Miele Complete C3 Comfort Boost EcoLine review: Bagged brilliance

Miele has long been known for its cylinder vacuums, which have changed little in appearance over the years, with their understated but richly-coloured units and stainless steel extension tubes. Some thought that bagged devices such as these would be eradicated by bagless vacuum cleaners but Miele has stuck with the concept, as have many consumers. There’s a wide range of bagged models from the company but here I’m looking at one of the top-end models, the Complete C3 Comfort Boost EcoLine.

With the recent EU regulations on wattage and some tough energy regulations, the Comfort Boost EcoLine neatly walks a balancing act between performance and power efficiency. It has an A-rating for power efficiency, with numerous power settings on offer to strike the correct balance. It matched its quoted EU power rating, drawing just 700W at the plug on its standard setting.

Performance

Its power draw may be low but I was still highly impressed with its cleaning capabilities. This C3 comes with a basic cleaning head, with two settings for carpets and hard floors respectively. It relies purely on suction without the powered, spinning brush you get with the Electro Plus model (which costs an additional £130). Even then it whizzed through our tests without any major hitches.

On hard floors it sucked up practically everything at the first time of asking. I poured a cup of cat litter over a carpet and it all went in with only a few passes. I often find a lot of litter falls back out when you turn off the vacuum and shake it, but here only a couple pieces were regurgitated, which was a good result.

I tested it across our standard pair of large shiny tiles, pouring a cup full of fine powder other both. This can be tricky to deal with, but the Miele sucked it no problem in a single slow pass (pictured) and then took a couple more to tidy up the edges. The 275mm head means you should be able to cover plenty of ground quickly.

Using our suction meter the Ecoline acquitted itself respectably. When the bag was empty it provided 21kPa (Kilopascals) of suction power on its standard maximum setting, though you can go to Boost mode to push this up to 24kPa. However, that draws 1200W destroying both its low-noise and low-power credentials. It didn’t lose much suction when the bag was half-full or full (there’s an indicator on the device to tell you how full it is), losing around 1kPa across the board.

We’ve seen vacuums that score much higher than this, of course, but then some of those were drawing three times the amount of power at the wall – to only provide around 50% more suction. All that said, it’s results that count and the Miele C3 Ecoline delivers where it counts.

Bagged vs bagless

All the muck and dust you suck up is going into a bag inside the machine. On the plus side that bag can hold up 4.5l of muck, so you won’t need to change it very often – that’s around double the capacity of a bagless cylinder. Once you’ve sucked it up you’ll never see that muck again, which will appeal to some (particularly allergy sufferers).

The downside is that you will have to buy new bags and filters from time-to-time. Official packs with 4 bags and a new filter cost around £10 a piece, though you can buy much cheaper bags if you wish.

Design

Miele has had a few years (actually a few decades) to perfect the design of its bagged cylinders and I have to say it feels pretty flawless. The foot pedals are a good size and never required a second press; plus the cord tidy button only requires a single tap, you don’t need to hold your foot down on it.

The wheels on the bottom are padded, so it rolls around almost silently and won’t damage your floors. There’s a respectable 7.5m of cable tucked away inside, so you’ve plenty of range before you need to switch plugs.

The middle section pops open to reveal a selection of handy tools for upholstery, crevices and dusting. There’s also a hard floor brush that clips to the side or back of the chassis, though you’ll rarely need this given the main head design, so pretty much everything is fitted inside the machine itself.

The handle is comfortable to hold, with the pipe suspended underneath rather than out of the back, keeping the weight distribution just right. You can switch the power level up and down from the handle, or turn the C3 on and off. It’s easy to adjust the tube length and everything clips together firmly and audibly.

Finally, the lower wattage means the C3 is far quieter than you might expect. It’s rated to 72db at standard power, which is pretty impressive and easy to talk over. You can reduce that down considerably while still doing less-demanding tasks such as a basic weekly once over, by choosing the middle power level and then it’s quiet enough to watch TV or listen to the radio while you clean.

Conclusion

With a £300 list price, and costing around £240 if you shop around, the Miele Complete C3 Comfort Boost EcoLine (SGUG1) isn’t cheap. However if you’re looking for a bagged vacuum then this one just feels so well thought out. It’s power efficient, relatively quiet, brilliantly designed and will cope with anything but deep pile carpet, for which you might want to splash the extra cash for the Electro Plus. I’m still not convinced that bagged cleaners are the best choice for most people, as buying bags is something of a faff, but if you prefer the cleanliness of a bag then this is a great buy. Buy Now from Amazon.