The best vacuum cleaners in 2023, plus everything you need to know before you buy
Cordless, cylinder, upright, pet and robot vacuums – which is best for you in 2023? We’ve tested leading brands and asked the experts
Nothing will make more of a difference to the day-to-day cleanliness of your home than buying a decent vacuum cleaner. They come in all shapes and sizes, from traditional corded upright vacuums to “stick” or cordless vacuums, powerful cylinder vacuums, specially-designed vacuums for pet hair removal and even high-tech robot vacuums. There are also wet-and-dry carpet cleaners to consider. If you’re reading this piece, it’s likely you’re in the market for an upgrade – but which type should you go for?
According to professional cleaner Katerina Petrova of the Happy House Cleaning Company, that largely depends on the area you have to clean, as well as your budget.
Weight and manoeuvrability are priorities, she says, as “no one wants to carry around a very heavy hoover, or to keep looking for yet another switch if the cord is too short." If you have mostly hard floors and are looking at the upper end of the price spectrum, Petrova recommends the cordless Dyson V15, which is also our top pick, as “it has a brush head with lasers and really does perfectly clean every corner of your place.”
However, a cordless vacuum cleaner may not be the best choice if you have lots of carpet or a large area to clean. Corded upright and cylinder vacuums aren’t limited by battery life, and in most instances they have more powerful suction. Petrova also recommends looking for a vacuum with a HEPA filter, “as they provide the best method of filtration and traps even particles too small to see with naked eye.”
She is also a fan of robot vacuums, which she says are a good choice if you don’t have any budgetary constraints and don’t want to do much cleaning. However, on testing the best robot vacuum cleaners, we found most were quite a faff to set up and use.
How we tested the best vacuum cleaners
See our individual reviews of the best upright, cylinder, cordless, pet and robot vacuums for more details. In general we used dry food like crisps and crumbs, grit like cat litter, fine dirt like tea-leaves and talc and various types of hair from people and pets to see how the vacuums handled different tasks. Weight, manoeuvrability, ease of use and adaptability were important criteria. We also considered price and build quality.
Which is the best vacuum cleaner? At a glance
- Best cordless vacuum cleaner – Dyson V15 Detect Complete
- Best pet vacuum cleaner - Vax Air Stretch Pet
- Best cylinder vacuum cleaner – Shark Bagless Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner
- Best robot vacuum cleaner – iRobot Roomba i7+
- Best upright vacuum cleaner - Shark Lift-Away Upright Pet Vacuum
Best vacuum cleaners
1. Dyson V15 Detect Complete cordless vacuum cleaner
Best cordless vacuum cleaner
We liked: it’s the Telegraph team’s best-rated vacuum cleaner, and a favourite of professional cleaners
Recommended by Abigail Buchanan
Vacuum cleaners have become an unexpected specialist subject of mine over the past year as a writer on the Telegraph Recommended product review section, and no vacuum has impressed me more than this.
It’s expensive, but you get the best of everything – the best suction power, the best range of features (including a laser-powered light up floorhead and an LCD screen which shows you exactly how many microscopic dust particles you have sucked up), and the best battery life. It’s the first Dyson vacuum to have an upgraded HEPA filter to trap microscopic particles as small as 0.1 microns – the size of pet dander and diesel soot. It also comes with a range of premium accessories for cleaning every part of your home thoroughly.
At just 2.74kg, it’s light enough to use on stairs and to move around without too much bother. Despite its light weight, it’s a market leader with 230aW of suction power. If there were a vacuum worth investing in, I have no doubt this one fits the bill.
Compare more of the top-rated models in our review of the best cordless vacuum cleaners.
Key features: 0.76 litre capacity, up to 60 min battery life, 230AW suction power, HEPA filter, weight 2.74kg
2. Vax Air Stretch Pet
Best pet vacuum cleaner
We liked: powerful suction and good filtration to trap pet dander and hair
Recommended by Simon Lewis
Our favourite pet vacuum cleaner was also the cheapest — which is remarkable, given that it had one of the most powerful motors and a top-rated HEPA filter. Good filters are the key to pet vacuums, since pet dander (dust made of microscopic particles of their skin, saliva and sweat, which can give your home an unpleasant 'pet smell') can be as small as two thousandths of a millimetre across.
Pet vacuums also need powered brushes for lifting hair from carpets and upholstery and, though Vax's isn't cutting edge compared to brands like Dyson, it's very effective. Especially at a sixth of the price.
Compare more of the top-rated models in our review of the best vacuums for pet hair.
