Thread Number: 26334
Tested a Kenmore Elite canister today 		[Down to Last]

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Post# 295251   8/24/2014 at 00:29 (3,526 days old) by DesertTortoise ()        

Was doing some shopping in Palmdale today so I could not resist swooping through the vacuum department of Sears. The new Elite canister was there on display so I asked the sales person to plug it in and let me play.

The first thing you notice is how quiet it is. You can have a comfortable conversation with someone standing right over it while it's running. The floor brush is also nearly silent. It is noticeably quieter than my Windsor or my Electrolux.

The hose is interesting. The 90 degree elbow at the canister end swivel is gone. Now the hose exits straight up from the body but it still swivels. The hose itself, while eight feet long, has returned to the same shiny dark gray material other Kenmore and Panasonic vacuum hoses have used since the late 1980s. The connection from the hose to the lid is with a normal looking three prong connector of the type used since the late 1980s, but there is another electrical connection from the lid to the vacuum body with three flat spades like the hose connection used on the previous generation Elite Intuition canister. You could conceivably plug this hose on any new Kenmore vac that uses a powered hose and has a variable speed motor. I am also betting though I do not know for sure that you could re-hose worn out six footers from older Kenmores with the eight foot bare hose (no ends) from this vac. You know I'm going to try it. Oh yes, you can now open the bag compartment with the hose attached to the vacuum. This is a real improvement.

While the wands and nozzle are copies of the kludge on the current Progressive line (nozzle and wand ends are female and tools are male) the tools are a nice improvement. The dusting brush is a nice traditional horse hair brush and they give you this adjustable angled brush you can stick on the end of a wand and use to dust the tops of ceiling fan blades, book cases and the like. It's a highly useful tool.

No more bag caddy. The previous gen Elite Intuition placed the bag in a plastic basket that held the bag off the inside surfaces of the bag chamber. It had a little picnic basket handle and detached from the vacuum with the bag to make bag disposal easy. On the current Elite, the basket is there but it is fixed in the bag chamber. You remove the bag from the chamber the normal way now. Panasonic still uses a detachable bag caddy in their premium MC-CG937 canister.

The access door for the exhaust filter could not be easier to open and is a huge improvement over the current Progressive model in this regard. Fit and finish are very good and the whole vac is very understated in lightly contrasting shades of matte gray. Combined with it's quietness and the return of good horse hair brushes the vac gives the impression of being a refined machine. Only that Crossover floor tool is on the goofy/cheesy side, otherwise a very nice vacuum you don't have to be ashamed to admit you like.

Post# 295296 , Reply# 1   8/24/2014 at 13:08 (3,526 days old) by Jaker15 (Meridian, ID)        
That sounds

 jaker15's profile picture
Really cool! I might have to keep an eye out for a cheap one sometime. I'd also like to try out the newest Elite upright. That inducer motor design is fascinating. I used to have one of the earlier Progressive canisters, it was a dark blue color and had the Whisper-Belt power head. It wasn't the quietest machine, but the power nozzle was silent and, wow, did that thing have suction! It spun my Dyson turbo brush like an electric power nozzle! I sold the Progressive because I bought a Panasonic JetFlo 240 canister from a friend and I felt like it performed better than the Kenmore, not to mention that the connector on the top of the wand was broken and the hose grip was busted. I wasn't going to pay for a new hose or wand, I got the machine for free. As much as I liked its power, it wasn't my favorite canister. I would get another Kenmore Progressive, though, because the HEPA bags I found for it worked great.

Post# 295298 , Reply# 2   8/24/2014 at 14:07 (3,526 days old) by DesertTortoise ()        

You know what Jakr15, I have a new Progressive and in hindsight were I to do it again I would buy a Panasonic MC-CG902. The Panasonic is exactly the same vac as the previous generation Kenmore Progressive, so it's HEPA filtered (really the Q bag you can use in nearly every Kenmore canister since 1984 is doing nearly all the filtering) and to me what it really has going for it is that it still uses a conventionally sized 1 1/4 inch nozzle and wands. It comes with traditional Kenmore tools too.

The Progressive and this new Elite canisters come with very large diameter wands which I assume is to maximize airflow with these new motors. Unfortunately this means tools are unique to these vacs and the Progressives have crappy tools. Moreover, the nozzle and wand ends you connect the tools to is female and the tools are all male, like an Electrolux (but naturally you can't put an electrolux tool on the Kenmore wand). At least the new Elite has better tools than the Progressive line has and you can use these new tools on Progressive wands (but there is no place to stash them on the vacuum). It also means you have to have a floor brush compatible with those wands. Your older brushes don't fit. Someone needs to make a nice double row horse hair floor brush for a Progressive wand.

Or you buy the Panasonic and use all the tools you have accumulated over the years.


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