The Oreck XL is one of Oreck’s most affordable models and we are sure their more costly models are more likable. That being said let jump into the Pros first due to the fact there are a few things to really like about it.
As I mentioned the price is very good, actually at current rates you could buy four Oreck Xl’s to one Windsor XP so keep that in mind when I get into the negative stuff at a later time on.
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Another Pro is that its really light, actually it would be the lightest full sized upright available on the market at only 9 pounds with a 1.2 pound handle weight which means its on average about half the weight of its rivals which is crazy.
Related to that its got a fairly exclusive handle design which they call a “Helping Hand Handle” which apparently has received an award from the Arthritis foundation for Ease of Use” So yeah the Oreck blows away its competition in terms of weight ease of use.
Its a commercial vacuum cleaner so it had a few cool functions that are meant to make it last longer and be easier to self-service, one of my favorites being the Non marring bumper which provides protection to the plastic, its seems easy to substitute and I think its an fabulous idea that I wish was available on each and every vacuum.
I also really liked that it came with an additional belt that was built in into the vacuum cleaner, also that the belt itself was ultra easy to substitute by unscrewing the access door on the side, another feature that i’ve never seen in the past but would like to.
Its got a long 35’ cord which seems sturdy, its not quite assuming that its commercial rivals but its close.
Another pro was that it does have a little plastic squegee on the floor head which means it can vacuum cleaner hard floors without scattering debris It does not have a brush roll shutoff switch but the plastic seal is practically as excellent.
The final pro is that it has appropriate power, we tested its flow of air at the cleaner head at measured it at 52cfm which is pretty much all the same as the Windsor and Sanitaire Eon, one cfm more than the Windsor actually. Its not precisely a large amount but its pretty excellent and it performed really well on the crevice pickup test, picking up the debris in both crevice sizes in just two passes, which I think is the finest yet in this series, so its efficiency on tile floors would be very good.
Ok so lets move on to the negative stuff.
Its filtration was pretty poor, this isn’t surprising for a vacuum cleaner in this budget range but in our quality of the air test it scored a whopping 3600, that is 3600 2.5 micron sized particles in the air, where a passing score is 100. For contrast the Proteam and the Windsor both scored around 54.
To be fair in similar tests done by the Carpet and Rug Institute other Orecks have passed this test like the U2000R and the Magnesium’s, Ill link all the Orecks that have passed the CRI fitration tests in the description below.
But as far as this one with the ordinary case it was an acutely shoddy showing.
As I mentioned it can vacuum cleaner hard floors without scattering debris but that does not mean it was in particular excellent on hard floors. I found that it took a few passes to get fine debris, and its was pretty considerably limited with the size of debris, havine problem with fruity pebbles but still getting them, but unable to get cheerios or something larger. It mightn’t be such a big deal if there was a hose or wand but Orecks don’t have wands or hoses, so you really are stuck with picking up larger debris.
On carpet it was just okay with debris pickup, it did have problem with additional large debris which is kind of rare on carpet. On our deep clean test though, where we rub sand into a medium pile carpet and weigh the bags in the past and after, it had the worst score yet in this series at only 87%
It was also extremely loud, by far the loudest in this series maybe the loudest vacuum cleaner i’ve ever tested. I measured 91 dba.