If you’re willing to throw down the cash for a machine that cleans better than any cordless (and many plug-in) vacuums from any other brand we’ve tested, upgrade to a higher-end Dyson model. These vacuums, including the V15 Detect, are fantastic cleaners. They work well on bare floors, too, and the V15 is especially great when equipped with its soft-roller, laser-lit cleaning head. The battery life is ample, thanks in part to an automatic suction-adjustment feature. And some variants have extras that are also useful, such as a real-time countdown of the remaining battery life. The S11’s best feature is its comfy handling, which is lighter and smoother than most—and doesn’t force you to keep squeezing a trigger to make it run, like a Dyson.
The Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional upright vacuum comes with a few modes you might find useful. First among them, of course, is the upright mode that lets you clean both carpets and hardwood floors. If you want to clean your stairs, however, you can detach the canister and use it as a handheld vacuum with one of several attachments. The Shark Navigator also comes with an extender so you can vacuum high or hard-to-reach areas to tackle dust and cobwebs. Shark’s vacuum also has an anti-allergen seal to reduce chances of infectious debris from entering your home and it offers a high-capacity canister to house more dirt than most other upright vacuums.
But that’s not the case – when looking at cost, the Dysons are priced significantly higher than Sharks. While the Dysons may have more features than the Sharks, the Sharks are great vacuums for the price and their bissell crosswave cordless multiflex feature is awesome. When weighing all four of them as a handheld with the standard crevice tool attached, both Sharks and the Dyson v10 all weigh within two ounces of each other (3 pounds, ounces).
They’re compact to store and lighter than upright and cylinder vacuums, making them generally more comfortable to use. In our tests, we found it lightweight and comfortable to hold. The controls are easy to use and the dirt cup, though small, flips open at the press of a button and the dirt drops neatly out. It has impressive pickup on bare floors and rugs and even has a button to boost the power for deeper cleaning when you need it. The WandVac could just put your broom and dustpan out of business!
But if your home is mostly hardwood with scattered low-pile rugs or carpets, it’s an excellent option. Weighing in at just 7.7 pounds, this powerful cleaner punches well above its weight class. The all-floor suction removes pet hair and debris from both hard floors and carpets and a detachable handle captures shark cordless dirt in vents and other hard-to-reach places. And because the filter can be washed and reused, there’s no need to buy endless replacements. The vacuum’s compact size lends to its portability, allowing you to move effortlessly from room to room and then easily stores away until you need it next.
We like a lot of Eufy products, but not the HomeVac S11 Infinity. The Powerseries Extreme can convert into a handheld vacuum, but it’s a bulky, cumbersome one. Some Tineco sticks outside of the S11 can be good options for the right price. If you can find the top-of-the-line S12 for $350, that’s worth it. It’s a marginally stronger cleaner than the S11, and its battery life is a little longer .
After six weeks of steady testing, we found no tangles on this brush. Although most models completely clean uncarpeted surfaces after a few passes, not many grab everything on the first or second push. Snowplowing—when big debris, like Cheerios or mulch, gets pushed around by a low-riding cleaning head—is a common problem at every price. It’s also hit-or-miss as to whether a model will reliably clean up powdery debris, particularly when the stuff is stuck in gaps between floorboards. Carolyn Forté has tested and reviewed hundreds of vacuum cleaners, carpet cleaners, mops and other major home appliances as executive director of Good Housekeeping’s Home Care and Cleaning Lab. She oversees all testing done in the Cleaning Lab and recently tested all of the handheld, stick, upright and canister vacuums that were submitted for consideration in the most recent Cleaning and Organizing Awards.
Build quality also isn’t especially impressive, and there are quite a few parts that need periodic cleaning. Samsung isn’t known for its vacuums in North America, but it released a slew of new cordless stick vacs in 2021. We tested the Jet 70 and found that it was just okay, really nothing special among dyson robot vacuum a crowded field. In our tests it was a decent carpet cleaner, though not quite as strong as the similarly priced Tineco S11 or Dyson V8. It was also the worst snowplower we tested on bare floors—it pushed around more types of debris without sucking the stuff up than the other models we tested.