Best henry or miele Hoover?

[Thandeka]

We used Which for our last two Hoover purchases. Both of which were shite. :( so have decided to get either a henry or a miele as I only hear good things about them.
So dear mumsnetters tell me which is the best one to buy, I can't spend another £100 odd quid on another crap Hoover! (oh and I'm a proper slattern so never Hoover until the dust level is" industrial", but sometimes we have a cleaner who will Hoover weeklyish. But we don't have pets just a 6 month old who is a weaning mess!)
Any suggestions?

Have you got pets?

I hate our Miele - great suction but the bag t soon gets filled up. I have just bought a new Henry and boy, as they say, nothing sucks like it! I was fighting to turn the suction down on it and my carpets look really clean and sort of plumped up. Ask for a demo at the shop?

Henry, great on carpet and wood

I've had both and prefer the Miele.

How do you get a Henry to do the stairs? Isn't it a bit unsteady (we had the Henry in a flat)?

The hose is long enough to do half the stairs when you do the hall and half when you do the landing - I just bring it down with me as I go though, it doesn't quite fit on the stair but doesn't go rolling down IYSWIM.

I had a Miele which i loved but my cleaner burnt the engine out by not emptying the bag. I replaced it with a Henry on the basis that they must be idestructible and so far so good!

We've got a Henry - got him a couple of months ago, and our carpets have their pile back for the first time in about three years!

It seems quieter than our old hoover too - the cat doesn't leap up and leg it when I switch it on, for a start. Plus I can hoover all of the stairs without having to unplug it/balance it - brilliant given that I'm 34 weeks pregnant.

Thanks for the info about Henry's being made in the UK - I'd assumed (wrongly) that our manufacturing had entirely ceased for domestic appliances and it had been shipped out wholesale to the Far East. Am delighted to hear that. Should add that we had a Henry when I worked on a landfill site - now that is what you might call a challenging environment. But still love our Miele.

Apparently I'm reanimating a 'dead thread'. But I just wanted to add my tuppence-worth to the hoover discussion. After 17 years of hard labour I have just said goodbye to Henry I, which started growling then smelling very nasty indeed, and bought Henry II. Considered a Miele, but in the end another Henry was less than £100. Why wouldn't I? Long live the King!