The newest fanciest upright "Cinetic Animal+Allergy" just didn’t have any suction at all, and the Multifloor Big Ball canister had a ton of suction, but really more than I needed and would need filter washing, and it lost a few points of usability by suctioning down on things a little too much to the point that it became a little hard to move the head at times.  The upright Animal 2 also had very good suction and would definitely be my choice if I went with an upright, but would need filter washing and just isn’t as easy to use on my particular house as the canisters seem to be.

 

Not only did the canister win on getting under things like cabinets and the value of a self-winding cord, it also won on ease of use with the hose that I will often use for dusting.  The upright is tidy for storage, but pulls back a lot as you use the hose while the canister stays open and movable.  However, the storage footprint of the upright is obviously a bit easier to manage.

 

Again, the canister won on stairs by simply lifting the head onto them while the upright would need a cleaning tool and the hose to get them.

I vacuumed and tested all over the house, focusing mostly on the performance on my difficult tile and how well they got into the troublesome carpet.  And before long my head was swimming with vacuum data.  Sorting it out was a lot of trouble until I started getting it into a chart.  First listing all the areas of comparison, and then giving each vac a 1 to 10 rating. 

However, that still didn't seem to clear things up... because how is my tiny strip of stairs as valuable as the huge areas of tile and carpet?  Finally I figured out that I first needed to judge the importance of the categories.  For example, I think the most important areas are equal for me in tile and carpet performance, with filter management and ease of use coming next.  While the tiny set of stairs to the seldom used loft that I only need to vac now and then only accounts for a tiny portion of a vacuums value.

On the other hand, if my house had main-traffic stairs that were used many times a day and needed cleaning as often as the carpets, the stair performance would probably account for 20% or more of a vacuums value.  And further, if I had all hard-wood or tile, the carpet cleaning value would be very low and the tile value much higher.

In any case, my particular house values looked like this:

Carpet 35%

Tile 35%

Filters (clean/replace/lifetime-never-mess-with) 15%

Ease of use (including moving around and the fact that I will be dusting a lot with the vac wand) 12%

Throw-carpets 1%

Stairs 1%

Tools 1% (because you can buy tools separately)

Note... the big thing missing from all this is the dollar amount.  That is because this is a big investment and I had already decided to spend whatever it cost to have the best vac for my home.  Obviously this isn't the case for everyone, and I really admit it hurts my head to really think about how much these run.  I have literally spent less for a running car than some of these vacuums cost!  The only saving grace is that there are huge discounts on the vacuums all through Black Friday and "Cyber week".

And so, test after test, and finally even doing the one test I really didn't want to do.... dumping potting soil and working it into the carpet.... I had the data I needed.

 

As an added note, none of the canisters do as well on carpet as the upright Animal 2, though they did better than the upright Cinetic... However, after giving several passes instead of just one on the potting soil, they ended up with close to the same pickup.  And lets face it, when are you going to dump potting soil on your carpet and then only make a single pass with a vacuum to clean it up?

Of course, the marginally larger head on the upright would also give it a much greater advantage if you had a house with almost all carpet in it.

While it doesn't have the best suction, the “Dyson Cinetic Big Ball” canister style has adequate suction for my needs, even on the uneven tile and kitty liter test, and needs no filter changing or filter washing at all.  It did the worst of my top 3 for soil pickup on a single pass in the carpet, but after 6 total passes of each vac, the difference was almost unnoticeable.  The softer long bristles in the air-driven head are probably the culprit in the reduced efficiency on carpet, but a distinct advantage on tile and hard surfaces.  Additionally, I am really liking the canister style for my house instead of the uprights I am used to… it moves very well on my difficult tile, and I will be using it a ton for dusting up higher as well as vacuuming, so it’s hose style is easier for that, too, and the base doesn’t fall over when I stretch out the hose and it doesn't fight me to suck back in the whole time I am dusting.