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As part of our small appliances coverage on TechRadar, we review dozens of different vacuum cleaners each year.
to make this testing fair, and provide you with useful results, we have a strict reviewing protocol.
Here’s exactly how we test vacuums at TechRadar.
Fine debris test
Sprinkle a teabag’s worth of dry tea on the carpet.
Vacuum on the lowest setting, ensuring that you don’t go over any section more than once.
Assess how much of the tea the vacuum cleaner has picked up.
Repeat for hard floor and carpet.
Large debris test
Repeat as above, but with 30g of oats.
Note if the vacuum pings around the oats, moving them out of its suction path.
Repeat for hard floor and carpet.
Comment on your findings.
Hair tests
Assess how well the vacuum can remove hair from both carpet and hard flooring.
Ideally, test both long (human) hair and short (pet) hair.
Does this hair become caught around the brushroll, or is it whisked straight into the bin?
If the former, how easy is it to remove?
Charge the vacuum to full power.
Repeat for each power option.
Record how long it takes to fully recharge the vacuum, from a flat battery.
Fine debris testSprinkle a teabag’s worth of tea on the floor.
Start the vacuum on the lowest power setting.
Assess how much of the tea the vacuum collects.
If it hasn’t pick up all of it, repeat on increasingly more powerful options.
Repeat this test on hard flooring.
Hair test
Assess how well the robot vacuum pulls up hair from both carpeted floor and hard flooring.
Ideally, test both long (human) hair and short (pet) hair.
If the former, how easy is it to remove?
Mopping
Nowadays, many robot vacuums include mopping capabilities.
If this is the case, run a series of tests to measure how well these work.
How does it handle it does it push the liquid around or lift it?
Does it require multiple passes to dump the juice from the floor?
Next, smear a tiny amount of tomato ketchup on the floor, and leave it dry.
Set the robovac off on a cleaning cycle and see if the mop lifts it.
Set the robovac off on a clean and monitor how well it avoids and/or identifies each object.
Run this test twice.
Additionally, monitor how well the robovac deals with obstacles during everyday cleans.
Note if, for example, it regularly becomes tangled in cables and needs to be rescued manually.
During this review period, consider questions like:
