RIDGIDWet Dry Vacuums VAC3000 Portable Wet Dry Vacuum Cleaner for Car, Garage or In-Home Use, 3-Gallon, 3.5 Peak Horsepower Wet Dry Auto Vacuum Cleaner for Car

I live in an apartment but still do a ton of woodworking...sometimes in my living room (yikes). My balcony has that outdoor carpet that traps EVERYTHING and the DeWald hand vac wasn't cutting it and I certainly didn't want to use my nice vacuum to clean up a mess of wood shavings.I decided to buy this on an impulse and I am SO happy I did. This thing is amazing. It gets everything out of my annoying carpet and also works nicely as a dust catcher when I'm cutting things. The size if perfectly compact but still offers plenty of room for big cleaning jobs. I've not used it on anything wet, but I am looking forward to testing out that feature at some point.

Great product

Got this as a portable option for my husband since his shop and garage are not together. He loves it and so do I. Easy to carry around if the mess is far away from where you have it stored. Light weight, good suction and well built. Sure, it isn't as big as some shop vacs, but when is the last time you really used and filled the entire shop vac you have at home? I did once in 15 years. My husband is pretty rough on his things but this has lasted for him and is easy to maintain. Highly recommend one of these! Wish I would have bought one sooner.

I bought this to replace a small shop vac that has served me well but has developed bad bearings. Rather than replace it with another one as I have done twice before, I tried this one. There are a lot of good things about this vac. It has a nice squarish shape and places for the hose, nozzle, cord, and brush that make it easy to stow. It has great suction. It has better build quality than the shop vac even though they're both plastic.Here's what I don't like. This vac was made for cleaning cars and I'm sure it's great at that. For around the shop it needs more attachments. The hose is a larger size so normal attachments don't fit. Look for ones used on larger vacs. It has an unusual connection on the vac end with a little latch, so it wants a proprietary hose, or you could splice a standard hose onto the end of the one it comes with. For general purposes, the hose could be a few feet longer and lighter duty. It extends but it takes enough pull that the vac will skid along the floor instead. The cord needs to be about 5' longer.The bags that come with it should be thrown out. Even with the pleated filter removed the dust bag will reduce the suck to super wimpy. It's hard to believe they didn't test this. Also, the bags look like they are really made for another vac. I put a bag from my festool vac in there and the great suck returned. It also sucks greatly with the pleated filter.So far I like this better than my old one. It's more powerful and easier to manage and stow. Now I want to see how it holds up.

I use this to clean my guinea pig's cage out. It's got lots of suction (it's a little loud, but not horribly so). The bags are worthless--I thought I needed the bags so I ordered more, but I can't get the thing to work with bags in it. It has a little slider thingy on the hose to adjust the suction, which is REALLY useful so that I don't keep sucking up the fleece bedding in my guinea pig's cage--I just slide it all the way open. When I'm vacuuming hay off the carpet around the cage, I close it all the way and it makes quick work of the hay. The attachment that it comes with is pretty handy--I use it exclusively instead of the bare hose. I have never really needed the little LED light that comes on the attachment, and I kind of feel that it's a bit of a gimmick, but it may be useful for auto detailing. I don't know. This is a good basic shop vac that stores well in my house.