Buying guides, comparisons and reviews for vacuum cleaners, cordless vacuums, robot vacuums and home cleaning products.
Stairs are the job that shows up a vacuum cleaner’s weak spots. The floorhead that’s great in the lounge is too big for one tread. A few hundred grams you’d never notice on the floor start to matter when you’re lifting the machine up 13 steps. And a big runtime figure doesn’t help much if…
Vacuum cleaner lost suction? Don’t give up on it yet. Most of the time something is simply restricting the airflow. It might be a full bin or bag, a clogged filter, something stuck in the hose, or hair wound so tightly around the brush bar that it can barely turn. The good thing is that…
Pet hair isn’t like ordinary dust. Long hair wraps round the brush bar, short hair gets pushed into the carpet, and a fair bit of it never reaches the floor in the first place. It sits on the sofa, the stairs and the dog’s bed. So when I’m choosing the best cordless vacuum cleaners for…
Battery life is usually the first thing people check before buying a cordless vacuum, and the first thing they blame when it starts cutting out early. Sometimes the battery really is the problem. Just as often it’s something simpler, like a clogged filter or a machine that’s been left in Boost mode. This guide explains…
In any Shark vs Dyson vacuum comparison, the first thing to know is that the two brands take noticeably different approaches to cordless cleaning. Dyson puts more emphasis on suction engineering, dust detection, low weight and detailed on-machine feedback. Shark focuses on practical features: flexible wands for reaching under furniture, anti-hair-wrap floorheads, automatic floor and…
Robot vacuums have become far more capable, but they still solve a different problem from a cordless vacuum. A good robot can keep accessible floors under control with very little day-to-day effort. A cordless gives you direct control and can go where a robot can’t: up the stairs, onto the sofa and into the car….
Almost everything on a vacuum can be changed later. You can fit a different floorhead, replace a worn hose, buy a spare battery. The collection system is the one thing you are stuck with for the life of the machine, and it is also the part you deal with most often, because the dust has…
Walk into any UK electrical retailer and the cordless sticks are the ones on the plinths by the door. Corded uprights and cylinders are still there, usually further down the aisle and usually cheaper. That layout tells you where the market has gone. It doesn’t tell you which type suits your home. The short version:…
£200 is an awkward budget for a cordless vacuum. It clears the £70 machines that pick up crumbs and give up on carpet, and it falls well short of the Dysons people photograph on the kitchen wall. What sits in between is a set of machines that get most things right and then ask you…
Weight is the vacuum spec people care about most and read about least. Air watts, suction figures, battery minutes: all of it gets top billing on the box, and none of it counts for anything at nine o’clock on a Sunday when the machine is still in the cupboard under the stairs because you can’t…