Would have been good to have a round-up comparison chart a the end, so all the important stats and price could be easily seen in one go, along with some kind of score/rating.
Coming clean: Ten cordless vacuum cleaners
The DIY market for power drills cracked going cordless years ago, but for domestic heavyweights such as an affordable vacuum cleaner, tripping over a six-metre mains cable has been a weekend tradition for most UK households. Really, how much R&D does it take to get a good cordless vacuum cleaner? Is the wait over yet? El Reg's …
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Sunday 23rd November 2014 10:26 GMT Anthony Hegedus
Black and Decker
I have the 1020L model, which appears to be exactly the same as the 1820L but without the docking station. It only cost £60 as opposed to £170 and I'm very pleased with it. It's strong enough, has an easily switchable brush/solid end mode, and above all, its really tiny and very light.
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Sunday 23rd November 2014 10:38 GMT PleebSmash
Re: I Thought the Reg was an IT mag.
Don't you know about the GreenVac500 list, which ranks vacuum cleaners by Pascals per Watt?
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Sunday 23rd November 2014 18:31 GMT Rol
Re: Why cordless drills came first
I see the ergonomically designed cleaners have all the bumps, edges and throbbing motor parts to satisfy even the most demanding of women, but where are the extensions and hoses for male dusting?
Seems a little sexist.
I foresee a time when A&E never again gets a little light hearted relief from males presenting while attached to Henry the Hoover.
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Monday 24th November 2014 07:00 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: Why cordless drills came first
Err... The eldest male offspring? I thought that is who is blamed to vacuum clean by default. I was until I left home and I always try to blame mine nowdays. The problem is that every time I try to blame mine (either the elder or his younger sister) to do the vacuuming I find them setting up the Roomba in the room to be cleaned.
C'est la vie, vacuuming is somewhat of a thing of the past.
From that perspective the only thing you use a household vacuum cleaner in a non-DIY/non-Workshop context for is to go around the corners left by the roomba once a month. Something like the Dyson (the long wand version) or the Black-N-Deckers will actually be quite appealing for that job.
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Sunday 23rd November 2014 14:23 GMT TWB
As a Gtech owner....
...I wish this article had been out a couple of weeks ago.
But having said that, I like my new AirRam and handheld a lot - I live in a dusty house and both really seem to pick up stuff well and run for a long time. I like the fact that the AirRam has no extra tools - Mrs TWB never put them back with the old mains vacuum and we ended up with odd attachments all over the place. I rarely use the old mains machine as it is heavy and clunky to carry around the house by comparison.
The only downsides I'd say with both Gtech's is that you have too plug the charger leads into the units - this takes two hands - I would have liked charging holsters, though also a shame that the 'MagSafe' idea only seems to be on Apple laptops (do correct me if I'm wrong here).
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Sunday 23rd November 2014 14:27 GMT Tim99
Dyson stick
We have the new model Dyson stick without the animal head (no pets). We both have back trouble and I have a duff neck caused by a RTA. The old cylinder cleaner was too heavy and its wheels kept getting stuck in the deep-pile carpet, causing it to fall over. We replaced it with the Dyson and are very pleased with it.
I can clean our 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, small office, hall and living/dining/kitchen unit with a single charge. Not having a cable to trip over is a real bonus. The docking station is screwed to a wall in the garage, and is easy to use provided you remember to lift the cleaner slightly before pushing it into place.
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Sunday 23rd November 2014 15:24 GMT Pen-y-gors
Viva cordless!
Got a Dyson stick job a couple of years ago - house is much cleaner now! The difference is that a cordless is so quick and easy to use - much, much less faff than plugging big Dyson in and lugging it around, then unplug and lug upstairs and plug in, before unplugging again and lugging back downstairs. Basically it didn't happen! Now it's just remove stick from wall and give the whole house a quick wizz. Happens frequently.
To be honest though, even in turbo mode the little one isn't as effective as the big one. Still benefits from a good run round with the biggie every month or two.
And don't talk to me about the fun of unclogging the hair/fur/threads/leaves etc from the turbo head! I find an old steak knife is an essential accesory.
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Monday 24th November 2014 10:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Viva cordless!
That's why we eventually sprung for the Dyson; our flat is so lacking in floor space (too much ephemera) that 2/3 of the time during hoovering was probably spent moving things out of the way or freeing the cable from where it had got stuck under a door or cabinet. The Dyson's agile enough to get into the fiddliest corners without moving much at all, helped by the fact you can remove the long tube to get into smaller gaps. And in spite of the seemingly low power, it actually cleans the carpet better than the (now more or less unused) 3kw Vax, at least in part I think because the (in my experience) exceptionally well designed brush head does such a decent job of beating the dust out of the carpet in the first place. The Dysons head is motor driven, whereas the lamentable version on the Vax relies on an impeller driven by the suction, and it simply doesn't do the job at all, the brush usually grinding to a halt.
