Dewalt DC500 Canister Wet/Dry Vacuum

This is a well-built tool that works fine for limited uses. It is not cheap, but is designed and built relatively well. It performs better than any similar tool that I'm aware of.

By "limited uses," I mean that it will not replace a regular shop vacuum. Both the speed and the volume of air (CFM) are limited, and the hose is too narrow for the type of debris a large shop vac is capable of handling. This tool is best used for those occasions when you need a quick, portable vac to pick up light dust and debris. Or, in our case, hair. Let me explain...

We have two dogs that shed constantly. Fortunately, we also have wood floors throughout the house. One of our dogs has very fine, very long hair that accumulates in clumps which seem to crop up overnight. It really is unbelievable how quickly these hair piles can appear.

We've tried numerous approaches to controlling the hair, and it finally became apparent that a shop vac did the best job. Unfortunately, my shop vac is rather bulky and hard to maneuver, which meant that the hair would typically collect for several days before it was swept up. And nobody in our household was jumping at the chance to drag the shop vac around.

Enter the DeWalt vac. This tool is perfect for this use. The suction is strong enough to easily pick up the hair, while not being strong enough to bother surrounding furniture, drapes, etc. It also does a great job picking up dust on baseboards, chair molding, window sills, ceiling fans, etc. And yes, it will pick up sawdust and construction debris, but at a slower rate than you may be accustomed to.

One drawback to the tool is that they don't include many accessories. There's a crevice attachment and a small sweeping head, but that's about it. The biggest oversight may be the lack of a wand, meaning that you have to bend over to reach the floor with the hose.

Fortunately, the hose is a standard 1 1/4" size, so all our regular vacuum attachments fit just fine. I have permanently swiped the 2-piece wand from our carpet vac, and have also picked up some brush-ended attachments, so that we can now dust with the vac quite easily. This has really made a nice difference when it comes to dusting baseboards, blinds, and ceiling fans. DeWalt probably decided against a wand in order to keep the tool portable, but I think it was a serious oversight. With the wand, this tool really shines - you can quickly and easily reach areas around your house that were just too cumbersome with a regular vacuum, and as I mentioned the power isn't strong enough to worry about sucking up unwanted items.

You can also pick up a set of small brushes and crevice tools from your local home store that are designed to work with another brand, but which work quite well with the DeWalt. These are great for cleaning small areas such as keyboards and car dashboards, or the cracks between the seats that are too small to fit a regular crevice tool.

Finally, a tip on batteries: If you're considering purchasing this tool, you're probably already aware that it doesn't come with a battery or charger, and that these items add roughly $150 to the purchase price if bought at your local hardware super store. Well, may I suggest eBay? You can find any number of reputable sellers there, and should be able to get an 18 volt battery and a charger for about $75. Make sure the battery is new, however - a used battery may be next to useless.

It's also worth noting that DeWalt makes a 15-minute charger for their batteries. If you anticipate heavy usage for this tool, you might want to go this route. A fully charged battery seems to last about 10-15 minutes of steady use, which is typically more than enough to get most jobs done. But more often than not, you'll pick up the vacuum only to find that the battery hasn't been charged recently. Fortunately, the vac can then be plugged in, but this takes away one of the major benefits of the tool - instant usage. A 15-minute charger runs about $75 on eBay, whereas a 1-hour charger runs about $25.

Some more assorted pros and cons:

Pros:
- good quality hose with great flexibility and stretch - important in a device that needs good reach but compact storage
- washable Gore-tex filter! nice touch.
- easy opening for emptying.

Cons:
- switch could be better located, like on the handle rather than on the body of the unit. That would make it easy to only run the vacuum when needed, saving battery life
- battery access is cumbersome - the battery fits oddly, and the latch for the battery compartment gets covered by the wrapped-up cord. This is important, since the battery will be removed constantly for charging
- attachment storage - the little rack for the attachments seems awkward - they slide in from the bottom - why? (update - we've figured out how to slide the tools in from the top - each tool has a specific spot. It's still a poor design.)

All in all, this has been a nice solution for our specific needs, and we've already been using it regularly. It's not cheap, but no professional tools are, particularly specialty tools like this.