Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I don’t like long reviews at all but I highly recommend reading this one. It seems appropriate for such an expensive vacuum..... I’ve had a Miele C3 for several weeks now and researched vacuums obsessively before buying while my 2 year old and 4 month old sons slept. As a stay at home mom with a toddler boy and a baby boy who will be a toddler in short order + 3000 sqft of carpet, my vacuum is literally my life. It’s a fixture in my home like a chair or table. My husband and I have had a Kenmore canister vac for approximately 7 years and it has been extremely durable. It still works. If your budget tops out at $500 I highly recommend the Kenmore. The Miele, however, is much better. But of course you’ll pay for it. It’s worth it. Consumer Reports is always my jumping off point whenever I am looking to buy an appliance, vacuum or what-have-you. Followed by reading amazon reviews. Pro-tip: Pay the $7 one month access fee to see consumer reports ratings. When it comes to vacuums, consumer reports rated the Miele Marin in the top spot. After doing my own research and then buying a Miele I realized that this is a pretty accurate rating, all things considered, but key details were not included in the consumer reports ratings for Miele vacuums. Details relevant enough that I am compelled to write this review. The Miele Marin is of course a great vacuum. If you rarely if ever vacuum OR budget isn’t a big deal to you (like having to spend a few hundred bucks on additional attachments won’t faze you regardless if you can afford it or not) then surely you will be happy with this vacuum as you will be unlikely to care about or even encounter the ways in which it is lacking. The first thing to understand about the Marin is that it is a Miele C3 vacuum. Meaning, the canister on the Marin is called a C3 model and the exact same canister is found on ALL Miele C3 vacuums albeit in different colors. Miele also makes a C2 and a C1 canister which have lower prices for legitimate reasons. But it’s important to understand for the remainder of my review that the Marin is a C3. For those of you with young kids it’s important to know that a benefit of the C3 is that the small attachments are hidden in a compartment on the canister. On the lower priced C2 the attachments are stored on the outside of the canister in such a way that you’ll never be able to find your attachments again because your kids will take them. If you have the option of a local vacuum store that sells Miele, go there. Like really go there and do not buy online. You are not saving money on amazon when it comes to Miele vacuums. First of all the dealer prices I encountered were often LOWER or the SAME as amazon. Second, authorized dealers have 2 better Miele C3 models than the Marin that only they can sell. The one I bought is called a “Homecare” C3 that is the same price as the Marin but comes with several hundred dollars worth of additional tools/attachments. Including a 2 foot flexible crevice tool that will change your life. To be clear you can buy this tool separately to use on the Marin, but it’s included on the Homecare. The homecare C3 also has the option of purchasing only some features you want, which is of course reflected in a lower price $899 vs $1099). Conversely, dealers sell an even more upgraded (and expensive) C3 from the Marin, priced around $1499, that you may be more interested in. This, like the Homecare, isn’t found online. If warranty is important to you, the warranty on the Homecare model is 10 years. And buying at a dealer has the obvious benefit of being able to easily return the vacuum if you don’t like it or want a different model. The main thing to know about the Marin here on amazon is that it comes standard with the top of the line motorized Miele brush head. In this case top of the line isn’t necessarily better. Especially if you have little kids who break the unbreakable and somehow get water on everything. It has LED lights and electronic height controls. It’s also slightly lower profile but not so much that it matters. You probably do not want this top of the line motorized brush head and Instead what you want is the next level down, also a motorized brush head, but with manual pedal controls and no lights. In other words no electronics. Your 2 year old pours something on it, drops it in the toilet or throws it down the stairs, it still works. Whereas the top of the line electronic brush head has maintenance problems caused by its electronics. This according to an honest dealer. It’s also time consuming to fix. While the warranty will of course cover it completely, reliability suffers as you will be unable to vacuum and will have to take it to a dealer for a fix. In my opinion the electronics are simply not worth the potential hassle or cost. But should you really want the top of the line brush head it is available as an option on the homecare model and comes standard on the $1499 C3. The other standard feature on the Marin that you probably don’t need/want and is optional on the Homecare are the electronic off/on, and suction level controls on the handle. We are all used to controlling a canister vacuum this way. But the standard Miele way is with buttons on the canister itself and with a switch on the handle which activates the motor on the brush head. You use your foot or even the wand to hit them. The controls on the handle are relatively new and like the electronic brush head they can break and take longer to fix. Therefore it’s my opinion that they aren’t worth the additional cost or potential hassle despite the fact that obviously they are nice to have. Another thing to keep in mind if you’re budget conscious and see that there are less expensive Miele C3’s such as the Calima is that Miele, for whatever reason, has not made its C3 vacuums streamlined. This means that although all C3’s are the same, you cannot - say- buy the lower priced Calima C3 which does not come with a motorized brush head and then buy the motorized brush head separately. It will not attach to the wand and hose that comes with the Calima. You’ll need to buy a new wand and hose too. Which will cost you the difference in price between the Calima and more expensive C3’s such as the Marin. This is why there are so many differently priced models of Miele vacuums. It’s one of the reasons why I strongly recommend going to a dealer. If you’ve done lots of research you probably know that the absolute best vacuums for carpet are a handful of uprights such as the moderately priced Oreck, the expensive Kirby, the Miele upright or the Kenmore pet upright. The issue with these is their lack of versatility and/or emissions (filtering). One idea I considered was buying the $699 Miele upright with hepa filtration upright AND the less expensive $299 C1 for everything I’d use attachments for. But this still would require carrying the heavy upright and the canister up and down stairs. No thanks. And it’s not THAT much better on carpet that it’s worth it. Also I’ll add that the modestly priced Oreck is so effective on carpet and is also light-weight because it doesn’t trap as much in its bag and has no attachments. The Miele has great filtration and cleaning power but is also very heavy. So is the Kenmore. The Kirby is hands down the best for carpet but isn’t user friendly at all. So I kept arriving back at a Miele canister. And my Miele C3 Homecare cleans carpet ridiculously well. Which brings me to my final point.... Make sure that you buy a box of bags with your new Miele. Despite the fact that it comes with one. You might be thinking that you won’t need to replace it for a while so you’ll just buy bags later. This is almost surely not going to be the case if you have a lot of carpet and your prior vacuum is a standard Kenmore, shark, Hoover, etc. Reason being that the Miele is SO effective at cleaning AND filtering that you will probably block up the Miele bag pretty quickly with all the stuff your current vacuum doesn’t suck out of the carpet or furniture. This happened to me. As a side note I assume this means that the Miele is well suited for allergy and asthma sufferers. In conclusion the Miele C3 is a phenomenal vacuum that is worth the cost regardless. But you’ll get a better deal and more options at a vacuum store/dealer.