Oreck Touch Bagless Vacuum review – CNET

The Good The Oreck Touch is a powerful performer from a long-trusted brand. At a price of $399, it flat-out beat the $649 Dyson DC41 in our basic cleaning tests.

The Bad A few minor design imperfections detract from an otherwise flawless build. Also, the Oreck isn’t quite as versatile a vacuum as the DC41 or the Shark.

The Bottom Line The Oreck Touch is an exceptional vacuum that left us all highly impressed. It’s an excellent choice for anyone looking to upgrade to a high-end machine.

When I was a kid, I remember seeing commercials for Oreck vacuum cleaners on TV. David Oreck himself usually starred in the ads, and when he did, he’d always cheerfully proclaim the merits of his machine, the 8-pound Oreck XL. The XL had the look of a complete clunker, with an ugly, dated design that seemed like it hadn’t been updated since 1963, when Oreck first started selling vacuums in Louisiana. All the same, there was just something endearing and perhaps infectious about Oreck’s unapologetic confidence. Sure enough, everyone I knew who used an Oreck XL swore by the thing.

Fast forward twenty years or so to today, and you’ll still see Orecks on the market (David Oreck, by the way, just celebrated his 90th birthday last month, and is still an active entrepreneur, lecturer, and philanthropist). You won’t, however, see anything quite like the good ol’ Oreck XL. It seems that somewhere between those TV commercials and the present day, the company finally caved in and decided to update its design — which brings us to the new Oreck Touch. I was almost disappointed as I took the thing out of the box. It looked… modern. It looked… great. Was this really an Oreck vacuum I was looking at?

Twist and go with the Oreck Touch Bagless…
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The Oreck Touch is as modern as the Oreck XL was vintage.
Colin West McDonald/CNET

By the standards of the many Oreck loyalists out there, I’m happy to say that yes, this is most definitely an Oreck vacuum, the kind of vacuum you’ll swear by. We put it through hours upon hours of tests, throwing everything from sawdust to Labradoodle hair at it, and in the end, we found that it was one of our top scoring vacuums, right up there with the most expensive, high-end models. At a price of $399, the Oreck Touch isn’t cheap, but as a high-quality appliance in a category with more variance than you might think, it still represents real value for consumers looking for a dependable, easy-to-use cleaning machine.

Design and construction The Oreck Touch is a vacuum cleaner built for the 21st century, and if Oreck was late to the party in this regard, it’s only helped it to make a big entrance. The minimalist, utilitarian design of fifty years ago is gone, replaced with something truly modern and elegant-looking. If there was an old chalkboard at the Oreck factory with the word “flourishes” boldly crossed out for all to see, it’s been thrown out the window

This is a vacuum with style to spare. The thick, pale blue bag is gone — the Oreck Touch uses a sleek-looking translucent blue canister, instead. The handle isn’t just a boring, industrial-looking loop of white plastic anymore — it’s a futuristic joystick buttressed by arcs of brushed steel. I hate when writers refer to appliances as “sexy,” but I’m really struggling to not call this thing a sexy vacuum.

Thankfully, these design touches have a degree of functionality to them. The brush roll is housed in a body with stylish cutaways that actually allow you to immediately see if you’ve missed anything on the floor as you’re cleaning. The great-looking canister is amazingly easy to take out, empty, and replace. And, of course, there’s the fact that the Oreck Touch conveniently relocates the power switch, along with the brush roll button, to the tip of the handle, where they sit just beneath your thumb. From start to end, you could clean with this vacuum and never need to bend over once.

This is a vacuum designed with maneuverability in mind.
Colin West McDonald/CNET

The most noticeable function of the new design is how maneuverable the Oreck Touch is. The curves of the machine’s body create a pivot point at the base, allowing you to turn the thing with a simple twist of the wrist, similar to how you would with a ball-based design, like Dyson vacuums use. The comfortable angle of the handle seems designed to make this kind of turning even easier — it juts out in front of the vacuum, giving your wrist more leverage.

