Customer Reviews for RIDGID 16 Gallon 6.5 Peak HP NXT Wet/Dry Shop Vacuum with Cart, Fine Dust Filter, Locking Hose and Accessories

Its a large one, if thats what you need. Works well

It is so sad that this vacuum has to get a bad review because Rigid went cheap I expected more for $170. The first version of this I bought is the slightly cheaper one and the hose kept breaking I went through 3. I then upgraded to this and the actual piece the hose connects to pulled right out of the machine. I guess if you only use your vacuum on occasion you will be fine but I use this daily for car detailing and it just will not stand up to the test of time.

I use this vacuum for commercial automotive detailing and it is great. It has the most suction I have seen on a wet/dry vac so far. The hose is a good length. The only thing I don’t like is that when you put the hose on the hood wet it blocks where the cord wrap is I feel like they could fix this pretty easily.

I've had it for about a year and use it for light duty. The switch location in this new design is so annoying. If the any of the cord is still wrapped around the handle/cord holder, its in the way of the "ON" side of the switch. Uuhhhgg! Other than that, it really nice if you use the hepa filter, bag and exhaust filter.

I bought the Ridgid HD18000 Shop-Vac with cart to use exclusively as a wet-vac to clean my fish pond. The large rear wheels have very poor ground clearance for my backyard. I fixed this by cutting off one inch off the bottom of the two axel supports. This does not seem to affect axel integrity. Poor axel support - cheap thermoplastic instead of engineering plastic (even on the "stainless-steel" model). Not sure how long this will hold up wheeling the weight of the water outside in my yard.

Bought this and the additional hose kit. It's the worst purchase I've ever made. It barely picks small pieces of debris up and it has trouble picking up drywall dust. I have the hepa filter installed and its clean. It took me almost 10 minutes to clean up some small construction debris and drywall from a 4x4 electrical closet. Never again...

I'm not even sure how old mine was. But, if I had to guess, I think it's at least 15 years. I've used it for many tasks including cleaning up ash from the BBQ (a very fine powder that could easily mess with the motor if the filter failed) and sucking out the contents of my pool filter so I could remove the cartridges. (I'd estimate about 20 gallons of filthy water, sand and other small particulates) A few weeks ago, I contacted warranty support because the power switch (a red toggle on the old ones, not the rocker style like the new ones) had broken off in the "on" position. It broke flush with the housing, so there was no way to turn the unit off, excepting to unplug it. After complying with their pre-requisites of taking pictures and explaining the problem, they replaced the entire funky old unit with brand spanking new one just like is advertised here. Thank you, Ridgid, for living up to expectations regarding the warranty coverage.

Bought this product from Home depot it is suppose to come with a life time warranty. used it 5 times in last six months. about 4 hours of use.. Last time using the vacuumed it stopped working would not turn on. went to warranty site followed directions sent pictures in of all different parts of the vacuumed. including blower . I received a response back today stating they see plastic in the blower motor and their decision is that it was damaged because the filter was not on properly. , I see no debris in the blower motor just black film from it burning up. That's a great warranty say you have it ! then deny all claims

Does everything I needed it for. Lightweight, easy to assemble, nice long cord. The muffler seems to be just an extra piece of plastic and foam. I really do like this product. My only issue; the attachments will not stay in there respected spots. Especially the long hose extensions. When you move the base they just fall off.

Purchased this vac to clean up water, but to my surprise, it says in the operation manual that it can only pick us a little water. My old sears vac (16 gal) would pick up about 10 gal of water before shutting off. Taking it back today.

This is the second one I’ve owned they have a “lifetime” warranty but you have to jump through too many hoops Home Depot didn’t care that this was the second one in 14 months to die so I left it on their door step

Super powerfull shop vac! Great quality. If you get this or have it yoy need to pair it with the Dustopper! You’ll never have to buy amother filter. You can make your own mounting solution with some PVC and a scrap piece of plywood. I also paired this with the Ridgid water pump accessory

