Best Home Vacuums

18 Apr Best Home Vacuums

Choosing a Home Vacuum Cleaner

A good vacuum cleaner is a necessity when it comes to a clean, healthy home. Do you have to spend a fortune to get a good one? And what features should you look for?

There are four main types of home vacuum cleaner: upright, stick, canister and robotic. The type you buy will depend on your personal preference and what type of flooring you have.

Carpet Cleaning Woes

You know that the first step in keeping your carpets clean is regular vacuuming. Unfortunately, most home vacuum cleaners aren’t up to the job and many of them will eventually fray your carpet fibers.

What makes carpets so hard to vacuum? Most carpets sold today are considerably softer than carpets made in the past. The thickness of the fibers makes it hard to push a vacuum through them. At the same time, these soft fibers are easily torn and frayed.

Most carpet manufacturers recommend setting your vacuum to its highest setting to avoid tearing the carpet fibers. Some even recommend removing the beater bar entirely when you vacuum, especially on frieze or “shag” carpets. You also shouldn’t use high-suction vacuums on soft carpets. For best results, check your manufacturer’s warranty for guidelines on the best way to clean your carpet.

Upright Vacuums

Most independent reviews, including Cnet, found that uprights are great for bare floors like hardwood and laminate, but fall far short when it comes to carpet.

The testers at the Good Housekeeping Institute noted that every vacuum has its own strengths. For instance, the best vacuum for picking up pet hair, dander and allergens were the Kenmore Elite 31150 Pet-Friendly upright. At a price of almost $250, it is not cheap until you compare it to the $800 Miele Complete C3 Powerline, a canister model that Good Housekeeping rated as the only vacuum able to really pull dirt out of carpets.

Review site Top Ten Reviews ranked the Dyson Animal 2 as the best all-around cleaner for all types of flooring, including hardwood and industrial carpet. If you don’t have or don’t want to spend $500 for a vacuum cleaner, the site also gave high ratings to the lower-priced Dirt Devil Razorvac UD70350B and the Bissell PowerGlide Cordless 1534.

Stick Vacuums

Lightweight and easy to operate, stick vacuums are good for cleaning carpet and are ideal if you have area rugs. Almost every vacuum manufacturer makes a stick model. One review found that the unassuming and affordable Hoover Platinum Collection Linx wireless stick vacuum outperformed all others tested, including the $500 Dyson DC59.

Canister Vacuums

Not as popular as uprights, canisters are a good choice if you need something that maneuvers easily around furniture and on stairs. Canister vacuums are available in bagged or bagless models.

As with other vacuum cleaner types, you can still find values if you compare carefully. For instance, Consumer Reports gave almost equal rankings to the $300 Kenmore 81614 as it did to the $1100 Miele Marin when comparing both models’ ease of use, maneuverability, and ability to pick up pet hair and dirt from carpets.

Robotic Vacuums

If you really, really hate cleaning, you can hire a cleaning service. But what about daily pickups and in-between floor cleaning? Enter the robotic, self-guided vacuum cleaner. Keep in mind that most robotic vacuums do only surface cleaning and don’t dig deep.

The Roomba, whose full name is the iRobot Roomba 880, is the best-known brand, but some reviewers give a slight edge to the Neato Botvac Connected Vacuum. Both of these have similar features and a similar price tag of about $700. Neato also makes a more affordable, lower-tech version, the $450 Neato XV Signature Pro.

Make Your Choice

If you’re having trouble deciding which vacuum fits your needs, think about what you need to vacuum. If you have mostly hard surfaces, any decent, affordably-priced vacuum cleaner will be fine. You might want to supplement with a stick or handheld vacuum for small carpeted areas. If you mostly have carpet, you’ll have to decide which features are most important to you and what you can reasonably fit into your budget.

No matter which vacuum you use it makes sense to regularly schedule deep carpet cleaning by a professional carpet cleaning company.  The team at Carpet Keepers is on standby to meet your carpet, rug and upholstery cleaning needs – contact us to schedule a carpet cleaning.