What is the Miele Complete C3 Celebration Electro EcoLine Plus?
This is one of Miele’s flagship energy efficient cylinder vacuum cleaners. It’s also the first Miele cleaner to achieve a 4A EU rating – that is A for energy, exhaust dust, carpet and hard floor cleaning. It has an 800W motor and has an electrically powered Turbobrush – other Miele cleaner’s we’ve reviewed have air powered brushes.
The C3 Celebration aims to offer the best of both upright and cylinder cleaners thanks to its ElectroPlus head, which is actually larger than the floorheads on many upright cleaners. It’s also ideal for allergy sufferers thanks to the 11-stage dust filtration system that gives the vacuum it’s a rating for exhaust dust. The C3 Celebration isn’t without some issues, however, which just goes to prove the EU ratings don’t tell the full story.
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The large ElectroPlus head has a motorized head that's great on deep pile carpets
Miele Complete C3 Celebration Electro EcoLine Plus – Accessories
The hero of this Miele cylinder cleaner package is the enormous ElectroPlus head with its mains powered brush. It’s big, powerful and offers six-step height adjustment for various carpet piles – the most we have seen on a cyclinder floorhead.
Unlike brush bars powered by the airflow, this powered turbobrush bar spins with a consistent (and most efficient for cleaning) speed and does not slow down even in the deepest pile carpets. The brush bar itself is designed to simultaneously beat and sweep your carpet for a deep clean, while leaving it looking combed and refreshed.
On the downside, power to the ElectroPlus head is run via a loose cable that must be attached to the cleaner and runs down the tapered tube attached by clips. This is an unusually inelegant solution for Miele and also means swapping between the powered floorhead and the normal hard floor one or other tools is a complete faff. We also wonder why, considering there is power to the ElectroPlus floorhead, it doesn’t have a light – a feature we’ve seen, and liked, on rival cleaners.
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There are plenty of tools to choose from, too. In addition to the upholstery brush, dusting brush and crevice tools stored beneath the lid, you also get a dedicated lightweight hard floor head with stiff nylon bristles and a standard floorhead with a switch to convert between carpet and hard floor use. Given the lower power of Miele’s EcoLine models, we were disappointed to see that the company’s excellent AirTeQ head, designed for just such machines, was not included.
The newly designed and quite chunky EcoComfort handle is home to its own quick dusting brush, which can be pulled forward into action when the tubes are removed. Like many Miele models we have tested the cable length is only average at 7.5m, but the good hose and high-quality metal telescopic tubes compensate and give the C3 Celebration an ample 11-metre cleaning radius.
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Miele Complete C3 Celebration Electro EcoLine Plus – Carpet Cleaning
Putting the C3 Celebration together for use with the ElectroPlus head is far from quick, although all the parts and clips do feel solid and made to last. Once setup, the main handle now feels much like wielding an upright cleaner albeit without the movement flexibility as you are still attached to the cleaner on the floor.
Power up and the C3 Celebration does a very good impression of a good upright cleaner as its main floor cleaning performance is outstanding. Our carpets, from the short loop-pile nylon office tiles to a shaggy bedroom carpet, were cleaned exceptionally well with a single pass on full power and the head never once stuck down through suction or slowed its spinning brush bar. The overall noise is a little higher with the powerhead running at 79dB compared to 77dB without – but both figures are less than the Eco label’s 81dB.
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Before
After
On longer pile, the rotation of the brush bar tends to want to drive the head forward making it very easy to push forward but a little heavier to pull back. We found adjusting the height setting a little higher diminished this effect, but groomed the carpet less.
While the basic cleaning is very good, the ElectroPlus head did not clean as effectively up to the edge as we might have hoped, with some powder residue still visible after a skirting-scraping pass. Also, bear in mind, this is not a cleaner set up for the older or more frail user because manoeuvring the extremely large ElectroPlus head is quite a physical operation and the strip-down and re-build required to swap between heads require some strength on the clips.
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Miele Complete C3 Celebration Electro EcoLine Plus – Hard Floor Cleaning
Using the dedicated and lightweight hard floor head is like dancing with a fairy by comparison and the head glided around our dusty parquet floor like it was on ice. The hose assembly is still quite weighty and chunky, but the main unit follows you with considerably more ease than it does on carpet.
Cleaning results on hard floors were superb with a minor caveat that the flat front to the nylon bristles did tend to push larger dirt and grit in front of the head rather than allow it to pass underneath to be sucked in. Stepped bristles in the front brush would have helped, and a strange omission considering the other floorhead supplied has just such a design. Still, there is no faulting the overall result on hard floor, which was faultless.
Final mention must go to the dusting brush built into the handle. We initially thought this a bit of gimmick, but regular use meant it came into play all the time when using the non-powered heads. You simply unclip the tube, pull the brush forward and pounce on dust and cobwebs with gusto. Sadly it doesn’t work as well when all the cable is attached for the powerhead, as the cable itself restricts the reach and movement of the handle when disconnected from the tubes.