Stick vacuum cleaners

Test performance

• Hard floors  – uses the power head (or hard floor head if included) to pick up a variety of materials such as cornflakes, potting mix and flour.

• Carpet – for our “quick” carpet clean score, we rub a precise amount of dust into a piece of test carpet and then, using the standard brush head, pass the vacuum over it four times and weigh the collected dirt. For our “full” carpet cleaning score, we make a further six passes and weigh the dirt collected.

• Pet hair – we rub pet hair into a piece of test carpet, then use the standard brush head to vacuum it up with 10 passes and weigh the collected hair.

• Ease of use – assesses the movement of the main cleaning head, looking at the vacuum’s ability to clean under low furniture, as well as versatility and mobility, ease of emptying, control use and what on-board tools are provided.

We no longer include corners and edges and handheld performance as part of our overall score, but we do note how well each model performed these tasks by giving them a good, acceptable or poor rating.

Predicted reliability

It’s reasonable to expect a new appliance to remain fault-free for at least the first five years. Our predicted reliability won’t tell you whether the vacuum cleaner in your laundry will stop sucking tomorrow, but it does show which brands make models that are less likely to fail.

Owner satisfaction

Satisfaction is important – no appliance should be a source of buyer-regret. Appliances with very satisfied owners are more likely to get cleaned regularly and maintained well. Their owners are more likely to seek repair for faults than look for a quick replacement.

Survey data 101

In our annual reliability and satisfaction survey, consumers tell us about faults that have left an appliance they own unusable or mean they’ve had to change how they use it. We also ask them how satisfied they are with the appliance. We use their data to produce our predicted reliability and owner satisfaction scores.

We use a statistical test to rate the relative performance of each brand. Compared to data we have for all products (of the same type) in the survey, we rate each brand with excellent (score 90), good (70), average (50), poor (30) or terrible (10) reliability and satisfaction. You can compare the rating of different brands for the same product type (for example, the reliability rating for Miele and Dyson stick vacuums), but you can’t compare the results for different product types (for example, satisfaction of LG TVs and Samsung stick vacuums).

We analyse brands that get at least 30 responses in our survey. That means there are some brands we can’t analyse because we don’t have enough data. For those brands, we assume they have average (50) predicted reliability and owner satisfaction.

Our data is based on responses for 1839 cordless/stick vacuum cleaners in our 2022 survey.