I'm late to the party, but I feel compeleed to say that Riccar has my loyalty now. After going through a string of cheapo vacs, I was steered by a gentleman who runs an actual Vacuum-only store towards Riccar, and based on what I needed he steered me towards the cheapest model he carried. That was about a decade ago, and it's still doing its job just fine.

I can't say one thing or another about Dyson other than the whole campaign for it has something of a Bose-stink about it that makes me cringe.