Karcher NT 361 Eco TE: Discontinued — What to Buy Instead
A professional wet-and-dry vacuum with a tool outlet. Retired from the range, and the replacement depends on what you extract.
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The NT 361 Eco TE was a professional-class wet and dry vacuum from Karcher’s NT range. The TE suffix was the useful part: a switched power outlet on the machine that started the vacuum when the connected tool started and ran on for a few seconds afterwards to clear the hose.
It is discontinued. Karcher’s professional NT line has been revised several times since, and the model numbering has moved on.
What to look for in a replacement
Three features separate a dust extractor from a shop vac, and only one of them is suction.
A tool-triggered outlet. It sounds like a convenience and it is actually the feature that decides whether the extractor gets used. A vacuum you have to switch on separately gets skipped for short cuts.
Filtration class. Ordinary shop vacs pass fine dust straight through and back into the room — the dust that matters for your lungs is the dust you cannot see. A machine with a genuine HEPA filter, and ideally certification on the whole unit rather than just the cartridge, is what stops that.
Hose diameter and antistatic. A 27 mm hose suits sanders and routers; a larger one suits saws and floor cleaning. Antistatic matters if you have ever been snapped by a hose after sanding MDF.
What to buy
The Festool CT 15 E HEPA, linked below, is a compact extractor with all three: tool-triggered outlet, whole-unit HEPA and the CLEANTEC hose system. It is expensive.
The cheaper honest route is a good shop vac with a HEPA cartridge and an auto-start switch fitted in line. It is louder and the filtration is not certified, but it collects the chips, and for a garage workshop that is most of the benefit at a quarter of the price.