Consumer Reports – September 2019

WHETHER YOU’RE WHISKING up a

mess of spilled coffee grounds on the

kitchen floor or giving your living room

carpet a workout after a week of golden-

retriever roughhousing, you want the

job to be done well—and that means no

crumb or hair ball left behind.

Choosing the right type of vacuum

for the task at hand is the key to your

success. Large, or full-sized, vacuums

include canisters and uprights, the most

powerful type. Each of these has its

advantages. If you live in a single-story

home with lots of carpets, an upright

is a good choice. But if you live in a

multilevel home, a canister lets you rest

the weight of the machine on a landing

while you clean the stairs with the hose.

Small vacuums include stick, handheld,

and robotic models. (We’re in the midst

of testing more robotic vacs, so those

models are not discussed here.) Stick

and handheld vacuums are lightweight

and convenient for picking up smaller

messes. They’re not intended for serious

cleaning—though stick vacuums as a

category are becoming more powerful.

“The main difference between

uprights and canisters vs. sticks and

handhelds is in their ability to deep-

clean carpet,” says Frank Rizzi, one of

our vacuum test engineers. “Lighter

vacuums don’t have the strong suction

and brush-roll combination of uprights

and canisters.”

The Rigors of Our Testing

To determine how well vacuums

perform, we conduct different tests for

different types. Here are the details:

Carpet cleaning. Inside a climate-

controlled chamber, our testers weigh

each empty canister or upright and each

carpet section before embedding talc

and sand into the pile. After vacuuming,

machine and carpet are weighed again

to see how much the vacuum sucked up.

For stick models, a mix of dry rice, sand,

and Cheerios is scattered on the surface

of the carpet and vacuumed; the stick is

weighed before and after the test. We also

apply pet hair to the carpets, weighing

the hair before and after vacuuming.

Bare-floor cleaning. Using sand

for uprights and canisters, and the

same rice-sand-Cheerios mix for stick

vacuums, we measure the pickup for

each model. We test to see how well

stick vacs clean edges and corners. Our

testers broadcast sand into a corner

along a simulated baseboard. Then they

measure the distance of the remaining

sand to the edge after one full pass.

Emissions. The best vacuums keep dirt

well-contained inside a bag or dustbin

to keep the air clean—an important

consideration for allergy sufferers.

During these evaluations, our testers fill

each vacuum with a precise measure

of fine wood flour and run it in a sealed

chamber, measuring the amount of

flour released back into the room down

Product Update

WILL YOUR

VACUUM L AST?

We asked CR members

about the problems they

experienced with more than

51,000 nonrobotic vacuums

in our 2018 survey. Here’s a look

at how 18 brands compare

across the three most widely

sold vacuum types.

PREDICTED

RELIABILITY

RATINGS

10 20 30 04 05

WORSE BETTER

BRAND UPRIGHT CANISTER STICK

BISSELL 02 20 03

BLACK+DECKER 01 04

DIRT DEVIL 01 30 04

DYSON 03 30 01

ELECTROLUX 02 30 01

EUREKA 01 30 02

FULLER BRUSH 02

HOOVER 02 20 03

KENMORE 03 30

KIRBY 03

MAYTAG 02

MIELE 03 50 03

ORECK 02 03

RAINBOW 50

RICCAR 02

SEBO 05

SHARK 04 40 05

SIMPLICITY 02

PH

OT

O,

PR

EV

IO

US

PA

GE

:^ J

OH

N^

WA

LS

H/

CO

NS

UM

ER

R

EP

OR

TS

20 CR.ORG SEPTEMBER 2019 ICONS BY ELIAS STEIN