This is replacing a 15 year old Ridgid shop vac that is actually still running strong. I'm using the old one for something else. After about 6 months of almost daily use, I found a few things I liked, and many I did not. What I like: - The large power switch is easy to use with gloved hands, easy to access. It sticks up in the 'on' position and almost acts like a kill switch, making it super easy to turn off quickly. - Lots of suction. The ultimate static vacuum is about 1.82 psi which is about 13% more than my older one (old one measured 1.61 psi). That's about 50 inches of water lift. Or put another way, it can pick up a 6 pound bar of steel. - Good air flow. This means it will actually pick up stuff. I didn't have a way to measure actual CFM, but I will say this: I have to be careful where I aim the nozzle because it will GRAB stuff that I don't want to pick up. I actually had to drill some vent holes in the carpet attachment so it wouldn't constantly lift the floor mats in my car. - Long cord. Most of the time I don't have to grab an extension cord. Yay! - Hose wrap holder thing. It's nice that there's a place to put the hose, instead of just laying it down on the floor. It's well placed, and makes stowing the hose simple and quick. What I don't like: - It's loud. Really loud. And it has a high pitched whine. - The cart handle intersects where the hose wraps, so you can't even use the cart handle if you wrap the hose. Or if you choose to keep the cart handle, it squashes the hose. - The diffuser intersects with the rear tool holder. That means you have to remove the diffuser every time you want to add or remove a tool to the rear holder. - The design of the latch on the new tools makes everything difficult to remove. Previous models used an actual lever with a pivot pin; these new ones are simply molded flexible plastic which feel cheap. The old ones snapped in, these new one 'jam' in for lack of better description, and it can be tough to get them to even lock. - The power cord is supposed to wrap around the handle, but there's not enough handle to do that. Also no quick release, so you have to spend time unwrapping the long cord if you decide to try to use it that way. - No wheel locks. If you have a sloped driveway, which almost every residential place does, it can literally run away from you. - The container has tons of crevices, making it difficult to clean. The old vac was just a simple cylinder. - The cord constantly gets caught in the rear wheel / axle. Some other observations: - The fixed rear wheel design means that you can't roll it 360 degrees, it has to be "aimed" where you want it to go. So you can't easily tug it around by the hose. - The hose connector at vac body has more restriction than old style, with an 80% smaller area due to connector. - The "noise muffler" is not a muffler. It does zero to decrease noise. It's real purpose is to diffuse the exhaust so you don't have a jet stream blowing things around in your garage. Overall it performs well, but the poorly designed features annoy me every time I use it.

This vac has awesome power for a portable. I upgraded from my 2hp to this 6.5hp and can now handle all of the dust in my shop.

Great value. Great vac. Paired it with a cyclone dust collector and it does the job. Thanks to excellent customer service for supplying two extra front caster mounts to replace back wheel mounts, which allowed stacking the cyclone above the vac via 2-in pvc pipes. Casters allow easy movement between table saw, miter saw, drill press, etc.

I bought the wet dry vacuum for cleaning wet garage floors in winter. All attachments work very well and vacuum all water off the floor. Great. Another side discovery was when I reversed the hoses and used the vacuum as a blower, I could totally dry my cars after washing! That is cool. Very good air flow does the job nicely.

Way less power than the cheaper shop vac brand I replaced it with. NOT COVERED by Rigids Lifetime service warranty. Instead it has a separate ‘lifetime warranty” which means if the vacuum dies it’s life is over and they won’t fix it. Some shady word games from a company with already shady marketing. I only found this out after weeks of the rigid website for registering tools being down or malfunctioning (which is common tactic they use to prevent people from getting the LSA). So I can no longer return to the store. I paid for the overpriced professional 10 foot cord and the vacuum doesn’t have enough power to pick up dust with the longer house and can barley do it with the provided hose, forget attaching the extension tubes. This is the end of my venture into rigid tools, luckily I was able to return everything I bought (almost 2500$ in rigid tools) and only got stuck with this poo poo vacuum and a 500 dollar planer that is also jacked up out of the box. Also tried to test it with water, just filled a bucket with water and tried to suck it out. All that happened is it fluttered and slurped and dropped the water right back out the hose; it also shot water all over out of where the muffler connects all over the wall.

I don't have vacuum system in my shop and needed to collect the dust from my saws. I love the way I can quick connect my new Ridgid wet dry vac to my saws and its powerful suction. No more breathing saw dust when using my shopvac.

