A good idea but does not live up to it with the real thing (Morphy Richards 71060)

Member Name: tomo359

Product:	Morphy Richards 71060
Date:	12/11/08 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Like the bagless container, the extenable stair hose is a good idea

Disadvantages: Quite a few problems as mentioned in the review, main hose got a couple of holes in

We bought one of these are we wanted a good powerful portable vacuum which will pick up dog hairs. When we got it home and took everything out of the box, there were plenty of accessories included with it (a bit too much really, we had to find places to put everything)
We don't use it any more (i will explain why later) so i can't quite remember everything that came with it but i will do my best.
We got three heads (not sure what they are actually called, the bit that rolls along the floor). There was a standard one which you can see in the picture. This one has brushes which can be pushed out when used on hard floor. You get a bigger version of this head for more stubborn things. This one has rotating brushes inside which spin when you start the vacuum. Then there was a small head which i wasn't quite sure what this was foor, it again has brushes but i never used this one so i can't really describe what its best used for.

Ok, as well as the 3 main heads, you get two hoses. A standard hose and an extendible stair hose. Now the standard hose i didn't mind most of the time (except this is one of the things that stopped us using the vacuum later). I can't remember the length of it but it was a good length so you do not have to have the vacuum right behind you and you don't keep tripping over it.
The second hose looks similar at first but when you move it, it acts a bit like a slinky and moves very easy and it stretches a long way. This is so you can put the vacuum unit at the bottom of your stairs and vacuum each step without having to carry the vacuum with you. Now this might seem like a brilliant idea, i loved the idea at first, but the thing is, when you are near the top of the stairs and you start vacuuming, when you put the head flat on the carpet the hose gets stiff and inflexible so you don't actually have that much freedom. Its not a big problem but it can get a bit annoying when you start vacuuming and the hose gets tight and pulls against you. When i used this one (not sure about other people) but i used one of the extra accessories. In a small tray underneith the vacuum is a small head that clips onto the end of the hose and is perfect for stairs and small areas as you could get into corners.

This brings me to the next part, the tray of accessories. As i said there is a tray that pulls out from underneith the vacuum and it holds about 3 items, there is the small extra stairs head, then thee is a brush attachment for this small head, and i think you also get a small connector tube (can't be too sure about that bit)
Its nice to have this little draw as it means you don't lose everything, but you have to put the things in the exact right spot or the draw will not close, and the draw is quite stiff to begin with.

Next we have the main steel tube that connects the hose to the heads. I do love this feature. The tube is extendible with a push of a little button that locks into different holes in the tube. It is extremely easy to extend and retract the hose to the right length, so it is perfect for people of any height.

The power lead is fully retractable which is a nice feature, you pull it out manually then when you are finished you hold a button and the lead is automatically pulled inside the machine all neat and tidy. This is good but when you pull the lead out it is quite stiff and you have to hold the vacuum as you pull otherwise you will often end up just pulling the vacuum.

One of the things that put me off this unit was moveability. This links with the power cord. If you have not pulled enough cord out and you want to move to a next room, you are supposed to be able to just pull the vacuum and more of the lead will come out, but because the lead is stiff when coming out it often just ends up pulling the plug out of the wall or the vacuum just won't come towards you so you have to go over to it and pull out more cord.
Also if you are in a fairly small room, or you have to go back on yourself, the vacuum is supposed to turn around 180 degrees and follow you but a lot of the time it will tip back on the large back wheels and if you are not careful it will tip right over and after a while of this you can get very annoyed.

Another negative is the noise, this is an extremely loud vacuum. I always thought our Henry vacuum was noisy until i turned this one on. There is a slider on the main unit which can turn down the suction power which reduces the noise, but of course it also reduces the power. I just had to put up with the noise as i needed the highest power setting because of the dog hairs on the carpets.
This then leads me back to the heads. All the heads have brushes in them and of course these pick up the hairs from your carpet but then the brushes get entangled in hairs and you find yourself picking them all out when you have finished. Even the main head, even though the brushes are retractable, they do not retract quite enough and still pick up hairs.

This is a bagless vacuum so you do not have to waste money on those horrible paper bags that fill up and have to be thrown away and replaced every so often. Instead the dust and dirt all goes into the large container on the front (the large coloured cylinder you see in the picture). This was one of the things that got us buying this vacuum. To empty it, all you do is remove the container from the rest of the unit then holding the handle, you press a button and the bottom lid falls open and all the dust falls into the bin or bag below. This is a great idea but its not as good as you think as dust seems to get everywhere on the container, including the outside walls and all over the lid so you spend all your time cleaning the thing.

Ok we had a few problems as i have mentioned but i could cope with most of this, but the thing that stopped us using it was the main hose started to tare slightly in one of the ridges as the main hose is not very flexible and as you have to keep pulling on it to get the vacuum to move with you and a hole started to appear. Luckily it was near the end of the hose and my dad managed to cut that bit off and replace the end cap thing, but a few weeks later we got another small hole and then we just gave up. We tried contacting Morphy Richards and it took them ages to reply and all they told us was to take it up with the store where we bought it. So then we did just give up and took it back.

We may have just been unlucky with this vacuum but sorry i cannot recommend it overall as we had too much trouble with it and you start to get stressed using it. We just went back to our good old Henry which is still working fine after about 10 years. Yes it has to have bags in but we can cope with buying a couple of bags a year.

Summary: We were not happy with this vacuum and ending up going back to our old faithful Henry.

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Cleaning/Maintenance: