The Miele S5981 Capricorn is probably the best canister vacuum you can buy. It features Miele's 1200-watt, high-output Vortex motor along with many other first-rate features that not only clean your home but also the air you breathe—like Miele's revolutionary patented bags with spring‐loaded, self‐locking collars that prevent micro-sized, lung-damaging dust and allergens from escaping when you change the bag. And it's all housed in a beautiful midnight purple package weighing a measly 13.5 pounds. In our opinion, the Capricorn is one of the best, if not the best, canister vacuum cleaner on the market today.

The good

One of the first things you'll notice about the Capricorn is how beautifully streamlined and durable it is. At just 13.5 pounds, you can use it anywhere. And accessories that fit nicely into a specifically designed area of the vacuum make it easy to switch between carpet and detail vacuuming tasks. There's a dusting brush for cleaning delicate surfaces, a crevice nozzle for getting between sofa cushions, and an upholstery brush that in our testing quickly sucked up pet hair. We don't know about you, but we really like the idea of on-board tool storage so that our accessories are always at hand.

The Capricorn comes standard with a Parquet Twister tool for cleaning hard floors. But unlike other Miele vacuums that come with a particular carpet brush, the Capricorn offers you a choice of carpet brushes, both of which are motorized. In our testing, the 10½"-wide powerbrush with its floating head and swivel neck got a very high mark for cleaning low- to medium-pile carpets. But the 14"-wide powerbrush, with five level height adjustments, did an outstanding job restoring crushed pile on all carpet densities. We also like that the wider brush comes with an integrated light. It will add a few bucks to the price of your Capricorn—$100 to be exact—but if you're like us, you'll think it's worth it.

All told, our testing of the Capricorn went remarkably well, even when it came to removing pet hair around table and chair legs. Miele provides an electric stainless steel telescopic wand with the Capricorn to provide electrical supply to whichever powerbrush you select. There's no question that they went to great lengths in order to make the Capricorn work as good as it does.

In our testing of the Parquet Twister hard floor tool, the Capricorn did a fantastic job on tile, wood and linoleum. The 33-foot operating radius was particularly impressive, allowing us to clean a very large area without once having to unplug.

You'll be impressed with how easy and clean changing the bag is. We know there's a lot of talk about bagged vs. bagless vacuums, but we'll just be straight with you—most of the bagless models we've tested end up with more dirt on the outside than the inside. Thanks to Miele's revolutionary spring-loaded, self-locking bags, we weren't exposed to any of the dust and allergens we vacuumed up. We won't speculate on what breathing these things can do to your lungs, but there are studies out there that suggest they can increase the risk of heart attacks—or subtract 10 years from a person's life. So why risk it? With an Active HEPA filter standard, the Capricorn captures and retains 99.99% of all pollutants as tiny as 0.3 of a micron.

The not so good

Expensive.

The bottom line

14"-Wide Powerbrush

While all Miele vacuum cleaners feature powerful suction and world-class filtration, there are a few models that stand out from the rest. The Capricorn is one of these. For those who want the absolute best a canister vacuum can offer, this is the model for you. We found you can clean any carpet density imaginable incredibly well if you chose to pay the extra $100 for the 14"-wide powerbrush. But don't let that fool you that the Capricorn is just for carpets. The way the Parquet Twister works on hard floors is equally impressive. In our opinion, the Capricorn is a high-performance canister living at the top of the class. And because it comes standard with an Active HEPA filter that guarantees tiny lung-damaging particles never leak back into the air you breathe, this vacuum should be very appealing to health conscious individuals—as well as those suffering from a range of respiratory ailments. We give the Capricorn our highest mark for its first-rate features, long 7-year motor warranty, impressive cleaning radius and amazing filtration system.