Legitimate shop vac reviews?

[Alan Heffernan]

We are looking for a general purpose vacuum for a shop. Not looking for a dust collector but just a simple, 12 gallon or larger, robust, powerful vacuum for shop cleanup duty (dust, sawdust, wood shaving, metal chips/shaving, and dirt). I searched for some independent legitimate reviews without too much success.

Links to legitimate (independent) reviews would be appreciated.

Thanks for the help.

[Joe Jensen]

I have the Rigid 1851 from Home Depot. I use it with bags for general cleanup. This is maybe my 4th shop vac in 31 years. I had a Sears ones before and this one is dramatically better. I think with the 2" hose, most in this price point have the same suction. This one is very quiet and the cart makes it easy to move around. I also have an older WAP drywaller vac that is HEPA certified and has auto-start and filter cleaning. The Rigid was like $120 on sale, $150 full price. A new version of the WAP is now branded Alto and it's like $900. I use the Rigid to clean the floors, tools, etc and the WAP when connected to small power tools like sanders, etc.

[Barry McFadden]

I have the Rigid 1680 model from Home Depot and I think it's great...I would highly recommend a Rigid...

[Richard McComas]

Rigid get good reviews but from what I've been reading if you ever need motor brushes your out of luck.

[Joe Jensen]

Rigid get good reviews but from what I've been reading if you ever need motor brushes your out of luck.

Wouldn't you be able to make some out of generic brushes?

[Mike Henderson]

The Ridgid I have has been good. The ShopVac brand I had before that was too loud and I gave it away.

As far as reviews, why not ask people here on the forum? They (we) use those kind of vacs every day. About as independent as you're going to get.

Mike

[lowell holmes]

I have a 6 gallon Shop Vac from Lowes and a larger 12 gallon Rigid from Home Depot.

I'm satisfied with both of them.

[Greg Peterson]

I like my Ridged shop vac.

[Peter Kuhlman]

Depending upon your needs determines the proper vac to consider. Your description would seem to be handled well by the Home Depot Rigid vacs. I have their second largest model and it will do what you describe easily. Not a lot of differences in vacs in this $100-150 price range. All are fairly loud and have good suction. I have used mine to even suck out pool liners. Just wish they could suck and drain at the same time as it will fill up quickly with water due to the tremendous suction. Would never use it as a tool vacuum for sanding and such due to the noise and no variable speed. I use Festool vacs for that.

[Frank Drew]

Can't help specifically except to advise you to buy as good as you can afford; I had an inexpensive 6 gal. shop vac (Grainger?) for many years and absolutely hated it, but as aggravating as it was to use (very loud, very easy to tip over, lousy hose, etc.) it worked so I kept it. Know how enjoyable it is to get a new tool? Finally throwing that thing away gave me that kind of warm feeling all over!

[Frederick Skelly]

I like my Ridged shop vac.

Me too .........

[Alan Heffernan]

Thanks folks for the recommendations.

The few independent reviews I could find leaned toward the Rigid shop vacs. None of the reviews had any real data and they were quite subjective, therefore my post here looking for something more definitive.

Guessing we will just move on and buy a couple of Rigids and be done with it. We will likely equip one with the washable filter element since it will get contaminated with coolant soaked chips from a metal lathe and CNC mill.

[Rich Riddle]

I tend to give a lot of consumer reviews credence over independent reviews. While individuals might have hidden agendas, hundreds or thousands of individuals will not have that same hidden agenda. The problem with an independent review is that the reviewer had one product on one day. The reviewer might have lucked out and reviewed one of the few good products from the assembly line. I use my Fein for duties you discuss. It has the advantage of the filter and also being able to be attached to some small tools when using them. It's the most powerful one I found, but it isn't inexpensive.

[Alan Heffernan]

I like data and good solid comparisons. That is the reason I posted here was to ask if anyone had seen one. I have not been able to find any on my own.

In my shop I currently have Fein, Festool, Shopvac, Oneida and Jet vacuums to dust collectors. I am looking for a robust vacuum simply for shop cleanup as described. We are setting up a new shop and I would not willing to put wet aluminum shavings/cuttings contaminated with cutting fluid and coolant in my Fein for example. The only one I have that I would sacrifice is the Shopvac and it would die quickly if I used it for the service I described. By the way, I have a complete disdain for the Shopvac because of its lack of stability when dragging it around and it stops up almost instantaneously via filter blinding anyway. I have relegated it to the garage for vacuuming cars and empty it often to keep the filter clean.

Yes, folks can give you their opinions and I appreciate them sharing their experience. However I was looking for an independent comparison with some data to support the review. Subjective, marketing ploys are all that I could find and are not interesting to me at all.

[Ben Rivel]

Ive never seen such a comparison either. Dont think it exists. Too many models and they are replaced too often with newer model numbers to keep up. Sounds to me that with as many vacs as you own you would know better than most whats been good, what hasnt and why. User opinions like that are about as good as weve got to go off of in the sop vac market.