Vacuum cleaners: Compare features & prices Panasonic MC-UL594 Eco-Max review http://www.which.co.uk/home-and-garden/laundry-and-cleaning/reviews/vacuum-cleaners/panasonic-mc-ul594-eco-max/review/

As with other reports it is big and feels heavy but boy does it do the business! Its also quite noisy but then this is our first bagless model after 40 years of Hoover and I realise these are a lot noisier than bagged versions. The suction is phenominal but as a result so is the exhaust air which means you really have to dust furniture first otherwise it will just blow the furniture dust everywhere. Going anywhere near anything but heavy curtains will also blow them around but then our son says his Dyson is the same. The suction also means it fills the dust container fairly quickly and we have found that in addition to rotating the filter 'vibrator' on the top to clear the filter before and after use there is great benefit in taking the filter unit apart every few months to give it a good clean otherwise it will jam up with dust and you will need something like a screwdriver to unjam the dust from the crevises of the filter (as reported by another user) The instruction manual does tell you to do this taking apart of the filter regularly but it is something which can be easily overlooked which is probably why some users have reported loss of suction. One niggle my wife has discovered is that it will not lie as flat as our old Hoover Turbo to get under furniture and if it accidently hits the furniture as a result it tends to catch the lever that holds the exhaust filter cover on and it pops off - a little bit of poor design there! Although there are these various niggles the cleaner certainly does a far better job than the old Hoover and I just hope it lasts as long (20 odd years!)

This is probably the best vacuum cleaner we have owned. However, after a while the suction deteriorated quite a lot. The answer was to turn the filter refresher quite a lot more than specified which improved the performance considerably. Gently banging the cylinder against the inside of our wheelie bin dislodges a lot of dust/fluff from the filter and also improves performance

I found this cleaner heavy to lift and heavy to move around. It has to be emptied very often and is hard to get dust out . I get a static shock from it The filter gets blocked up and I have to use a screwdriver to unblock it The twisting action to unblock the filter is inefficient hence the screwdriver.Give me back my Dyson.

Just bought from John Lewis with a free 6 year warranty (available until 21 March 2012) and am very impressed. The suction power makes it stick to the floor, and whilst it is a little heavy (but no more than our previous vacuum cleaner, a Morphy Richards upright) it outperforms any other cleaner we have had. This is our first bag-less cleaner and my reservations about its abilities are unfounded - definitely worth the money and so much cheaper than a Dyson

This cleaner was a revelation. We no longer have a carpet embedded with cat hair and sad to say I couldn't be happier. It was very easy to put together only taking a matter of moments. To begin with I was very impressed by the all the little places to put the attachments but then I realised there is is no space for the stair tool and extra length of tube which is a bit of a pain.People have said that it is heavy but its not so much that the hoover is heavy but that the suction is so great it sticks to the floor!Its great for pet hair - the first time we used it there was so much hair in there you could have made five new cats from it.The suction goes right to the edge of the machine so for the most part you can get away without using the attachments to hoover near walls.I used to have to brush my living room carpet every so often - taking about 2 hours. This is the best money I've spent in a long time as it really does the job.

We got a static shock when we first used this cleaner. John Lewis consulted Panasonic who said that they knew of this problem but that it was not common and a replacement machine should be ok. It wasn't: we (my wife, my son and myself) all got shocks again. We are returning the second machine and changing to a different make. Pity - we otherwise were very happy.