The Best Home Vacuum Cleaner
The ideal home vacuum cleaner is a tool that is simple to maneuver and use. The right model should also be light, efficient and quiet.
This pick offers great suction at a low cost and comes with a powerful anti-hair wrap floorhead and an odor neutralizing puck. It comes with a bin that is easy to empty.
1. Power
A high-powered vacuum cleaner will efficiently take care of household debris and make it easy to keep your mess under control. If you're dealing with a heap of pet hair or a clogged kitchen drain, it must be able to suck up the mess with minimal effort. It should also be able to trap dust and inhibit bacterial development to ensure healthy, clean air. The best model to meet your needs depends on factors such as the type of floor, household size and budget. The most popular models are uprights, portable handhelds lightweight sticks, and convenient robots.
The Black+Decker Flex Vac is a lightweight handheld vacuum that has an impressively high-quality performance. It is perfect for households with multiple pets or large houses. It also features an easy-to-empty debris receptacle that prevents dirty clean-ups. The vacuum can even be used to mop and allow users to finish two tasks at the same time.
For households with lots of furniture, it's best to consider a more durable full-size, corded upright or canister vacuum. These models typically have stronger motors and a motorized floorhead to tackle difficult dirt and carpeting. They're also available with different models with different power settings to offer a variety of suction and longer battery life. It's also a good idea to choose the vacuum that has a HEPA filter if someone in your home is suffering from allergies.
2. Flexibility
The best vacuum cleaners are able to take on a variety of tasks in your home from quick dusting to deep cleaning carpets. They are usually lightweight and easy to maneuver. They should also have various attachments that meet your needs.
If you have pets, think about a vacuum designed to deal with pet hair. They typically have an exclusive power brush that sucks pet hair off the main floorhead, and then directs it into the dust cup so that it doesn't block or become stuck around the vacuum's brush roll.
Some of our top-rated vacuums also have intelligent features that can integrate with your home's systems, or adapt to different flooring types and levels of dirt. This is particularly crucial for people suffering from allergies, since these features keep dust particles from recirculating into the air.
Vacuums are pricey, but the best ones are on sale several times per year during major events like Black Friday and Amazon's Prime Day. There are also great bargains in the spring, when sales are planned by retailers to coincide with the annual spring cleaning.
The lifespan of a vacuum can vary depending on the model and the way you use it. The majority of our top-rated vacuums last on average eight years. If you're looking to last longer than the competitors, select a model that comes with a long-term guarantee.
3. User-Friendliness
A vacuum cleaner needs to be easy to use and maneuver, even during a lengthy cleaning session. A compact, lightweight vacuum cleaner that has easy-to-use controls attachments, as well as large, non-emptying bins are all crucial. This convenience is possible due to many options, including motorized power heads that clean carpets and rugs as well as a tall and large floor head to reach under furniture as well as rotating nozzles for corner cleaning, and LED lights which illuminate the walkway.
For example our top pick in this category, the Shark Stratos cordless vacuum, was easy to maneuver and utilized the lowest amount of battery power during our tests. It also features automatic adjusting suction as well as a sleek LCD display with a battery indicator and the ability to switch between Eco, Auto and boost modes.
In our tests, the Stratos sucked up coffee grounds, kibbles, and flour easily. It also did a great job with flooring with low pile and was able to remove the sand, rice and other particles in just a few passes. It also has a soft front brushroll that can capture fine particles and prevent pet hair from spitting back out, as well as a rigid rear brushroll that digs deep into carpeting.
The budget-friendly Kenmore Elite also has a dual brushroll design that can pick up wet spills and messes from hard surfaces. It is lightweight enough to be able to be carried up and down stairs, and even across the house without breaking sweat. It's much easier to clean than most other upright models too and comes with a removable HEPA filter and a disposable dust bag that can be replaced after filling up.
4. Versatility
The Levoit is a very versatile model, able of handling all cleaning tasks. It isn't equipped with the advantages offered by more expensive models but it does have several important features that ensure it performs well for everyday use: it has multiple cleaning modes that can vary suction power and battery runtime (including Eco) and an 8-foot hose to reach over floors, and a large dust cup that is easy to empty.
The brush roll is designed for capturing and sucking up hair without wrapping the bristles around it making it a good option for homes with hairy animals or even humans that shed a lot. The tests it passed in standardized tests also proved that it is able to handle a variety of debris, including hard floors and low-pile carpet; it even managed to remove rice, sand, and Cheerios from carpeting.
The Miele Flex Vac is a versatile cordless vacuum that also has a powerful motor. It was particularly effective in cleaning pet hair, and also picked up larger particles like cereal, although it struggled with more caked-on debris like car dirt. It has a variety of attachments like an electric power-nozzle that can quickly remove dirt and pet hair from upholstery.
5. Battery Life
A quality vacuum cleaner for home use should last at least one hour without needing to be recharged. This is essential for cordless models because it allows you to clean without stopping.
Shark Stratos cordless vacuum is our top choice. It comes with a long battery life and an impressive debris removal. Its three cleaning modes - Eco, Auto and Boost allow you to control the power level so that you can keep cleaning longer without draining your battery too quickly. The vacuum has an elegant LCD screen that shows the status of your battery, how much time is remaining, and if there is a clog.
This model is perfect for homes with pets as the no-tangle brushroll can effectively remove pet hair. It's also very effective at cleaning dirt and dust but it struggled to remove small particles like flour from hard floors, and was unable to remove coffee grounds from carpeting.
Tineco Floor One S7 Pro can also handle spills that are wet. It's a bagged model with features such as an iLoop sensor that can detect spills, dirt, and stains. auto vacuum has self-cleaning, which dry out the brush roll. It also has superior edge cleaning that allows you to get to the corners and baseboards. The battery lasts for 40 minutes - more than any other model we tried.
6. Cleaning is a breeze
The most effective vacuums make cleaning up spills effortless. The Levoit LVAC-200 for instance, is lightweight and compact but impressively powerful. In our standard tests, it took in everything from kibble to ground coffee to dog hair. The dual brushrolls snatch pet hair as well as other large particles without spilling them out or wrapping them around the cleaner head. This prevents clogging. And its motorized tool sucks pet hair that has been embedded in upholstery, even in hard-to-reach places.
Another standout is the Shark Stratos Cordless, which effortlessly handled pet hair as well as other debris in our standard tests. The main floorhead is fitted with a soft brushroll that can catch dust and other debris. The secondary floorhead, with its rigid bristles can reach deeper into carpeting to tackle tougher dirt. The dust cup is large and easy to empty.
If your home is carpeted, you should consider a full-size canister or upright vacuum that has a beater bar for deeper cleaning sessions. Or, opt for a wet-dry vacuum, which can tackle both floors and messes made by food or water like the Miele C3 Cat & Dog or the Henry Hoover. These machines can handle a variety of household debris from small crumbs to larger messes, and may offer more advanced features than the handhelds on this list.