For upright fanatics who want it all, the SEBO Felix Premium offers excellent cleaning power and filtration, comfortable handling, and an extra-long warranty. It also has a variety of different designs and functions that you can choose from.
It’s an exceptional cleaner. Whether presented with glitter, fine dust, fur, or cereal, this model hungrily scarfed up more debris than almost any other vacuum we tested. It was the top performer in both the upright and canister categories at picking up sand (only the much heavier, more expensive Riccar Tandem Air Deluxe did better), and it excelled in our baking soda test. While its electric cleaner head struggled with baking soda close to baseboards, its parquet brush, designed for delicate bare wood floors, picked up baking soda in one pass (both parallel and head-on, which is rare).
It comes with two effective, well-designed cleaner heads. The SEBO Felix comes with a motorized cleaner head with a self-propelling brush that helps dig up and agitate dirt and ferret it up into the vacuum. You can adjust the cleaner head to four heights, which helps it work effectively on bare floors and low-pile, medium-pile, and thicker carpets. (Other upright vacuums we tested tended to jam on thicker carpets.)
The Felix also has a warning light that flashes if the height needs to be adjusted or the cleaner head becomes clogged, a convenient feature that most other vacuums we tested lacked. It is particularly easy to remove the brush roll if it does get tangled: It pops out with the click of a button, while other machines require tools and finagling.
The non-motorized parquet brush has soft horsehair bristles designed for delicate wood flooring. Although not quite as flexible and nimble as that of the Miele Complete C3 Calima PowerLine, in our tests, the Felix’s parquet brush worked great at removing baking soda from bare floors and along baseboards where the motorized cleaner head struggled.
It’s comfortable, lightweight, and quiet. The SEBO Felix feels light and comfortable to maneuver. Its self-propelling cleaner head glides smoothly across all types of carpets, rugs, and thresholds. Unlike other machines we tested, the Felix didn’t make wheel tracks or streaks, leaving the carpet in pristine condition.