All of the vacuums featured have been tested by one of our in-house or contributing editors for at least a fortnight. The ease of use test also includes how heavy it is to lift it upstairs and how easy it is to clean underneath furniture and maneuver around furniture legs. It has nice touches, like the LED floor head and a 2 in 1 crevice tool for all of the little things you need to get to. The charging hole was oddly placed, though, on the side of the handle instead of at the base or the back of the unit, so it took a while to locate!

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. She enjoyed using its digital display, which detects and displays how much dirt, grime, and debris covers your floors by displaying a color-coded circular band. Testing several of the vacuums included in this round-up has allowed her to see which model excels at which task, and to judge them on all of the crucial factors of suction, as well as ease of use and storage, which is important in her very compact space.Battery life was sufficient to cover all the testing areas and there is a nice little self-stand function, which means you can free stand the vacuum, so you can move dog beds etc.

It would have been useful to be able to lock it in the upright position so it wouldn’t slide away over the floor. At the back of the unit, there are three light-up bars to signify battery strength and an orange button to increase the suction. It’s also equipped with a green laser so you can see every little grain of dust – even in brighter environments. It does, however, have a smaller dust tank than other picks on this list, and is a little less heavy-duty than large homes may need. Its clever brush heads pick up all the hair our furry friends leave behind, without getting tangled up.

We've replaced the Blade 4 in this list with the Blade 5 after testing them side by side at our testing facility. It also features a clever docking station, and produced impressive results in our tests, especially given that this is essentially just a handheld vacuum in the casing of a larger vac. Granted, this vacuum is big (it's got a 31cm cleaning head, and a 10 metre cord), but that makes it the kind of powerhouse you need for a large space.