Obviously I like buying things once and for all, but I feel it’s extra difficult with anything electrical because I just don’t know that much about it personally, and I can’t exactly check the insides.
So lately I’ve been wanting to buy an upright vacuum. I don’t know if there are more durable brands, what kind of accessories I should consider to make my life easier, what budget I should consider, or what characterics are more likely to make it shorter lived than others.
We usually start big purchases like that by reading The Wirecutter. We don’t always buy what they recommend, but they’ll suggest some criteria that we may or may not feel are important and review a number of products. When the Internet is a swamp of reviews-for-pay and SEO non-reviews, Wirecutter has the advantage that they actually evaluate products.
As for vacuums, we bought a Dyson V15 a few months ago. It’s big, which makes it inconvenient both to operate and to store, but it sucks mightily (in a good way). We haven’t used the plug-in canister vacuum at all for a couple of years now.
Our older Dyson, a V6, has new batteries and has recently been cleaned, and is relegated to bedroom cleaning. It doesn’t suck nearly as well.