Great suction power and the muffler is awesome. Quiets the vacuum tremendously.

First i went to pick it up at my local Home Depot where they showed it in stock. But they couldn't find it so i drove 30 minutes further to another Home Depot and bought it because i needed it the following day. Then after i get home and start assembling i realize Ridgid didnt include the correct parts. They gave me two right axle feet. So I cant install the wheels. I guess i will just drag it around on the floor and see if they will send me the correct part.

Just a heads up the rod for the wheels may come package in on the wand attachments, to protect it during transit. Also I recommend using a 5/8" or 15mm socket to hold the cap to lock the wheel to the rod. I used this for about 30minutes to pick up some standing water that was outside, that would not go away. The suction on this was great as it filled up very quickly. This picked up water and a bunch of leaves. For wet applications I removed the filter I love that there is a screw cap on the bottom plug the water. Simply unscrewing it releases the water. The attachments have a tab which latches them to each other, this worked well as it did not fall off while I used it. This lost a star from me because of the handles, the handles to me, are to slim and not that strong, when I used the handle to tip it so I can roll It when it was filled with water, it felt like they could not support the weight and were not sturdy enough so support the force I applied to it. I was able to get it on the 2nd try , but they handle just feels weak which lowered the score in my eyes. Locking the top is simple, you can simply twist it on, and there are two tabs on the side that it will latch too. The cord wraps around the handle on the top which is very convenient. Improvements: Ridgid has the new 9.0ah batteries, the tools that could benefit from it the most does not fit it. I would love to see an Octane Cordless shop vac. It was a hassle filling this up outside, unplugging it from my generator , stashing my generator, as I was out in the open, and dumping the water and repeating the process. Also I would change the cap screw. It was a pain trying to put it on without a socket to hold it place, as I did not have one handy. For the attaching it, you can use a 15mm or a 5/8" socket. I had to reattach the cap after it fell off and it was a lot easier with the socket to hold it.

The only shop vac you will ever need. It was easy to assembly and took no more than 10 min. I like the varies accessories that come with the shop vac The only accessories that does not sit well within the vac is the tip of the hose, other than that everything fits well within the vac. The vac is light to care up and down the stairs. The size of the vac is perfect to have laying around in the garage or shed.

RIDGID 16 gal. NXT Vac arrived quickly. The sides of bottom of box were opened. Just as it was delivered the axle fell out of the box. All the other parts were intact. When I got to the part in directions to install the hose storage clips I thought they forgot 2 screws. I went over the directions and realized I wasn't suppose to use screws on the front caster/foot. I removed them and installed them on the hose storage clips. I was afraid the front feet would not stay on. I have pushed, and pulled this vac across my rock landscaping. All the feet, and tools stay in place with no problems. I have to vacuum rocks up at times. This vac sucked them right up with no blockages, or issues. I grasped the push handle at the top, and the axle to empty the vac. When turned over all the accessories stayed in place. It does use dust bags. I will buy some for dusty, dirty jobs. I didn't think this vac was any louder than my old vac. First time I have had a muffler/diffuser. It did help to dampen the noise. For some reason the muffler/diffuser was the only part I had trouble attaching to the the caster/foot storage.But, I prefer to store it on the blower port anyway.The wheels were able to roll across the rocks, and flat terrain without issues. The handle for pushing/pulling is my favorite part. This is designed so the tools,hose, and cord storage on this vac makes it a more compact unit for storage. You can hear the parts lock in place when they are connected together. They remove easily with a twist and pull.I removed the qwik lock filter to vac up some water. The suction power on this vac is awesome. The drain cap in the front twist on, and off easily.The handle on top makes it very easy to lift the lid to remove/replace the filter, or empty the dust drum. This is the first time I have been able to vacuum/clean a vent 10 ft up on wall without having to pull a ladder out. This vac is awesome with all its power, upgraded features,parts, and compact size for storage. This vac makes my jobs around the house much easier.

The first thing is, it was easy to assemble. The cart makes it easy to move around. I used it to vacuum the dog hair out of my car and it did a great job.

Pretty good to noisy to be great.

Yes this is a great product

Easy to assemble, has highest CFM i could find for the price