Over a period of two months, we tried out more than a dozen, using them on our hardwood floors, carpets, and rugs, and in our homes full of pets , kids , and adults of varying messiness, judging each based on the following criteria:.
Cleaning Power: How well does the vacuum pick up crumbs, pet hair, dust, and other debris? Does it work better on one surface than another? Or does it work equally well on hardwood floors and shaggy carpets?
Is it effective at giving thick rugs a deep cleaning? Ease of Use: Is the vacuum too heavy to carry around or is it light and easy to use? If it has wheels, do they get stuck or do they smoothly roll and pivot around? Can it get into small nooks and crannies like under the couch or behind furniture? If the vacuum is battery-powered, does one charge last long enough for a full cleaning?
If it has a cord, does the cord get in the way when vacuuming? Is the cord long enough to vacuum a large area without having to plug it in somewhere else?
What are the ergonomics of the handle like? Is it comfortable to hold? If it uses bags or filters, how long will a single one last? Or if the bags are washable, is that easy to do? If the vacuum is bagless, is it easy to fully clean and empty? If the vacuum has any extra cleaning modes or features, what are they and how do they work?
My parents have a central vacuum unit, which we always thought was pretty good, but when we took the Bissell to the second floor, which is completely carpeted, we were disgusted by how much dirt and fur came up. Fur from our Westie Fiona, who died in , and Pekingese Ellie, who died last summer, appeared in the canister. Every room filled the canister. It also has a Febreze filter insert, which left a wonderful fresh-smelling scent that lasted for nearly two days. There are a few downsides, however.
On the other side of the spectrum, the vacuum is also almost too powerful for area rugs. I had to have my dad stand on one end of a rug because it kept pulling it up and getting stuck.
Dyson vacuums like its fans and hair dryers have a reputation of being engineering marvels — powerful, ergonomically designed products that are worth their higher-than-average price tags. This is a heavy-duty cleaner that catches everything from food scraps to tufts of cat fur with a single pass.
The vacuum has a huge and conveniently clear dirt container, so you can go a while without having to empty it.
Despite what I think is consistent vacuuming in the past, the Dyson unearthed layers of dust and crumbs that had been buried in my thick living-room rug for months — if not longer.
On hardwood floors, it glides along smoothly, sucking up every crumb in its path. I only had to plug it into two different outlets to clean my entire apartment. As a small-apartment dweller , I wonder if the Ball Animal 2 is too much vacuum for my home. Once I started testing out a stick vacuum the Eureka Stylus, below I reached for the Dyson less and less often because of its relatively heavy weight and difficulty maneuvering.
After going through just my living room and small dining nook on my first run with this vacuum, the canister was a little more than a quarter of the way full of hair, which I took as a sign of how effectively it was working. It did just as well on my wood floors, gliding smoothly from space to space, and the LED lights actually helped me see crumbs and dust under my kitchen cabinets that I might have missed otherwise.
Moving from different floor surfaces was a breeze. I did have to unplug and replug the vacuum to clean my entire apartment, but the retractable cord made that process less tedious. This is a loud vacuum, though, especially on hard surfaces.
We were always a single-vacuum family until we moved into an apartment with multiple floors a few years ago. So it stayed upstairs, and we bought a Dyson V6 stick vac for the living room and kitchen. The V6 worked great, until the battery stopped holding a charge a year in. So when we started testing the Hoover Onepwr Evolve, our living room and kitchen were definitely ready for it. The Evolve has three power settings.
The one for hardwood floors disables the brush and easily sucked up the Cheerios and desiccated blueberries that are constantly on our kitchen floor. We used this setting most of the time, actually, rolling from the wood floors directly onto the short-fiber, densely woven rug under the couch. Our daughter even pitched in. She loved pushing the Evolve around the living room. Considering she has us cover her ears for the two minutes before a subway train arrives, that should give you an idea of how quiet the vac is in hybrid mode.
It sounds a little like the whir of a remote-control car. The carpet setting, however, felt like starting up a jet engine, both in terms of suction power and volume.
It was almost too strong for our living-room rug, actually picking it up off the ground, which made pushing the vacuum a chore. It did do much better on the softer, longer-fiber rug in our bedroom, however. You get two batteries and a charger with it, and Hoover says that after three to four hours of charging, each battery should last for 35 minutes. The one-liter canister holds twice as much as our V6.
