Thread: Choice of vacuum to power mini-cyclone

I'm wondering about upgrading the vacuum that I use to power my mini-cyclone.

At the moment I just use an old domestic vacuum cleaner, and I'm wondering if I will get any significant improvement if I upgrade to a barrel-type shop vac. To illustrate my question, I am wondering if I would get better performance from a 2000W domestic vacuum like the second picture ($69), or a 1000W barrel vacuum like the first picture ($99).

I've read an old thread here where we compared different shop vacs, but we didn't compare them to domestic vacs. There was a big wrap for the $99 Timbecon vac, but they are not sold anymore, and have been replaced by a more expensive Sherwood model.

Because the dust is filtering through a mini-cyclone first, the size of the vacuum bag isn't important. I guess the most important factor to consider is which type would provide the most "sucking" power. And I understand that just comparing wattages doesn't work.
The second lesser factor is noise. People say the barrel vacs can be noisy, but they can't be worse than the domestic.

So what's the verdict? Does a barrel (wet-and-dry) type vac perform better than a domestic vac?