If you’re weighing up whether or not to invest in one of the best vacuum cleaners, then I have both good and bad news for cordless fans. The good news is stick vacuums are supremely convenient and very easy to use for light cleaning. The bad news is they’re never going to replace a traditional upright vacuum if you have a lot of floor space to get through and need a certain amount of suction power.
I’ve been using the Dyson V11 Advanced since I reviewed it towards the end of last year, and it’s since become an indispensable part of my cleaning regimen. The benefits I pointed out in my review — like the simple setup and robust design — mean I continue to reach for it when I need to spend 20 or 30 minutes vacuuming. Even the battery life has held up reasonably well.
However, when you’re several months into using a product, you’re much better able to appreciate shortcomings, or you come to use those “nice-to-have” elements you maybe glossed over at the beginning. I would still heartily recommend the Dyson V11 to anyone, but I can offer a bit more context about it now that I’m a little ways down the road.
The best part
You’re never going to run out of power when your vacuum is attached to an outlet, but the annoyance of having to thread a cable around furniture or through doors means I prefer the portability of a cordless vacuum.
The small LCD screen keeps things extremely simple. You get a readout of your power mode (Eco, Boost and Auto) as well as a battery countdown timer that lets you know how much of the 60-minute battery life you have remaining. That latter part is extremely useful as I’m not very good at remembering to keep the battery charged. Therefore, I can grab the vacuum, toggle it to the required setting depending on how much charge is left, and focus my cleaning because I know how long I have left on the clock.
Nearly a year on from first using the V11 Advanced, the battery life has remained constant when I do remember to charge it. You can get up to 60 minutes of charge when in “Eco” mode, and I’ve never needed to go beyond this. Furthermore, although you can purchase extra batteries directly from Dyson, I haven’t needed to augment my current power supply. That’s because if I know I’m going to be cleaning for the next hour, I’ll likely reach for my upright vacuum.
The worst part
It turns out there’s a rather divisive issue when it comes to Dyson’s cordless vacuums, and that’s the fact you constantly need to keep your finger on the trigger to activate the motor. The second you let up, the thing switches off. My upright vacuum has an on/off button, which, to my mind, is a far better solution.
It’s probably one of the reasons I don’t use the V11 Advanced for long periods of cleaning — I don’t want to spend 30 minutes with my finger clamped over a trigger. Furthermore, it also makes it difficult when you’ve got a different attachment bolted on and you need to try and work the vacuum into an awkward space. You can’t reposition your hand around it because you’re keeping one finger always on the trigger.
The fact that there’s not even a toggle button or a settings option (believe me, I’ve looked) letting the vacuum keep the trigger held for you seems like an oversight to me. Even all these months later, it’s still the one element of this vacuum that I feel lets it down.
Bottom line
Adding a battery-powered cordless stick vacuum to your cleaning closet is a no-brainer in my opinion. As long as you’re not going to make it your main cleaning tool. I look at it as something like a trusty sidekick to a proper upright vacuum that handles the lion’s share of the cleaning.
If I’m doing a weekend cleaning blitz, then nothing stands in the way of one of the best vacuum cleaners. But if you need to clean up a quick mess at a moment’s notice during the week, the cordless vacuum will let you get the job done with no fuss. Providing you’ve kept the battery charged.
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