Product Review: Kenmore Intuition Vacuum

As I mentioned last week, the folks at Sears asked me if they could send me a vacuum cleaner to review. Well,  a vacuum is obviously bigger than, say, a candle or other small item that is regularly offered for review.  Since I never want to feel obligated to give a good review just because I was sent something, I am very careful what products I accept.  My criteria for larger items is that the offering company be reputable and if I hated it, would either take it back, or could live with some criticisms. Sears is a big boy company, so I said yes, figuring they could take it.

Luckily, I don't have to be that critical, it's a very nice vacuum cleaner. 

Here are the details:
Product: Kenmore Intuition upright vacuum 31810
Features:

• Beltless Direct Drive agitator, which means no more replacing those pain-in-the-a belts. 
• HEPA  (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filtration that includes a cloth bag and dust cloud free bag changing. As someone who has dust allergies, this is a nice feature. 
• Reach out wand and HandiMate Pet and stair cleaner attachment gets into the hard to reach areas. 
• Shift on the fly (thumb operated on handle)  floor to carpet adjustment feature. Foot button to adjust height for different rug piles. 
• Infrared dirt sensor.

The good news: This is a powerful machine that cleans beautifully and I love being able to shift from floor to carpet cleaning with a thumb switch. Much easier than the vacuum I've been using for years which required you to stop the machine and wait for it to stop rotating, then move the lever on the base from floor to carpet. The reach out wand is much easier to use than the classic wand attachment which needed to be attached to use. This wand is already attached, kind of like a gun in a holster.  The bag is very easy to insert - unlike my old vacuum cleaner which had to be tucked in sideways and then prodded and pushed (in a sideways motion) onto the hole. This unit has a front door loader. Much easier.

The bad news: The unit requires a little assembly and there were no instructions for this. There is some information printed on the inside of the box, but it was hard to read. There are some instructions on the unit, but again, a little hard to understand. Perhaps it was missing from my box, but a nice handy assembly chart would be a good thing. That said, assembly was very minor and easy once you figured it out.  Because of it's power and on-board attachments, this vacuum is fairly heavy. Lugging it up and downstairs is not pleasant. The power cord is very long (which is a good thing), but is so long that it gets in the way too. However, in my small condo, I can vacuum the entire floor and never have to move the cord to a different outlet, so that's convenient. The placement of the reach out wand is a little awkward and I found it easily tangled with the power cord.

All in all, for the price ($222.99 on the Sears website) I think it's a fantastic vacuum and am looking forward to it doing a bang-up job after Christmas cleaning up after my Christmas tree is finally dragged out of the house, needles flying in its wake.

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