My 11 y.o. son actually opened this up and put it all together and used it first. It cleaned his room, with a thicker carpet with ease. When I initially used it, I was a tad disappointed because it didn't seem to pick up dirt on my hardwood floor, but once I emptied the canister, it picked up everything. I even used it on my thick living room carpet, as my bigger vacuum for pet hair was not working well. This picked up all the dog hair on the living room carpet with ease, but filled the canister twice. The only reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 is because the head of the vacuum doesn't stay close to the floor. I kept having to push it down with my foot to stay close to the floor to pick up the dirt. But this did work better than I expected, especially on the thicker carpets.