It’s a subtle, surprisingly smart build, and I was struck with how much I enjoyed using it in comparison with other machines that we tested. It isn’t without its minor imperfections, though. I wish that the hollow loops connecting the brush roll to the back wheels were a bit sturdier, since these are what you’re supposed to step on in order to click the vacuum down out of its resting position. While we’re at it, a dedicated button or latch for this function would have left me feeling much more comfortable. All in all, when it comes time to criticize the build, minor quibbles are the best I can come up with.

One last design note: as Oreck vacuums go, the Oreck Touch is a heavyweight, weighing in at about 16 pounds. This isn’t to say that it’s noticeably heavy or difficult to lug around, but don’t expect to see David Oreck lifting one with a single finger the way he used to do regularly while hocking the 8-pound Oreck XL.

Performance So the Oreck Touch looks and feels great, but the real question is how well does it clean? After all, it’s going to spend most of its life stashed away in a closet. How… ugh… sexy it looks is a trivial concern next to knowing how much dirt it’ll suck out of your carpets. For $399, you want a vacuum cleaner that’s going to do the job, and do it well. So how does the Oreck stack up?

Cheerios, 1 oz. (percentage picked up)(Longer bars indicate better performance)

92
97
95 Dyson DC41
92
97
93 Shark
73
88
97 Electrolux
93
88
92 Dyson DC50
80
83

Let’s start with cereal. For our purposes, we used Cheerios (Fruity Cheerios, to be exact — they photograph a little better against beige carpet and plus, they were on sale).

Our goal was to see how well the vacuums could handle lightweight particulates of a significantly larger size than your average dust mote. What percentage of the cereal would each vacuum manage to pick up? Would the cereal fit underneath the vacuum, or would it just get shoveled around? Would the vacuum grind it up and leave multicolored dust littered across the carpet? What about low-friction, hardwood floors — would any of the vacuums scatter the cereal across the floor?

See? I told you they photograph better.
Ry Crist/CNET

The Oreck Touch passed all of these tests with flying colors (or, in the case of that last one, with no flying colors.) Across all three surfaces that we tested on, the Oreck picked up more cereal than any other vacuum, averaging a very impressive 95 percent pickup rate, one percentage point better than the top-of-the-line Dyson DC41, which retails for $649. The Oreck didn’t leave any ground-up cereal dust behind, and it didn’t have any trouble on hardwoods, either. If you have a militant toddler in your home who loves lobbing his breakfast around, you’ll want to move the Oreck to the top of your list.

Neato XV Signature Pro review – CNET

The Good The Neato XV Signature Pro is simple to use, and it outperformed the competition in almost all of our cleaning tests, at substantial cost savings.

The Bad Compared with other robot vacuums, the Neato is a bit boring and feature-light.

The Bottom Line The Neato offers unmatched value in its field. Its performance, simplicity, and price make it an excellent choice for buyers seeking an effective, low-maintenance robot vacuum.

When people think about robot vacuums, the first word that probably comes to mind is “Roomba,” the signature offering from Massachusetts manufacturer iRobot. Take a look at today’s market, though, and you’ll find a variety of robot vacuums to choose from, all of which would love to make a run at the Roomba’s robo-reign over the living room. One particularly worthy competitor is the Neato XV Signature Pro, the latest model from a smallish, California-based manufacturer called Neato Robotics.

The first, most obvious contrast between the Neato and other robot vacuums we reviewed is the price. Despite being Neato Robotics’ newest and most advanced robot vacuum, the Signature Pro only costs $449.99. In comparison, the top-of-the-line Roomba 790 costs $699.99, while LG’s Hom-Bot Square costs $799.99. Those are some substantial savings, making the Neato an attractive choice for buyers who might have been curious about robot vacuums in the past, but who found the higher price tags to be a deal-breaker. But still, $450 is a lot of money — is the Neato worth it?

We say yes. After dozens of cleaning runs across multiple surfaces, and with multiple variations of debris scattered in its path, the Neato emerged as the clear favorite. In almost every situation we threw at it, the Neato picked up more debris than the competition, often in significantly less time. It’s an efficient, powerful little machine, and its laser-guided navigation system is one of the smartest you’ll find in any robot vacuum. It performed best on standard, medium-pile carpet, and impressed us with how well it picks up pet hair. If you’re a dog or a cat owner living in a carpeted home, the odds are good that you’ll love this vacuum. As for me — a non-pet owner who loves hardwood floors — it’s still unquestionably the robot vacuum I would buy for myself.

