Thanks everyone, I went for this one with a turbo brush as I have carpets.

Yes - the extra £50 on the one I didn't buy also included a turbo brush. I declined on the grounds of no pets and hard floors.

Some of them also have a turbo-brush which actually brushes up hair and fluff, rather than the standard head which just slides over the floor and sucks it up - I find the turbo brush much more effective at getting long hairs up.

Also the cheaper models you have to manually turn the dial on the cylinder to select the suckiness, on the more expensive models there is a control where you hold the tube bit!

Thanks for that ThingOne.

That's what I understood.

So to get technical here, everything that has S5xxx has the same suck and suckiness is what's most important. Is that right? The differences between models then are to do with filters, accessories and other twiddly bits? (Please excuse me if I'm baffling you with scientific lingo. )

I bought one on Sunday!

The series 5 ones are the same machine, same motor, etc but have different attachments, colours (naturally an important criterion), filters. The HEPA filter is the anti-allergy one. You don't need it if you don't have allergies. I bought the one that's £50 cheaper than the allergy one and the man said I could put a £20 allergy filter in it if I needed.

That's the limit of my knowledge .

Bumping now that the bedtime rush is over.

I'm tempted to buy on the basis of the most appealing colour, but as it'll be in a cupboard most of the time it wouldn't be an ideal way to make a decision.

I want to buy a Miele cylinder vacuum cleaner and there are loads of different models at different prices on the John Lewis website but not much information about the actual difference between them. Could anyone enlighten me please?