Others say...

"Works great until the wheels fall off...."
This vacuum works great until the plastic molded wheels fall off. The wheel design is poor (cheap), and after less than a year of normal use on my vacuum a wheel came off. Unfortunately once this happens you are done.

Due to this design flaw I don't recommend this vacuum unless you plan to buy a new one each year.

"BETTER THAN MY DYSON... no lie"
I've had my little Optima for three+ years now, and I'm as satisfied with it now (if not more so) than the day I pulled it out of the box. I'm not sure that ANYONE will truly find that "PERFECT" vacuum cleaner, that combines quiet with great performance with no upkeep. Sure, I have to rinse off the filter (I've got two, so I can just switch them out). Sure, it's noisy (did you expect a vacuum cleaner to be quiet?). But man, does this thing perform! My mom gave me her Dyson after she had back surgery, and needed something more lightweight to use. The Dyson is fine for my carpeted areas, but this is the BEST for hardwood floors and tile. It sucks like nobody's business. We have two cats (one longhair) and three rambunctious, messy boys... and plenty of reasons to pull out our vacuum several times a week. This vacuum has never let us down. I truly can't say the same for the Dyson--- it's so huge that it doesn't get to the toe-kick under the kitchen cabinets! Not to mention that it picks hardly anything up on hardwood. But the Optima is our go-to-guy 9 times out of 10.

"Broke after 6 months"
This seemed handy but it broke after 6 months even though I religiously cleaned the filter and emptied the canister. Eureka refused to fix or replace the vacuum because I didn't have my receipt and was quite rude about it too. What a waste of money.

"Nice Idea, Poor Construction"
I was looking for a light weight, simple bag-less vacuum cleaner and the Eureka Optima seemed to fit the bill. At first, I liked it because it was light, small and seemed to do a decent job of cleaning. Then the problems started. First of all, the dirty little secret with bag-less vacuums is that while they have no bag, they have filters. With this vacuum, you need to clean the filter every two or three times you vacuum or it significantly looses suction. Also, as soon as the filter starts to collect dirt, the noise level goes way up on the machine. It's to the point where the vacuum is almost painfully loud to use. Second, as others have noted, the wheels fall off. The wheel are snapped onto the machine and over time, the become loose and fall off. Since it's all plastic, there is very little you can do to reattach them. Would it really have cost them that much more to put real wheels on it? Finally, the machine vents to the front which causes loose debris in front of the vacuum to blow away unless you have it angled just right. Not an issue on carpet but you notice the dust bunnies blowing around when you use it on tile.

Overall, I cannot recommend this unit and mine will soon be going in the trash. It's not worth the frustration of the painfully loud motor and wheels that won't stay attached.

"Broke within less than a year"
My husband and I bought this vacuum after we bought our first house, because it was a good deal, and without any children we figured we didn't need anything too heavy duty. That was $65 down the drain.

The canister is so narrow that hair and dirt clogs the filter within minutes of vacuuming because it has nowhere to go. Eureka claims their filters last 6 months or more, but we were replacing filters every two months (when we could find them, they were difficult to find in stores).

Every time I dumped the canister I had to pick all the hair and dirt off the filter so I could use it the next time, which was an absolutely disgusting task. We tried washing the filter, which Eureka claimed you can do, but it barely removed any dirt, took days to dry, and made the filter smell terrible from then on out.

Then one day about 11 months after we bought the vacuum it just stopped working right in the middle of vacuuming. After searching online we found that many people have had this happen and it's because the motor overheats and shuts itself off. So we let it cool, which took about a half hour, til it felt like there wasn't any heat coming from it anymore. So I turned it back on to finish vacuuming, within 5-10 minutes the vacuum shut off again.

We couldn't get any help from Eureka with why our vacuum was overheating or how to fix it. We threw it out the next day and bought a new vacuum. We won't be buying from Eureka again!