I also own a Fein dust extractor so my comparison is based off of that. I've had a good experience with 3M products in the past, their sandpaper, respirators, painting system, tapes, glues, etc. are all great, so I figured I'd take a chance with the 3M Xtract Dust extractor. This extractor feels like it was engineered and then never used by an actual person. The good (in no particular order): - The front wheels lock so it won't roll around in your truck/van on the way to a job. - There is a built in cord wrap. - There is a built in place to store 2 nozzles, like a brush and a crevice tool. - Adjustable airflow. - Red light on the dash telling you if suction is restricted/low. - Automatic filter cleaning. It has 2 HEPA filters which are cleaned alternatingly so that you don't lose suction while the filter cleaning happens. - Long 15 foot hose. - Long and nice 15 foot rubbery (not vinyl) power cord. - Extractor starts when attached tool starts, also works with air tools. - It is quiet, 69 dB. - Can be used as an extension cord for your tools without turning the extractor on. - The top has a nice carrying handle for carrying it down stairs etc. The top is also shaped in a way that you can use it to temporarily store some items without them falling off the extractor. I use it to throw my safety glasses, hearing protection, respirator, etc. while not in use. - Seems to maintain good suction even with clogged up filters. - Lightweight until it gets full. The bad (in no particular order): - It feels cheaply made in some regards. - The knob to adjust the vacuum motor speed is small and cheap feeling, it wobbles, and there is almost no resistance required to turn it. Because of this the knob will turn itself down regularly when the automatic filter cleaning cycles. I have had to turn the vacuum back up dozens of times in the last few weeks of usage. My Fein extractor has + and - buttons for speed control which have literally never once adjusted the speed without my pushing them. - The extractor does not come with any attachments for vacuuming, like a brush tool or crevice tool. Kind of annoying at this price point. The ones 3M offers for sale do not even fit this hose. - The hose that it comes with is very stiff and narrow with sharp ridges that get caught on edges. The Festool cloth covered style of hose is a better design for this issue. The diameter of the hose is 27mm (just over 1 inch), which is adequate for fine dust from a sander, but don't use it to clean up the shop floor because it will clog. There currently is not a bigger size hose that you can buy for it either. - The hose end does not swivel. The hose end simply threads on to the hose and if you twist it too many times, it will fall off. The hose end fell off on me while sanding a couple of times in the past few weeks of initial use. The 3M hose feels like you're wrestling it to get your tool where you want it. My Fein hose end swivels and does not come off, thus it has never fallen off while using it. - There is no good place to store the hose when not in use. You can wrap it up and hang it over the metal push handle, but because the hose is so stiff it unwraps itself and does not stay put very well. - The nozzle on the hose end is rubber, which makes a nice friction fit on many different sizes of tools, but it has so many step downs that it restricts the air flow and in turn the dust collection. After a few uses I cut the first 2 steps off of the nozzle because they where too small, and in the way for most of my tool use. If a tool has a larger dust port, then the smaller steps of the nozzle will often bottom out inside the tool's dust port before it seats in the port. I appreciate the thought, but it'd be better to have included multiple separate nozzles for different dust port sizes rather that a one size fits all solution. - The extractor only comes with 1 poly bag to collect dust, no fleece or paper bags. The poly bag is essentially a bin liner, the top is open, which means that the filters are directly exposed to all of the dust you are sucking up. Even with the automatic filter cleaning, the filters get very clogged up with fine dust very quickly if you are using it to extract drywall or concrete dust. Fleece bags would go a long way from preventing the filters from getting clogged up, but 3M fleece bags are still not for sale (at the time of writing), so you can't even get them. More over, the manual tells you to use poly bags when sanding drywall or grinding concrete. - When emptying the poly bags you get dust everywhere. I do not recommend them at all. The inside and outside of your extractor gets very dusting when emptying the poly bags, so they are essentially pointless. - The poly bags are super expensive, for what is essentially a small poly garbage bag. - With the poly bags the filters don't really stay clean or get cleaned very thoroughly. The extractor has a pressure differential sensor, and when the differential hits a threshold it fires the automatic cleaning cycle. Each filter housing has an electromagnetically actuated plunger that reverses the airflow to the filter, so that air is blown in the opposite direction through the filter. This is how they are cleaned. Because each filter is cleaned separately, you don't lose suction to the tool like you do on most auto clean extractors. To 3M's credit, this works fairly well. You don't lose suction during the cleaning cycle, and while sanding drywall and grinding concrete over the past few weeks, I only lost suction when the extractor was full enough to need emptying . The bad part in my opinion though, is the filters do not get visibly clean, even if you run the auto clean cycle manually repeatedly. I spent a good 20 minutes today blowing the filters clean with an air compressor getting all of the caked concrete dust out of the pleats. This probably would not be an issue if you had the fleece filter bags in place, but alas they don't come with the extractor and again, you can't buy them yet. - The filters with the poly bag don't work that well. In cleaning the extractor filters today I opened up the motor compartment and it too was covered in fine concrete dust. So dust is getting past the filters somehow. My guess is when the filters get clogged, air is drawn past the filter seals. I don't think this would be a problem with larger saw dust etc., or IF you had fleece bags in place, but again, you can't buy fleece bags yet. - When the auto filter cleaning cycle runs, it would routinely pump clouds of dust out the back of the extractor. I think because dust was getting past the filters, when the filter cleaning cycle ran, the redirected air would blow the settled dust out. (This makes you glad that you're also wearing a p100 respirator) - The front panel of the extractor has a red light that flashes when suction is too low to adequately collect dust. This usually means either A. The airflow adjustment knob was vibrated itself counterclockwise turning down the suction, or B. The filter is clogged. If it is because of reason A. then just turn it back up and curse 3M for this stupid design, if it is B. then why isn't the auto filter cleaning cycle running? If you run the filter cleaning cycle manually it will fix the problem, which begs the question, why is the light flashing and the filter cleaning cycle not running? - The outlet to attach a power tool is only rated for 400 watts. That's not a lot of wattage. This will do for most sanders, but nothing bigger. I'd like to see 3M take another pass at this extractor because it does have promise. Currently it is not worth the price they are charging, and I don't think it is going to be a long term commercial success for them unless they rethink the above issues. I will be looking at the Festool line of dust collectors to replace this 3M.