Key features: 850W motor, 1.5l capacity, 5.5kg weight, 12m reach, HEPA filtration, turbo tool, one year guarantee
3. Shark Bagless Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner
Best cylinder vacuum cleaner
We liked: the excellent suction
Recommended by Abigail Buchanan
American Dyson-challenger brand Shark performed best in our tests of the best cylinder vacuum cleaners. The Shark Bagless Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner is easy to use, manoeuvre and empty, with an LED light for illuminating hidden dust.
It also has the same ‘anti hair-wrap’ technology, “DuoClean” floorhead and flexible wand as the upright Shark model below and a HEPA filter makes it excellent choice for homes with pets or people with allergies. It’s also the most stylish cylinder vacuum we tested by a significant margin.
It’s easy to switch between dedicated cleaning modes for carpets, hard floors and “above floor,” plus three suction strengths. The bagless design means there’s no need to faff around with changing dust bags, and it has a long 9m cord that automatically rewinds.
Compare more of the top-rated models in our review of the best cylinder vacuum cleaners.
Key features: 1.6 litre bagless capacity, 800W, 9m cable, weight 8.4kg
4. iRobot Roomba i7+
Best robot vacuum cleaner
We liked: basic floor cleaning can now be done while you're out (although anything above ankle height is still your problem)
Recommended by Simon Lewis
Prices in robot vacuum cleaners range from £250 to well over £1000. Sitting roughly in the middle, the Roomba i7 isn’t the cutting edge, but the tech is impressive. As it cleans rooms, it creates a map which you can amend on your phone with keep-out zones and clean zones that need special attention, like around the bins or under the kitchen table. You can then send it to spot clean a given area at any time, using the app or a voice command.
In our tests it was faster and less ‘dithery’ than other robot vacs, forming a confident map of its surroundings. Trundling around quietly (it's no noisier than a desk fan), it was impressive on hard floors and while did leave some fine dirt behind on carpets on the first pass, it got it up on a targeted clean.
We definitely recommend the + version, which automatically empties itself into a bag in the base station when it returns to recharge. The bags fill up quite quickly, especially in a house with pets, but are very easy to slide out and dispose of.
Robot vacuums if we’re honest are still more of a novelty than a must-have, but this is the one to get, especially with the discounts currently available. It auto-updates its software over wi-fi, so won’t be obsolete for a good while yet.
Compare more of the top-rated models in our review of the best robot vacuum cleaners.
Key features: 9.2cm high, 34cm wide, auto-empty into 0.3-litre bags, laser, camera and infrared sensors for obstacle and cliff detection, 75 min run time, iRobot app
5. Shark Lift-Away Upright Vacuum NV612UKT
Best upright vacuum
We liked: it’s excellent value for money
Recommended by Abigail Buchanan
Our top upright vacuum cleaner is this lightweight, versatile Shark model that has impressive cleaning power. It comes with a dedicated pet hair tool to remove embedded hair from upholstery – and, even better, it's frequently to be found discounted to under £200.
The canister is detachable, so you can lift it up and use it like a cylinder vacuum to clean stairs or furniture; this makes it almost as practical as a cordless model for spot cleaning, but with the suction power of an upright. Even in an upright position it's light, compact and easy to move around. It's freestanding and the suction power can be easily adjusted via a switch on the handle.
It has LED lights on the floorhead to illuminate hidden dust and grime, and an anti-allergy seal that traps an alleged 99.9 per cent of dust and allergens.
Compare more of the top-rated models in our review of the best upright vacuum cleaners.
Key features: 0.83 litre capacity, 750W, 8.5m power lead, weight 5.65 kg
Which vacuum has the strongest suction?
Old-fashioned upright and cylinder vacuums will always be more powerful than cordless or robot versions since they have more powerful motors. But as for which brand sucks hardest, it’s complicated. Vacuum cleaner manufacturers commonly quote the input power of the motor in Watts, but is not quite the same as measuring suction. After all, a badly-designed vacuum might have a powerful motor but fail to transmit that to the business end.
Experts say what you should really be comparing is the output power, given in airWatts. This is calculated by multiplying two other measurements (told you this was complicated):
Waterlift measures the suction at the foot: if the bottom of the tube was placed in water, this measures how far water would rise up the tube before gravity cancelled out the power of the motor. A vacuum with higher waterlift will be good for deep carpet cleaning. It’s also called sealed suction.
Airflow measures the amount of air pulled through the hose during operation. It’s often considered a better measure of a vacuum cleaner’s performance than waterlift, because it takes into account the resistance of the filter, bag and any other impedances to airflow.
In an ideal world all vacuum cleaners would multiply these to give an output rating measured in airWatts. Sadly it is rarely available. Some manufacturers list waterlift (in mm), some airflow (in m3/h), some nothing. We have listed whatever information is available to help you compare, but our assessment of the vacuum cleaners' power is based on at-home tests and expert advice.