Cleaning & Vacuums
Corded uprights and cylinders, bagged and bagless, from a light bagless cylinder to a 9 L bagged Henry and a SEBO upright, each matched to its exact Amazon.co.uk listing and checked against the manufacturer’s own page. Choose the shape first, then bags or a bin, then work out the cable and hose that set your real reach. Shopicks has not tested any of them.
Our editorial choice to illustrate this subcategory. Featured picks are not a ranking and are not the result of side-by-side testing.
A corded upright with a removable 1.5 L bin and a stretch hose that Vax says gives up to 17 m of reach, for people who want an upright that also reaches stairs and above-floor jobs.
Featured as the cleaning-reach example because Vax UK spells out how its 17 m figure is made up, a 13 m cable plus a 3.6 m total stretch hose, which makes the difference between cable length and cleaning reach easy to see. It illustrates the point and is not a ranking.
May suit: People who want an upright for carpets and hard floors and a stretch hose for stairs and above-floor jobs.
Worth checking: Reach is the cable and hose added together, so the cleaner itself still has to stand within the hose's length of where you are working. Vax's fine dust and dander claim is footnoted to a laboratory test standard measured to the maximum fill line, and we do not repeat it as a result.
Checked against: Vax UK (opens in a new tab)
Showing 10 of 10 products
A corded upright with a removable 1.5 L bin and a stretch hose that Vax says gives up to 17 m of reach, for people who want an upright that also reaches stairs and above-floor jobs.
A corded upright with a DuoClean floorhead and a Powered Lift-Away section, for people who want an upright that lifts away for stairs and furniture.
A 9 L bagged cylinder with a 10 m cable and a stated 26.4 m cleaning range, for people who want a large bag and a long cable and do not mind the weight.
A 2.5 L bagless cylinder with a telescopic tube, a combination floor head and a turbo tool, for people who want a light, simple cylinder with rinseable filters.
A bagless upright with a 3 L bin, a stretch hose and a carpet height selector, for people who want a straightforward corded upright with a pet hair remover.
A 4 L bagged cylinder with a washable filter and six nozzles, for people who want separate nozzles for hard floors, upholstery and mattresses.
A bagged upright with a separate brush motor, a foot-operated brush switch and three handle heights, for people with mostly carpet who want an upright with a long guarantee.
A compact bagless cylinder with a washable filter, a stretch hose and a pet turbo tool, for people who want a small bagless cylinder for stairs and pet hair on furniture.
A light bagged cylinder with a rotating hose and on-board tool storage, for people who want a bagged cylinder that stores compactly.
A 4 L bagged cylinder with a HEPA hygienic filter and a turbo nozzle, for people who want a bagged cylinder with a 10 m operating radius.
Before you buy
Which? says uprights suit large floor areas and carpets and are generally better at getting hair and fluff out of carpets, but are harder to use on stairs, in tight spaces and under low furniture. Cylinders have a long flexible hose that usually makes stairs easier, and they tend to reach further from the socket, but can be harder to push over thick carpet, particularly without a turbo brush.
The uprights listed here are the Vax Air Stretch Pet Max, the Shark NZ801UKT, the Hoover Breeze Evo Pets and the SEBO Felix Pet. The Shark’s Powered Lift-Away converts it into a portable vacuum, and the Vax adds a stretch hose, which narrows the gap on stairs. The cylinders are the Henry, the Vax Pick Up Pet, two Bosch models and two Hoover models.
Which? found that both bagged and bagless vacuums can lose suction as the bag or container fills, and that bagless models released much more dust into the room when emptied than bagged ones. Bagless means no bags to buy but a smaller capacity and more frequent emptying. Bagged tends to hold more, though bags are an ongoing cost, and Which? says branded bags often have extra filtration while cheaper ones usually do not.
Listed bags and bins run from the Henry’s 9 L drum and the Bosch models’ 4.0 l bags to bins of 3 L on the Hoover Breeze Evo Pets and 1.5 L on the Vax Air Stretch Pet Max. Allergy UK recommends vacuums with a HEPA filter that do not blow out dust, which is something to check in the maker’s own wording, not in a listing title.
Which? says corded cables run from about six metres to more than fifteen, and that this makes a big difference. A cable only tells you how far the machine can stand from the socket. Reach adds the hose and any tube, and makers define it differently: Vax counts a 13 m cable plus a 3.6 m stretch hose as up to 17 m, Bosch gives a 10 m operating radius with a 7 m cable, and Hoover gives a 9.5 m working radius with a 7 m cord.
Numatic’s Henry lists a 10 m cable and a 26.4 m ‘cleaning range’ that its page does not define, so we do not compare it. Measure the distance from your socket to the furthest corner you clean, and compare cable and hose, not the headline reach.