At 8.6 lbs., the Neato is the heaviest robot vacuum that we tested.
Colin West McDonald/CNET

Construction and design The Neato is sturdy and well-built, with a tough outer shell capable of withstanding the inevitable barrage of gentle bumps against the legs of your dining-room table. It sits low to the ground, too, for greater access beneath furniture and cabinetry. The bin lifts conveniently out of the top of the machine – you won’t need to flip it over or yank a drawer out to empty it, which makes for faster, easier cleaning than other models we tested. The backlit menu is easy to use, with a simple interface that makes scheduling a cinch.

At first glance, the Neato resembles the bottom section of your typical upright vacuum, at least in terms of its shape. It’s a design approach that might help the Neato feel familiar, but it’s also one that fails to highlight its modern, forward-thinking appeal. Throw in the black-and-white LCD menu that seems lifted from the very first generation of iPods, and the Neato actually feels downright dated, and certainly not as fun or quirky as other machines we tested.

Simply put, for all its smarts, the Neato feels a bit soulless. This might sound like an obtuse criticism, but for a machine that relies on artificial intelligence, subtle, playful touches of personality can really go a long way — something that iRobot seems to have mastered in the Roomba after several generations of development. The closest the Neato comes is when it offers text asking you to put it down on the floor or thanking you for cleaning its bin. It’s a polite machine, for sure, but not the life of the party.

Charging the Neato takes 2 to 3 hours. When it’s finished, the light will change from red to green.
Colin West McDonald / CNET

Usability For such a sophisticated device, the Neato is surprisingly simple to use. Just press the power button to wake it, then press it again to set the vacuum off on a floor-cleaning expedition. When it’s finished, the Neato will automatically find its way back to its charging station for a well-earned nap. It will also return home in the middle of a run if its battery is running low; once charged, it will automatically return to the spot where it left off and resume cleaning.

Even more convenient is the Neato’s scheduling ability. Just turn it on and tell the Neato what days and times you want it to clean, and it’ll take care of the rest. You can program it to skip days if you want, and you can even program it to run at different times on different days, a nice feature that you won’t find on a lot of other robot vacuums. The scheduling feature is particularly useful if you want the Neato to tidy up while you’re away at work during the day, or overnight, while you’re asleep. I wouldn’t recommend late-night cleaning runs, as the Neato was the loudest robot vacuum that we tested. While not as loud as a full-size vacuum, it’s still noisy enough to wake you up.

Performance

Rice (out of 2.5 oz) (Longer bars indicate better performance)

2.05 2.33 2.13 iRobot Roomba 790 2 2.32 2.25 LG Hom-Bot Square 1.85 1.87 2.13 Infinuvo CleanMate QQ5 1.55 1.8 0.8

Pet hair (out of 0.2 oz) (Longer bars indicate better performance)

0.15 0.15 0.18 LG Hom-Bot Square 0.083 0.02 0.08 iRobot Roomba 790 0.047 0.05 0.17 Infinuvo CleanMate QQ5 N/A 0.02 N/A

Sawdust/sand mix (out of 1.25 oz) (Longer bars indicate better performance)

0.42 0.43 0.92 iRobot Roomba 790 0.3 0.23 1.12 LG Hom-Bot Square 0.23 0.27 0.75 Infinuvo CleanMate QQ5 0.15 0.13 0.07

In our tests, the Neato was the overall standout, dominating the competition on each variety of carpet and performing well on hardwood, too — though not quite as well as the Roomba when it came to picking up rice or our sand-sawdust mix. The data paints a very clear picture of the Neato’s considerable vacuuming power, and it’s hard not to like what you see. Pet owners in particular should pay attention — the Neato honestly blew the competition away when it came time for dander duty.

The Neato is also an effective navigator. It had no trouble mapping out our test spaces and covered them with ease, rarely getting stuck and needing us to intervene. At only 4 inches high, it was able to clean beneath our couches, coffee tables, and bookshelves, and also navigated beneath low-hanging curtains, an obstacle that regularly confused some of the other robot vacuums we tested.