For us, the Evolve is the perfect closet stash. If the WindTunnel is any one thing, it is powerful. I have three rugs one thin, one medium-pile, one high-pile in my apartment, plus hardwood and tile floors, and this vacuum picked up nearly all the debris from all of the surfaces on the first pass.
It has seven settings — one for hard floors and six for carpets of various heights — which ensured all of my rugs got a thorough cleaning. The rugs are only two months old, but after vacuuming just two of them, the dirt canister was very full, proving just how well the WindTunnel had gotten all the dust, dirt, and hair strands my roommate and I shed more than her dog does out of them.
Now, CR has split corded and cordless models into separate categories, and Dyson sits near the top of the cordless category once again.
Between about and , Dyson had no serious competitors—everything else was much weaker. We looked at reviews for competing models from the past few years, and they have their fair share of poor ratings and tales of early breakdowns, too.
Comfort is one of the main things that separates the Tineco S11 from the sometimes-awkward Dyson V7. The S11 weighs about as much as the Dyson V7, but the weight is distributed in a way that makes it feel lighter.
The S11 comes with a single pack, which runs anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes, depending on which mode you use and how dirty your floors are more on that shortly. It did well in most of our carpet-cleaning tests when it was running at maximum suction, picking up a similar amount of sand and baking soda as the Dyson V7. Bare-floor cleaning was okay at best, aided by a headlight but hindered by difficulties picking up very large debris, even with the suction turned up.
Debris detection is a unique and mildly useful feature. And when the S11 senses a big mess, it automatically turns up the suction. According to publicly available import records subscription required , EcoVacs has also manufactured vacuums for Shark including newer versions of the beloved Navigator line of plug-ins and Bissell.
Neither A-series model has the debris-detection feature. We did test the top-of-the-line S12 , which is like the S11 with extra suction but still with less deep-cleaning ability than a Dyson.
Each model comes in a few different variants, differentiated by extra attachments, brush rolls, or battery packs included in the package. The Linx is a hoss, at least by the low standards of cordless vacuums. Other cheap stick vacuums perform well out of the box and earn decent ratings in their few first months of use, but the critical reviews begin to pile up within a year. Meanwhile, the Linx abides.
To wit: The first Linx unit we tested for this guide, back in , still works as of The traditional upright design, with a low center of gravity, also makes it more comfortable to drive than the top-heavy modern sticks that have dominated the category since Dyson introduced its iconic trigger-style design. Remember: The Linx is meant for a relatively light workload. It comes with a two-year warranty. So for tougher and more-frequent jobs, you have to upgrade.
But, again, plug-in vacuums are always the smart-money option. It actually sucked up a similar amount of gritty debris as the Dyson V7 in our tests though not nearly as much pet hair, and hardly any fine dust. It also has a headlight, which is always helpful for spotting fine debris, though this one is pretty weak. If you like the idea of buying an entire battery-powered system, maybe this is an attractive feature. At the very least, it means there should be plenty of spare batteries available for several years, including some affordable knockoffs though third-party packs may pose additional safety risks.
The low point is the awful dustbin. It falls off too easily if you bump it. We always struggled to reattach it because it has no tactile cues for where to line it up and no audible click when it slots into place. Even the mid-range Cyclone V10 is really good for the price. The V15 Detect in particular is so strong that it essentially defeated our controlled rug-cleaning tests.
Very few cordless vacuums can match that cleaning power even on their highest power settings, and none even come close on their lower settings. Another useful feature on both the V11 and V15 is Auto mode, which adjusts its suction to make the most of the battery life.
It works a little differently depending on the model. For the V11, the suction will automatically change depending on the floor type, using a brush-resistance sensor. For the V15, the suction changes depending on how dirty an area is, based on what the built-in particle counter finds more on that feature in a bit. The battery life for the V11 and V15 is ample, anywhere from nine to 60 minutes depending on the power setting, but typically around 30 to 40 minutes on Auto mode.
The other feature that makes it a true pleasure to use the V15 and certain V11 variants not the Animal is the LCD screen. After six weeks of steady testing, we found no tangles on this brush. We tested a version of the V15 Detect that has a sheathed combo-crevice tool built into the shaft of the vacuum check out the photo below.
