Overall a good buy. Review on Philips Vacuum Cleaner FC6049/01

I purchased the Philips Handheld Vacuum Cleaner FC6049/01 about a week ago.

So far I am pretty impressed with the performance. The suction power is really good and it picks up almost every speck of dust it gets near. It has a shoulder strap so you can sling it over your shoulder and use the floor accessory to do your cleaning. The Floor kit is well designed. I surveyed some of the other products available with a similar floor kit from Eureka Forbes and I must say that the design on the Philips model blows the completion away. The attachment is fairly easy to move around once you get used to it and swivels freely as opposed to some other manufactures products that I took a look at.

Now here come to Con’s. The dust filter is an absolute pain to clean. It’s a two stage filter the first being a fine mesh filter that traps most hair and larger debris. You have to remove the first filter to get to the second stage filter. The second stage filter is a paper air filter similar to the one used in cars. This filter is almost impossible to clean effectively and clogs easily with fine dust that gets sucked up. It is very efficient in keeping the dust out of the motor but impossible to clean effectively, especially since the vacuum cleaner does not have a blower function to reverse blow out the dust from the paper filter. I have had to use a brush and resort to smacking and beating the dust out of it. Because once the filter gets clogged the performance of the vacuum cleaner drops significantly.

Another thing this model severely lacks is a good array of accessories. Don’t get me wrong the accessories included are good but, they could have included a few more. Like a better tool for using on computers and tight spots. The unit does come with a crevice tool built into it that lets you get into some tight spots but you can’t attach a brush or any other accessory on to the crevice too.

Overall I am quite happy with the vacuum cleaner but am severely troubled by the hassle of cleaning the extremely efficient filter. It does a great job of trapping dust and keeping it out of the motor and fan but, impossible to get the dust out of it!