a few home models. This commercial vacuum has a regular filter connection port, and does not have a "dock" for the filter attachment. The commercial vacuum has the traditional, non-docking, filter connection port that the non-docking filter bag snaps onto. The filter bags seal to the port with a rubber-elastic seal that does not leak! For the commercial vacuum, I recommend green hypo-allergenic filter bags, and you need the traditional bags, not the bags that are designed for a "dock" contraption. CAUTION NOTE. This is a 5-star product, without any doubt. Read the astonishing and excellent reviews! I'm not the only Oreck enthusiast! HOWEVER it is disappointing to me that the blue Oreck in the picture is different than the actual vacuum I received. Mine has a gray bag, with the broad white diagonal stripe across the bag with "Oreck Commercial" emblazoned on the banner. The one in the picture is much nicer looking. My disappointment is not in the vacuum quality or performance. My disappointment is that I have to believe the seller knows the difference between the pictured vacuum and the one he is providing, and I suspect the one in the picture is a newer model than one I received, but I'm not sure. I expect the sellers to provide what they show. And I suspect they know exactly that they are picturing something different than they are providing. With that said, this Oreck is OUTSTANDING, and this is the lowest price I have seen on this vacuum. It cleans like a miracle, and I am VERY PLEASED! The long cord on the commercial vacuum is worth a lot to me. I plug it once by the stairway, and do the whole house without moving the cord. It also has soft wheels which are quieter on the hard floors than older models. The commercial cord is bigger around and the vacuum will not go over it and wrap it up in the motor like some of the smaller non-commercial cords. I also like the new style non-marring bumpers that really don't mark walls or furniture that get bumped. IT'S A GREAT VACUUM!