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• Analysis of 16,308 genuine customer reviews collated by Reevoo.com confirms Somerset-based Numatic’s position in the top ten most popular vacs
• Market-leader Dyson fails to make the top ten list, with most models ranking lower than 30th in the league table

Analysis of over than 16,000 genuine customer reviews of vacuum cleaners by Reevoo.com indicates that market-leading Dyson vacuum cleaners are no longer cleaning up in the popularity stakes.

Lesser-known UK-based manufacturer Numatic, with its Hetty and Henry vaccum cleaners, has captured the hearts and the wallets of British shoppers.  Hetty is positioned third in the league table and Henry makes it in at number ten. The machines, with their trademark smiley faces, impressed consumers with their durability and superb performance.

Hetty Numatic

Jo Reale, spokesperson for Reevoo said “It’s great to see Numatic doing so well and flying the flag for British manufacturing. They produce quality products which are exported all over the world and which really hold their own against massive Global brands.”

Reevoo.com, the UK’s only genuine customer reviews site, analysed 16,308 customer reviews for 142 vacuum cleaners.  European brands Sebo and Miele also featured strongly in the top ten and were praised for their excellent suction, reliability and ease of use.

But as the top vacuums received praise from shoppers, it was a different story for Dyson. Despite having the most models out of all of the vacuum brands, and holding on to a considerable chunk of the UK market, Dyson were not rewarded with flawless reviews. The most common complaints referenced their weight, their build which some reviewers said makes cleaning difficult in hard-to-reach spots and their small dust canisters. Most Dyson models ranked in the 30s-50s out of the 142 vacuum cleaners reviewed.

Numatic has been building vacuum cleaners for 40 years in Somerset. Their current manufacturing facilities are in Chard, Somerset, where 600 employees produce around 3,000 vacuum cleaners a day.

Vacuum top 10 highest rated machines:
1. Sebo Automatic 9559GB X1.1
2. Miele S5261 Cat and Dog
3. Numatic Hetty
4. Miele S712 Pets
5. Sebo Automatic X4 Extra
6. Miele Revolution PLUS 5000
7. Sebo X4 Pet
8. Bissell 3760E
9. PHILIPS FC9160HE 912200W
10. Numatic Henry

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About Reevoo.com
Reevoo.com harnesses the power of genuine customer opinion to help shoppers decide what to buy – and to buy with confidence.  Independent and impartial, Reevoo.com collects hundreds of thousands of authentic post-purchase reviews from European shoppers every month.
 
All reviews, favourable and critical, are published on Reevoo’s website, www.reevoo.com, and on retail partner websites adjacent to the products.

In addition to reviews, Reevoo.com offers shoppers comprehensive product information and price comparison data to make finding and buying the right product as simple and convenient as possible.

More than sixty leading retail brands including Tesco Direct, Vodafone, Currys and Ann Summers already use the Reevoo.com service, sharing more than half a million reviews on more than 40,000 products.  

Reevoo.com has offices in London and Paris, was founded in 2005 and is backed by Eden Ventures and Banexi Venture Partners.

Consumers can also keep up-to-date with product news and reviews on Reevoo’s blog www.decidewhattobuy.com

Vacuum cleaners – a history
The first powered cleaner using a vacuum was patented and produced by Hubert Cecil Booth in 1901. He noticed a device used in trains that blew dust off the chairs, and thought it would be much more useful to have one that sucked dust. He tested the idea by laying a handkerchief on the seat of a dinner chair, putting his mouth to the handkerchief, and then trying to suck up as much dust as he could onto the handkerchief. Upon seeing the dust and dirt collected on the underside of the handkerchief he realized the idea could work. Booth created a large device, known as Puffing Billy, driven first by an oil engine, and later by an electric motor.

Booth started the British Vacuum Cleaner Company and refined his invention over the next several decades. Though his "Goblin" model lost out to competition from Hoover in the household vacuum market, his company successfully turned its focus to the industrial market, building ever-larger models for factories and warehouses. Booth's company lives on today as a unit of pneumatic tube system maker QuirepaceLtd.

In 1905 “Griffith’s Improved Vacuum Apparatus for Removing Dust from Carpets" was another manually operated cleaner, patented by Walter Griffiths Manufacturer, Birmingham, England. It was portable, easy to store, and powered by "any one person (such as the ordinary domestic servant)", who would have the task of compressing a bellows-like contraption to suck up dust through a removable, flexible pipe, to which a variety of shaped nozzles could be attached. This was arguably the first domestic vacuum-cleaning device to resemble the modern vacuum cleaner.