Why We Love Bagless Vacuum Cleaners

When buying a new vacuum, there are plenty of questions to ask, including whether or not you want a vacuum cleaner with bags or without bags. The most important impact this will have on your vacuuming is how you empty dirt and debris from your vacuum when you’re done cleaning. At BISSELL, most of our vacuum cleaners are bagless. The first one we offered that didn’t require bags was our CleanView® vacuum. We launched it way back in 2001, and never really looked back after that. Of the many upright vacuums we offer today, just a few are still bagged. The rest are bagless. We made the decision to make more bagless vacuums years ago, for several reasons, and we’ll break it all down for you in this post.

Cat’s Out of the Bag

When you think about vacuum cleaners with bags, you’re probably taken back a few years, maybe even decades. We can remember it so clearly, giving the bag a good poke with our finger to see how full it is, making sure it's not too full before vacuuming. If it was even half full, we all knew we'd have to prepare to empty it and hope we had a new bag on hand. Bagged vacuums were a common way of cleaning for a long time, but these days it can actually be hard to find a bagged vacuum. We still sell a Powerlifter™ Pet Bagged Vacuum Cleaner and a CleanView® Bagged Pet Upright Vacuum Cleaner for people who enjoy some of the more traditional methods of cleaning. We also offer a PowerForce® Bagged Vacuum exclusively at Walmart stores. We know replacement bags can be hard to come across at certain stores, so we still sell them on our website. But just like we revolutionized the way people mop with our CrossWave® products, we also revolutionized the way people vacuum when we started designing bagless vacuum cleaners all those years ago.

Saving Money with Bagless Vacuums

If you have a vacuum with bags, those bags need to be replaced somewhat frequently. A three-pack of bags costs around five dollars, give or take some depending on the kind of vacuum you have. While five dollars doesn’t seem like much, it has the potential to add up if you vacuum often. With bagless vacuums, you don’t have to buy replacement bags because they collect dirt and debris in a dirt tank built right on the vacuum. However, bagless vacuums do require some filter maintenance to ensure you’re protecting your investment. They have two filters, the post-motor filter and the pre-motor filter. They can be washed, but we also recommend changing the filters out as often as you would change your furnace filters, usually twice a year is enough. Our Febreze filters are great for many reasons, including letting you know when they need to be changed. Since they leave a fresh scent behind after you clean, if you start to notice that scent is a little weaker or completely lacking, it’s time to order a new filter. While replacement filters can cost a little more than vacuum bags, they’re beneficial in that they’re not as time sensitive as having a vacuum bag that’s full and a house that desperately needs to be vacuumed!

An Easier Empty

If saving money is not a good enough reason to ditch the bag, we’ve got a few more benefits up our sleeves to convince you to make the change. Emptying vacuum cleaners with bags was always easy, all you had to do was toss the full bag in the trash. So, we made sure to spend a lot of time making our bagless vacuums easy to empty too, even easier than removing the bag and tossing it in the trash. This is what led us to develop the innovative Pet Hair Eraser® Turbo Plus Vacuum Cleaner that comes with a Hands-Free Empty Dirt Tank. Just as the name suggests, it keeps you from having to touch the yucky debris inside the dirt tank. It’s all thanks to a Cyclonic Pet Hair Spooling System™ that keeps debris together in the tank and lets gravity do the work when it’s time to empty.

“I love this vacuum. It pushes with ease on my carpet and dog hair doesn't get caught around the brush… It gets up so much dirt and pet hair. I have three dogs and this vacuum cleans up beautifully after them. It is easy to empty. I love that it is bagless and I don't have to purchase bags.”^* Pam, 5-star review

^*Reviews from BISSELL.com as of 5/17/19. Some reviewers may have received a free product in exchange for an honest review.

We also have vacuums like CleanView® Rewind Pet that are engineered with an Easy Empty Dirt Tank. That tank empties in a similar way, with just the touch of a button – making it easy!

                “It is very simple to empty the bin and I love that it doesn't need bags.”* BHawn, 5-star review

“I like the large canister and [it] takes quite a bit for it to get full but when it does, it is very easy to remove and empty. It seems like it's very durable and will hopefully last me years. I love this vacuum.” Samm, 5-star Review

^*Reviews from BISSELL.com as of 5/17/19. Some reviewers may have received a free product in exchange for an honest review.

Another important consideration of a bagless vacuum vs. a vacuum with bags is that you can empty them any time you want. You don’t have to wait until the bag is full to empty the dirt and debris you've collected. If you have a bagless vacuum, you can empty the tank whenever you feel like it. It doesn’t matter if it’s one-sixteenth or fifteen-sixteenths of the way full – go ahead, empty on your timeline!