It was incredibly convenient to have the tool built right into the vacuum, and it made it even more convenient than usual for a stick vac to switch into a ready-for-action handheld mode. Dyson led us to believe that this sheathed tool feature would be included on all V15 Detect vacuums. They demonstrated the sheathed tool for us in a video briefing about the V15 and other new vacuums in late January , and loaned us a unit with the sheathed tool to test in early February However, the version of the V15 Detect models that was released to the public in late March does not have this feature.
If you bought a V15 based on our recommendation expecting this feature, sorry! That variant will also come with a spare battery. The roller is covered in soft microfiber fabric, which is great for a couple of reasons. The microfiber helps the head glide smoothly across wood and tile and linoleum and other hard surfaces. Fine, clingy dust is one example. Dyson has made a version of the Fluffy head for a half decade and plenty of other brands have copied it.
A Fluffy comes packaged with some V7 and V8 models, and will work with the V10 and V11 if you purchase the head separately. But the Fluffy that comes with the V15 is a souped-up version of the old design.
The V15 Fluffy also has a headlight—a green laser headlight. They guide your path, showing what areas still need to be cleaned and reassuring you that the vacuum is actually picking up debris. Usually headlights are just a strip of white LEDs, and they work great. Dyson reps told us that they tested other colors, but found that green did the best job highlighting debris.
Another is that you have to manually switch between the heads. Vacuums from Shark, Lupe, and some other brands avoid the awkward swapping by equipping their cleaning heads with both a soft-fabric roller and a stiff-bristle roller in the same chassis, and it works.
At its best, it helps you focus your efforts on dirty areas and preserves battery life in clean areas. Dyson took this good idea way over the top. Do you feel cleaner when you can quantify your filth? At best, the particle counter is more information for the kind of people who like to count and track everything. Most people will probably ignore it most of the time once the novelty has worn off.
The first time I personally used the V15, I was astounded to learn from this vacuum that my bedroom, which had been cleaned by a Roomba the day before, could contain ,, of anything, especially since the dust bin appeared to be mostly empty when I was finished. The next few times I used the V15, I treated the particle count like a video game, trying to find every nook and crevice to jam the vacuum into so I could try to beat my high score.
One time I caught 1. I stopped paying attention at all after about a month. The main one is that the V11 and V15 are exceptionally expensive vacuum cleaners.
Also, like the cheaper Dyson sticks, the V11 and V15 are top-heavy and use a trigger-style power switch, which you need to squeeze constantly. The switch can be uncomfortable to use for long sessions. That said, the older, similar V11 Outsize now discontinued had very good owner ratings, so this extra-large format works well for some people. Other V11 variants are out there, too; the differences boil down to how many attachments you get and how much information you get on the screen.
You could even consider the older Dyson Cyclone V It feels so good to use, right in the sweet spot between a traditional plug-in vacuum and a modern cordless vacuum. The Triflex HX1 is also the only vacuum we know of that you can convert to two different formats—one like a versatile yet top-heavy Dyson, the other like a more-balanced, self-standing upright—simply by rearranging its parts. In that sense, it really does split the difference between the old and new styles.
It takes only about 30 seconds to switch the arrangement, no tools needed. Like most sticks, the Triflex HX1 works as a handheld vacuum, too. The Triflex is also an excellent cleaner on all surfaces. In our sand and baking soda pickup test, it actually outperformed the Dyson V11 on short rugs and nearly matched it on a thicker rug. It sucked up debris of all weights and sizes like a magnet, even from the cracks between floorboards.
However, it did snowplow some large debris, like most sticks do. The main problem with the Triflex is the dust bin. To pop it off and back onto the vacuum, to empty the debris, and to get at the filter, you have to continue to twist the top of the assembly.
The other open question is reliability. We recommend its expensive canister vacuums , washing machines , and dishwashers because the company has an unusually strong track record for reliability and longevity 20 years is common.
Based on the reviews written by owners as of March , the Triflex seems to be a reasonably reliable cordless vacuum. One battery pack lasts anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes, depending on the power setting and whether the brush is attached.
You can sometimes find a good discount on gently used vacuums that have been reconditioned to work just as well as a brand-new one. They're also more likely to bump into walls and furniture as you drag them along.
