The Hoover vacuum cleaner I had been using for more than twenty years just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Over the years, it had become inordinately loud and it made the carpeting look worse.
Thus began my search for a new vacuum. I tend to overanalyze everything and this was no exception. I consulted with Consumer Reports. I asked my friends for advice. I googled like crazy. I watched countless infomercials. (It’s amazing how many infomercials are about floor cleaning.) And I went to every store in town, sometimes more than once, talking to salesmen of varying degrees of product knowledge, trying to find the best vacuums and the best deals. 
A lot has changed since the last vacuum was purchased. We now have bagged or bagless vacuums. It seemed as though making a choice between the two was probably going to be the most crucial part of deciding what vacuum cleaner to buy.
The advantage of traditional bagged vacuum cleaners is that they are somewhat easier to work with. Emptying the bag is the only real regular maintenance you need to do with them. When the bag fills up, you change it.
The advantage of bagless vacuums is that there is no bag. Bags can be expensive and bags are sometimes difficult to find in the stores. Finding bags for the twenty some year old Hoover I was discarding was becoming a problem.
The disadvantage of bagged vacuums is that the more filled the bag gets, the more suction it loses. It’s not a linear progression either. The fuller the bag doesn’t mean the worse the suction. The suction gets pretty sucky very early in the bag filling process. When the bag is maybe an eighth full, you’ve lost way more than one eighth of your suction.
The disadvantage of bagless is that there are filters that need to be changed every so often. This will cut down on your suction and increase your operating cost. In comparing the cost of the bags with the cost of the replacement filters, I found the yearly costs are comparable. You only have to change the filters once but they are expensive enough to equal the cost of a year’s worth of bags.
A bagless vacuum needs to be emptied often, sometimes after each use. Changing a bag is done every few months, for most users, which makes them easier to use. Allergy sufferers are often told to use bagged vacuums because emptying bagless vacuums tends to release a lot of dust into the air.
The plusses and minuses of each style were pretty equal. Good vacuums can be found with each style. Making the decision can almost be a coin toss. As long as you don’t go too cheap, and even sometime when you do, you aren’t likely to find a truly bad vacuum cleaner.