Thursday, September 13, 2007

Bissell Momentum Upright 3910 Review

Great vacuum, though I have received a few mechanical complaints.Vacuum Review: Bissell 3910 Momentum Upright Vacuum
Vacuum Rating: 4 stars out of 5

The truth about vacuums is they’re not all equal. Some lack a reasonable amount of features, some are way too expensive, and some have a track record of mechanical problems. I’m going to admit that I was on the fence about what to rate the Bissell 3910 Momentum Upright. I spent a lot of time trying to determine if this vacuum cleaner deserved 4 stars or a slightly below sub-par 3.5 stars. Your Sensei takes his vacuum reviews very seriously and I ended up sleeping on this one for a while. I wrote this about 3 days ago and finally came back to it this morning just before heading to the shop. Please know I took a lot of time to write this review in particular.

Before I talk about the bad, I want to discuss the good. There’s a lot of good stuff about this vacuum. First, I was satisfied with the suction power of this vacuum. My time on the test carpet picked up A LOT of dust. Anyone who purchases this vacuum will be extremely pleased with their carpets after a few passes with the 3910 Upright Vacuum by Bissell.

Your Sensei is also impressed with the included turbo brush. It seems in their quest for customers, vacuum manufacturers are starting to add more powerful vacuum hand tools, Eureka has had a lot of success promoting their vacuums with the “Power Paw” and it’s great to see other manufacturers like Bissell jumping on the hand tool bandwagon. It really benefits consumers! The rotating turbo brush really lets you get the dirt that lies beneath the top of your carpet and is great for cleaning high traffic areas like stairways and doorways.

A lot of customers come in complaining that their vacuum cleaner is shooting out dust faster than they pick it up. While I’ve never quite figured out why vacuums seem to be able to violate the laws of conservation, your Sensei does know how to prevent this from happening. The most common reason your vacuum is releasing dust back into the air is a dirty filter. It’s an often overlooked aspect of vacuum maintenance. The Bissell Momentum 3910 Upright is built with an on board clean filter indicator which means your vacuum will tell you when it needs to be cleaned. Even your Sensei forgets to clean out his personal vacuum filters and your Sensei loves that users are kindly reminded to perform this crucial vacuum maintenance that will prolong the life of your vacuum and keep your house cleaner!

And now for the bad. Honestly, once I took this vacuum apart and put it back together for one of my customers I had no problems with this vacuum. It worked great, did everything it said it was supposed to do, and delivered excellent performance. I start to take issue with this vacuum when I check it’s track record. Some, though by no means all Bissell Momentum Uprights have issues with “carpet beating”. It’s not the worst thing that can happen to your carpet but if you used a defective unit for several years your carpet might look a little more worn than it should. I want to be clear, “carpet beating” is very rare with the 3910 model and I’ve only seen it happen 3 times in my shop. But it does happen, and it is a defect. If you do have a defective model return it to your store or bring it to your local vacuum repairman or woman. They’ll be happy to make a few simple adjustments to ensure your vacuum is working properly.

If it weren’t for a rare mechanical defect in this vacuum cleaner it would have a perfect 5 stars out of 5. After much thought, I felt the risk of having to lug a defective vacuum back to the store should cost Bissell an entire star. At just under a $100 bucks it’s still a very great buy, just know there’s an extremely small chance you’ll have to exchange it.

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