Things that suck -- vacs

For the past 5 years or so I have had a lovely Dyson vac, similar to the model in the photo. However, the past several months it has been obviously near complete break down. It has like half the power it used to and the motor sounds wrong. None of the hoses are clogged, so that isn't the problem. After that many years of sucking up tons of dog and cat hair it seems to have had enough.

It took me months to admit to it, but I needed a new vac and I just can't put out the money for a new Dyson. Yesterday I finally replaced it with a Bissell pet hair vac, which was less than 1/3 the price of the Dyson animal vac.

I am not in the least happy about replacing my Dyson with something that isn't a Dyson, but I don't want to pay $500 and really can't afford to. I haven't even taken the new one out of the trunk of my car yet. I will later today and give it a go. At the very least it will have to work better than my half power Dyson, but is it also possible that it could work as well as my Dyson did when it was new? That is my hope -- that I will be very pleasantly surprised. I have sworn for the last 5 years that Dyson is the best vac ever invented, but I would be happy to be wrong.

I will update after I try the new one.