The Best Home Vacuum Cleaner
The best vacuum cleaner for home use is a multi-functional and easy-to-use tool. The best model will be lightweight, quiet and efficient.
This model offers excellent suction at a bargain price, with an effective anti-hair wrap floorhead as well as an odor neutralizing puck. It also comes with a huge bin and is extremely easy to empty.
1. Power
A powerful vacuum cleaner can effectively manage household debris, making it easy to keep messes under control. It should be able to clean any mess, regardless of whether it is a pile of dog hair or a kitchen drain that is clogged. It should also capture fine dust and inhibit the growth of bacteria, ensuring clean, healthy air quality. The best model to meet your needs depends on factors like floor type, household size and budget. Most common types include uprights, portable handhelds, lightweight sticks, and convenient robots.
The Black+Decker Flex Vac handheld vacuum is a compact device that delivers incredible force. It sucks up pet hair and larger particles easily, making it ideal for households with multiple pets or larger homes. It also comes with a simple-to-empty debris container that helps avoid messy cleanups. The vacuum can be used to mop so that users can complete two tasks at once.
Take a look at a large upright or canister-corded vacuum for households with a lot of furniture. These models come with stronger motors with a motorized floorhead, and can take on carpeting embedded and tough dirt. These vacuums can also be found in different powers to offer various suction capabilities and a long life battery. It's also a good idea to search for the vacuum that has an HEPA filter if someone within your home suffers from allergies.
2. Flexibility
The best vacuum cleaners are able to take on a variety of chores in your home that range from quick dusting, to deep cleaning carpets. They are typically lightweight and easy to maneuver. They should also come with several attachments to will meet your requirements.
Look into a vacuum designed specifically to deal with hair from pets if you own pets. They usually come with a brush specifically designed to remove hairs from the floorhead and then directs it to the dust container so that it doesn't block the brush roll or wrap around it.
The best vacuums come with smart features, that can be integrated with your home systems or adjust to different types of flooring and dirt levels. This is crucial for those with allergies, since these features prevent fine debris from recirculating throughout the air.
Vacuums can be expensive however, they're on sale during major occasions like Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. There are also great bargains in the spring, when sales are planned by retailers to coincide with the annual spring cleaning.
The life expectancy of a vacuum can be different, depending on its model and the kind of use you put it through. However, the majority of our top picks have an average lifespan of eight years. If you want to make sure yours will outlast the competitors, choose one with an extended warranty.
3. User-Friendliness
A vacuum cleaner should be easy to move and use, even for an extended cleaning session. A lightweight, compact vacuum cleaner with easy controls attachments, as well as large, non-emptying bins are all essential. Several features contribute to this ease of use, including motorized power nozzles that can tackle carpets and rugs with greater efficiency, a wide and tall floor head that is able to reach under furniture and has a rotating nozzle that allows for better corner cleaning, self-cleaning rollers, and LED lights that illuminate the path ahead.
Shark Stratos, for example is our top choice and was the simplest to move around. It also had the least amount of battery power in our tests. It also has an automatic suction adjustment, a sleek LCD screen with a battery indicator, and the ability to switch between Auto Eco and Boost modes.
The Stratos also took in kibble, ground coffee and flour easily in our tests, and it did a great job at removing carpets with low pile by removing rice and sand in just a couple of passes. It also has a front brushroll that is soft enough to capture fine particles and prevent pet fur from spitting out and a rear brushroll that is hard and digs 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's light enough to carry to and from the stairs and around the house, without breaking sweat. It's also easier to maintain than most upright models, with a HEPA filter that is easily removable, as well as a disposable dust bag which can be changed when it's full.
4. Versatility
The Levoit is a highly versatile model, able of handling most cleaning tasks. It isn't equipped with the perks offered by pricier models, but it does have a number of key features that ensure it's suitable for everyday use. For instance, it comes with multiple cleaning modes that can vary suction power and battery run-time (including Eco), an 8-foot hose for reaching over floors, and a large dust cup that is easy to empty.
Its brush roll is designed to collect and suction up hair without wrapping the bristles around it which makes it a great option for households with hairy pets or humans who shed many tears. The tests it passed in standardized tests also proved that it is able to manage a variety of debris, including carpet with a low pile and hard floors; it even managed to remove rice, sand, and Cheerios from carpeting.
The Miele Flex Vac is a multi-purpose cordless vacuum that has a powerful motor. It was particularly effective in cleaning pet hair, and also took larger particles such as cereal, though it was unable to tackle more caked-on debris such as car dirt. It also has a wide selection of attachments, including an electric power nozzle that makes quick work of pet hair and dirt on upholstery.
5. Battery Life
A good vacuum cleaner for your home should last at least one hour before needing to be recharged. For a cordless model that's important because it allows you to get your cleaning done without having to stop and restart the process.
Our top choice Shark Stratos Cordless Vacuum is a great choice, with a long battery life and impressive debris pickup. The three cleaning modes - Eco, Auto and boost, let you control the power so that you can clean for longer without draining the battery too fast. The vacuum has an elegant LCD display that lets you know if there's a clog and how much time you have left and the battery's status.
This model is ideal for families with pets because the brushroll with no-tangle can effectively remove pet hair. It also is very effective in tackling dirt and dust. However, it has a difficult time to remove fine particles like flour from hard flooring and is unable to remove coffee grounds from carpeting.
If robot vacuum cleaner looking to deal with wet spills as well, the Tineco Floor One S7 Pro is a great option. It is a bagged vacuum but has features such as an iLoop sensor that can detect dirt and stains; self-cleaning that dries the brush roll; more effective edge cleaning that gets into corners and along baseboards and a battery lasting 40 minutes - longer than any other model we've tried.
6. best robot vacuums is easy
The best vacuums make cleaning up spills a breeze. The Levoit LVAC-200 is a lightweight compact vacuum cleaner, but powerful. It was able to take in everything from kibble to ground coffee and dog hair in our standardized tests. The dual brushroll design captures pet hair as well as other debris, without spitting it out or wrapping it around the cleaner's head which helps keep it free of blocking. And its motorized tool sucks pet hair embedded in upholstery, even in hard-to reach places.
The Shark Stratos Cordless is another standout, as it handled pet hair and large debris easily in our tests. The main floorhead is equipped with a soft brushroll that can catch dust and other debris. The secondary floorhead, which has rigid bristles, can reach deeper into carpeting to tackle more difficult mess. And the dust cup holds plenty, and is easy to empty.
If you have a lot of carpet in your home, you may need to consider an upright that is full-size or a canister vacuum with beater to get a deeper clean. Select a vacuum cleaner that is wet dry that can handle both floors and messes caused by water or food. Examples include the Miele Cat and Dog or the Henry Hoover. These machines can handle all kinds of household debris including small crumbs and larger messes, and may have more advanced features than the handhelds on this list.