Consumer Reports: Best vacuums for spring cleaning
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After a long winter of mud, slush, and grime, your carpets and floors might look worse, and that’s where Consumer Reports comes in. Its experts lab test dozens of vacuums to help you find the perfect one to make spring cleaning a breeze.
Spring is in the air, but dirt, dust, and debris have probably built up in your home all winter. The right vacuum can make all the difference. A canister or an upright vacuum is your best bet for a thorough deep cleaning. You want a vacuum that’s going to suck up any dirt that you cannot see, such as embedded dirt in carpets.
To see which vacuums remove the most embedded dirt, CR testers got to work sprinkling a measured amount of sand onto a test carpet, packing it in, and then vacuuming it up. For bare floors, testers sprinkle more sand. The vacuum gets two passes to suck it up.
In addition to cleaning performance, testers also checked each vacuum for suction power, ran cleaning emissions tests, and assessed their loudness and ease of maneuvering.
CR has pet parents covered, too. You want a vacuum that picks up pet hair in the fewest passes without getting stuck in the brush. A canister vac is an excellent option if your home has stairs and a mix of hardwood floors and carpeting. The $400 Kenmore Elite Pet Friendly UltraPlush 81714 earned top marks in CR’s bare floor, pet hair, and emissions tests. – It also offered solid performance in the embedded carpet test.
Upright vacuums are best for deep cleaning carpets but are not great on stairs. In CR’s tests, the $150 upright Shark Navigator Professional NV360 offered impressive performance on carpets and bare floors.
Consumer Reports says a handheld or stick vacuum is also a great option for smaller jobs in between deeper cleaning. Although they still lack the suction power and cleaning performance of uprights and canisters, they’re great for surface dirt and messes.
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