What matters is the floor head and whether it can be adjusted. SEBO’s brush roller switches off with a foot button for delicate floors, and the Hoover Breeze Evo Pets has a brush bar adjustable for different floors and a carpet height selector. The Bosch BGB41HYGGB lists a hard floor nozzle, while the BGL38BA3GB lists crevice, upholstery, universal and turbo nozzles but no hard floor nozzle.
For pet hair, Which? says floor tools with spinning brush bars or powered turbo brushes can help on carpets and a mini turbo tool helps on sofas and stairs. The Vax Air Stretch Pet Max and Pick Up Pet list turbo tools, the Hoover H-POWER and H-ENERGY list pet turbo tools and the Shark lists a Pet Power Brush. Whether any of them removes pet hair well is something only testing can show.
Makers use different filter words, and a washable filter is not the same as a HEPA filter. Hoover’s H-POWER page says washable HEPA H13, Bosch’s BGL38BA3GB says HEPA hygienic filter, Bosch’s BGB41HYGGB says UltraAllergy hygienic filter, Hoover’s H-ENERGY page says washable EPA and SEBO says S-Class. The Amazon.co.uk titles for the BGB41HYGGB and H-ENERGY say HEPA where the makers’ pages do not, so the cards follow the makers.
Allergy UK recommends a high-filtration vacuum with a HEPA, S-class or similar filter, and says that cleaning lowers but does not totally remove house dust mite allergens. We make no claim that any listed vacuum removes allergens.
We chose uprights and cylinders, bagged and bagless, with different cable lengths, capacities and tools, not different colours of one model, and we kept a model only where we could open its exact Amazon.co.uk listing and the manufacturer’s own page and match them. We rejected Miele and Dyson candidates because their UK sites refused automated access. Hoover’s UK page for the H-POWER 300 Pets would not load, so that card and the H-ENERGY 300 Pets card use Hoover’s Irish pages for the same 001 model codes.
Nothing in the list is ranked, and no card makes a claim about sales or value. One card is marked as a featured example to illustrate the page, and the card says why. Amazon only permits prices, stock, star ratings and review counts from its own site, so none appears here, and each button opens the Amazon.co.uk listing for the current price and availability.
Upright versus cylinder, bagged versus bagless, cable lengths, floor heads and pet hair tools. Test results are behind a paywall and are not used.
High-filtration vacuum cleaners and the limits of cleaning.
Its recommendation of vacuum cleaners with a HEPA filter that do not blow out dust.
Each card’s source links are recorded in the Cleaning & Vacuums evidence dataset. Hoover’s pages for two cylinders were read from its Irish site.
Buying guide
A research-based UK guide to corded vacuum cleaners covering upright versus cylinder, bagged versus bagless, cable and hose reach, floor heads, pet tools and filters, with five examples checked against manufacturer pages.
Comparison
How cordless and corded vacuum cleaners differ in convenience, power supply, battery limits, cleaning reach, storage, maintenance, capacity and suitability for different UK homes, using manufacturer figures and Which? advice.
Which? says a cylinder’s long flexible hose usually makes stairs easier and uprights can be harder to use on stairs. Some uprights narrow the gap, such as the Shark NZ801UKT with its Powered Lift-Away and the Vax Air Stretch Pet Max with its stretch hose, but we have not tested either.
Neither is better outright. Which? found both can lose suction as they fill and that bagless models released more dust when emptied, while bagless saves buying bags. Bagged models usually hold more. The buying guide sets out the trade-offs.
Measure from your socket to the furthest point you clean. Which? says cables run from about six metres to more than fifteen. The cards give each maker’s cable length and quote its reach with the maker’s own definition, since the definitions differ.
The Vax Air Stretch Pet Max and Pick Up Pet list turbo tools, the Hoover H-POWER and H-ENERGY list pet turbo tools, the Hoover Breeze Evo Pets a pet hair remover and the Shark NZ801UKT a Pet Power Brush. Numatic’s Henry page names no pet tool. We have not tested how well any of them works.
Only some makers use the word. Hoover’s H-POWER page and Bosch’s BGL38BA3GB page do, while Bosch’s BGB41HYGGB and Hoover’s H-ENERGY pages use other terms despite their Amazon.co.uk titles, and several makers state no filter type. We make no claim that any removes allergens.
Amazon only permits prices, ratings and review counts to be shown from its own site or API, and a stale value would mislead you. Each button links to the Amazon.co.uk listing, where you can see the current price, availability and customer reviews.
No. The cards are based on each manufacturer’s own page or data sheet, matched to the Amazon.co.uk listing. We do not describe cleaning results we have not seen.