Best vacuum: Your ultimate guide to the top upright, cordless and robot models – rigorously tested by our experts

Reviewed by Luke Jeffery

What this vacuum lacks in style, it really makes up for in performance. It’s a brilliant bagless vacuum cleaner that’s easy to use and manoeuvre despite its heavy weight.

We tested the Anti Hair Wrap ‘Pet Model’, which comes with an additional ‘turbo’ tool for removing long hairs and fur from soft furnishings to stop them clogging up the rollbar.

Pair this with the anti-allergen seal, and after a blast of hoovering, the air in your home actually feels cleaner, as dust and allergens are prevented from being kicked up into the air. I was dubious at first, but once I’d hoovered for 30 minutes, it really was noticeable.

My house is an even split of hard floor to carpet, and changing between the settings for both could be done at the flick of a switch. I found that performance was much better on carpet than wood flooring and tiles, but not bad by any means.

This is a simply brilliant performer at an impressive price. It’s well worth your money.

Reviewed by Stella Radeva

I’ve genuinely enjoyed using the VAX LiftOut Reach Pet Upright. The suction is seriously impressive, and the long cable turned out to be far more useful than I expected.

I’m also a big fan of the dust compactor. It compresses debris so efficiently that the bin holds far more than you’d assume at first glance, which meant I wasn’t stopping mid-clean to empty it nearly as often. In a busy home – especially one with pets – that quickly becomes a feature you really appreciate.

Hair pickup is generally solid. The VAX includes technology designed to stop long, short and pet hair wrapping around the brush roll, and to be fair, it does make a noticeable difference. I saw far less hair build-up than I’ve experienced with other vacuums in the past.

That said, it’s not completely foolproof. Every so often I still had to clear the brush bar, and a couple of times that meant reaching for scissors to deal with stubborn strands.

The vacuum is also quite heavy, and that weight becomes noticeable when you’re manoeuvring around tight spaces or carrying it upstairs. The LiftOut feature does help by giving you a lighter, more manageable option for awkward areas, but when you’re using the main unit, the heaviness is hard to ignore.

The selection of tools is genuinely useful, though swapping between them can break your momentum slightly, Even so, for the price, it feels like good value. It sits in a very reasonable bracket for what it delivers.

Taking into account the build quality, the versatility of the LiftOut design and how well it performs in everyday use, it feels like a sensible, well-judged purchase rather than an overpriced one.

Reviewed by Xantha Leatham

The PowerPro has a lightweight stick design and is cordless, meaning I can whip around my flat at speed before storing it neatly in a corner, where it stands up by itself.

Its ’floor detect’ technology can work out if you’re on carpet or a harder surface, and adjusts the suction power accordingly – a handy feature which means I don’t have to really pay attention to what I’m doing.

This is my first ‘anti-hair-wrap’ hoover and I’m in awe of the mechanism that somehow manages to separate and remove strands from the brush as I clean.

A single charge gives me 50 minutes of run time. Given that I can get around my flat in 10 minutes, this is perfect.

The ‘extras’ that came with the vacuum include a car cleaning kit, which was a lifesaver following an orange feather boa incident.

In fact, my only gripe is that the vacuum is so powerful, some of my thinner rugs have fallen foul of being partially sucked into the brush as I’ve tried to clean them.

And the price is almost too good to be true. It’s definitely worth investing a little bit more if you’ve been looking at cheaper options.

Reviewed by Danielle Amato

I was overall, very impressed with this smart robot vacuum. Its ‘AI’ detection of socks, shoes and plugs was very good and while slow, it was ideal for my mostly hardwood flooring. In my tests it picked up the majority of ‘dirt’ I put in its way and even sucked up some much larger particles, such as broken bits of plant, I hadn’t noticed were on my floor.

Its biggest flaw is its slightly clumsy navigation. While it had no problem mapping out the entirety of my downstairs, it’s not particularly quick at this, nor does it seem to do it in any logical way, which was confirmed by the map screenshots I’ve added further down in this review. It did occasionally get stuck moving from hard floor to rugs with the mop attachment on but the rest of the time it was fine, which surprised me given how often robot vacuums seem to find themselves in these situations.

So who is this vacuum for? This is for you if: you’re mostly going to use it at home so you can help it if it occasionally gets stuck and/or if you want smart, premium features but don’t want to spend £1,000+ on the highest end robot vacuums.

Reviewed by Danielle Amato

I really enjoyed using the Dyson V16 Piston Animal. Its suction is powerful and it comes with loads of great upgraded features – but it’s not perfect. Some of these upgrades seem to have caused issues elsewhere, the new conical shaped brush means cleaning right to the edge front-on is more difficult than I’d like. Larger debris is sometimes crushed under the weight of the rollers too, rather than picked up on the first pass. A second pass gets the leftovers though, so it’s not a complete loss.

I’m also a huge fan of the dust compactor, which frees up bin space for less emptying. The anti-tangle however is, quite frankly, incredible. Both myself and my partner have long hair that’s always dropping around the house. We also have a cat that’s constantly shedding.

Every single vacuum head we’ve used in the past has needed some kind of tending to because of the sheer amount of human and pet hair – even those brands who claim to have their own anti-tangle tech. Yet not once did I find myself having to pull hair from the brush head. In fact, you can clearly see the balled up hair inside the dustbin. Genuinely impressive.

Despite all this praise, I can’t avoid talking about the price. These new features are the best of the best but the £749 price tag is just too much for most people, especially when Dyson’s older models, such as the Gen5Detect, perform just as well and in some cases even better.

If you’re specifically looking to invest in a Dyson and you’re plagued by tangled hair and pet fluff, this could be the answer to your problems, otherwise, you can probably opt for a cheaper model and still get the same results.