On average, cylinder vacuums tend to get higher scores in our tests, and there are better value options. But whichever type you prefer, we've found Best Buys for each, so check our list of Best Buy vacuum cleaners to see the models we recommend. With bagless models you don't have the ongoing cost of replacement bags, but they may not be best for allergy sufferers. Pros: No need to buy replacement dust bags, which can be expensive. Cons: Tend to have a smaller dust capacity, so you'll need to empty them more frequently.
Easy to overfill, as the maximum level is often lower than it looks. Can be messy to empty, as dust and fluff can get wedged inside, and dust escapes into the air when emptying. Pros: Tend to have a larger capacity than bagless models.
Dust and dirt are safely contained in bags, which are thrown away — minimising exposure. Branded bags often have extra filtration to prevent allergens escaping, and some bags self-seal. Cheaper alternative bags are also available although these usually don't offer the same filtration benefits, so you may need to clean your vacuum's filters more often.
Cons: You need to remember to buy replacement bags, which will be an ongoing cost. Our tests show that both bagged and bagless models can lose suction as they fill up, or leak allergens into the room. Manufacturers of bagless vacuums often claim that bagged models lose suction as the bag fills up, whereas bagless vacs don't. Some also claim their bagless systems have hygienic emptying features. However, we've found that both bagged and bagless vacuums can lose suction as the bag or container fills up.
We've also tested bagless vacs with hygienic emptying features, and found they still released much more dust into the room when emptied than bagged models. If you don't want to pay out for bags, you can take steps to prevent dust escaping back into your home after cleaning.
Empty bagless vacuums outside, ideally into a bag, and use gloves and a mask if you have serious allergies. If you'd rather not have the hassle, opt for a bagged model. It's also important to choose a vacuum cleaner that doesn't leak dust and allergens back out into the room while cleaning.
This can happen if the internal system is poorly sealed, or the dust filters aren't effective. We test this in our lab, and have found both bagged and bagless models that excel at keeping allergens locked up while cleaning, so check our vacuum cleaner reviews for the models with five-star allergen-retention scores.
Cordless vacuums are quick and easy to use, but can be pricey, and many struggle to match corded vacuums on cleaning power. Cordless vacuum cleaners are increasingly popular. They tend to be light, bagless, stick-style models with smaller dust capacities, plenty of accessories, and an option to convert into a handheld.
There are high-capacity and bagged versions, however, such as the cordless Henry vacuum. Our test are exhaustive. Each cordless vacuum travels meters in our lab — that's further than the length of an Olympic running track.
On average, corded vacuums are still a better bet if you want a good-value deep clean, or have a larger home. But the best cordless vacuums are just as good as corded equivalents, and many people are converted by how light and manoeuvrable they are.
However, you need to choose carefully. We've found more than 20 Don't Buy cordless vacuums - models which are so poor at cleaning we recommend you avoid them. Check our cordless vacuum cleaner reviews before you buy to be sure you're getting one that can actually clean your home.
Vacuum cleaners come with a range of whizzy extra features and accessories, but which ones do you really need?
Most vacuum cleaners with come with a basic combination floor head as standard. This works across all floor types, and can either be adjusted when switching from carpet to hard floor, or, on more premium models, self-adjusts as you move across different surfaces. Floor tools with spinning brush bars, or powered turbo brushes, can be handy for picking up pet hair and dislodging dust from carpets.
We test each tool on the surface it's designed for to ensure it does a good job cleaning where it's supposed to. Check our vacuum cleaner reviews to see the models which perform well across all areas, or to find a vacuum that is brilliant on your main floor type.
Most vacuum cleaners include a basic set consisting of a crevice tool, upholstery tool and dusting brush, or a combination tool which does several of these jobs. Here are some other tools to look out for:.
If you have lots of different floor surfaces in your home, or carpets of different thickness, then you'll want a vacuum that has easily variable suction so you can push it easily over different floor types without it sticking down. The best models have an adjustable dial that lets you change suction to the desired level. Cheaper models might rely on vents that you can open or close on either the floor head or the suction tube. Some vacuums have a lever on the floor head that you flick to adjust suction, or to switch from carpets to hard floors.
Pricier ones tend to have shortcuts to these controls on the handle, or self-adjusting tools, so you can change the controls without having to bend down. These prevent fine dust particles and allergens from escaping back into the room when cleaning. Some can be washed clean, others have a self-cleaning action, and others need replacing periodically.
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