But probably its biggest plus is dusting - a once a week (twice in summer) perpetual nightmare just to break even in a place beside one of London's main arterial roads. There's enough variety of well thought through tools to cover most tabletops, shelves and otherwise inaccessible nooks and crannies, but enough suction to make doing it worthwhile. The DC59 actually comes with two powered heads, a larger one for floors and a smaller one good for sofas, stairs and smaller gaps under furniture. Instead of two hours relocating dust randomly with a cloth + feather duster, the Dyson will actually dispose of it properly and cover the same area and more in 30 minutes.
The stated battery life is a bit misleading in practice too (in a good way), at least in the sense that use tends to be intermittent. Since the trigger is only pressed when you need it and the motor is so quick to spin up and down, you waste no battery idling as you move stuff out of the way, so a full charge can easily last an hour or more depending on what you're doing. In practice I've only run it flat once or twice in the year odd I've had it and usually manage a full clean including dusting on one charge.
I'm honestly usually not a mug for household gadgetry at all, and suspected I was being a more than a bit rash spending 300 quid on a bloody vacuum; my girlfriend, less charitably thought I was completely barking and was looking forward to delivering some weapons grade schadenfreude when it wasn't up to the task. But if I was cynical at the outset, I'm a converted and rabid Dyson fanboi now and will definitely replace the DC59 with the current equivalent when it packs up. I've got a far cleaner place, a happier girlfriend with one less (sadly legitimate) axe to grind, and I spend a quarter of the time cleaning and even enjoy doing it. For the 200 quid excess to what I'd have spent otherwise it was well worth the leap of faith, and for me borders on pretty close to a bargain.
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Monday 24th November 2014 13:12 GMT robin thakur 1
It's pretty ridiculous. Name one man that isn't into Dysons? They are virtually designed as man-toys as they look all shiny and engine-like, and the website is very masculine. Yet they still show just women using them like this is the 1950s. I personally look forward to doing the vacuuming when there's a Dyson involved and I've had many a conversation about Dysons with like-minded men. We all agree they are fabulous.
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Saturday 29th November 2014 01:46 GMT Martin-73
Re: Name one man that isn't into Dysons
Maybe this is just me, but Dyson=cheap. Seriously! Head to your local dump (household waste recycling centre).
90+% of the Dysons there have one of 2 faults. A damaged cord (which won't be an issue as the dump..err recyclers take them off immediately) or a lack of realizing that as well as being bagless it DOES have a filter, which has caused the thermal cutout to trip on the motor. Which self resets within minutes.
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Sunday 23rd November 2014 16:47 GMT Tony W
Replaceable batteries?
What happens when the batteries won't hold charge shortly after the guarantee ends? I had a lovely cleaner that couldn't be opened without breaking it, even with a full security screwdriver set.
Why don't these manufacturers adopt the cordless drill battery model? Ecologically (and economically) terrible to throw the whole thing away when the battery gives up.
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Sunday 23rd November 2014 17:37 GMT Infernoz
All expensive for what they are
I've had an old Dyson hand held for years which is much more convenient than a mains ones, but even with Li-ion batteries and high speed DC pulse motors I am disappointed just how expensive and short battery life these devices still are. I like the idea of more suction power with the newer DC58 and DC59, but £220 and £300 is tacking the piss! The price is actually rising for these devices, WTF!
I don't buy the excuse that making high speed DC motors is so hard and expensive, it's just rotating parts engineering, SMTP like electronics, and adaptive software to adapt the stepping spindle motor technology used in Hard Disks.
Dyson are flat out wrong on short battery life being OK; they need to provide the facility to charge extra batteries away from the vacuum, and price the batteries and cradle reasonably.
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Monday 24th November 2014 05:56 GMT Schultz
Re: Wandered into an alternative universe...
You must be new here, so you missed the preceding story on the X-rated circus of horrors.
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Monday 24th November 2014 13:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
I wish to complain
about the sexist images by the article, which imply that all that light work is done by smiling, middle-to-upper class photoshopped models. Can I have, like, I dunno... an Isis state-thingy bearded warrior or something instead? A slave boy (no, take that back! - this would be understood literally!). Well, a pizza delivery man, with his crash helmet on? Surely this is not racist or sexist? Or a wrinkly off his hospital bed (that's me!!!!), in his immaculately photoshopped gown, no need to bend or stretch, stiff as a stiff, eh? Not to mention a man of colour, to keep the gender/race ratio as advocated by the current double standards. Better still - two men! No, take that back, say, two WOMAN and a man! Sold!