How to Choose the Best Vacuum Cleaner

There are so many different vacuum cleaners on the market that it can be confusing to choose the best vacuum for your needs. This article will help you understand how vacuum cleaners work, what your options are and how to narrow down your options to find the best choice for you and your home.

Types of Vacuum Cleaners

This article is focused on choosing the primary vacuum cleaner for your home. So, setting aside specialty or secondary vacuum cleaners, such as hand vacuums, car vacuums, wet/dry vacuums, there are two major types of vacuum cleaners to choose from: uprights and canisters.

Uprights have traditionally been the favorite type of vacuum cleaner in the U.S. and Great Britain. In Europe and the rest of the world, canisters are the vacuum cleaner of choice.

Uprights generally have a revolving brush roll to provide agitation and may have one motor that provides the suction and also turns the agitator brush, or it may have two motors, one to provide suction and one to drive the brush.

Upright vacuum cleaners excel at cleaning synthetic (nylon, olefin or polyester) carpeting and many also have the ability to turn off the revolving brush for cleaning smooth floors. On-board attachments and integrated extension hoses have made uprights much more versatile and able to offer many of the features of canisters.

Still, canisters are by far the most versatile vacuum cleaner design. They offer outstanding performance on carpet and smooth floors as well as above-the-floor surfaces. Because the cleaning tools are used with a hose and wand, canister vacuum cleaners are more maneuverable than uprights, easily able to get under most furniture and into tight spaces.

There are three types of canister vacuum cleaners. All three are used with a hose, wands, floor tools and tool attachments. The difference is in the floor tools.

The first type of canister is called straight suction vacuum cleaner. It uses a floor tool with a simple, non-revolving brush for cleaning hard floors and flat carpets. The second type of canister uses a turbo or turbine floor tool. This has a revolving brush powered by the airflow created by the canister's suction motor.

The third type of canister uses a power brush floor tool most like an upright vacuum cleaner. A separate electric motor drives the power brush’s revolving brush roll. This type of canister is often referred to as a power team.

Bag or Bagless – Which Vacuum Is Better

After upright or canister, the other major difference between vacuum cleaners is whether it’s bagless or uses a dustbag. For most people, it’s a matter of personal preference. But if family members have allergies or asthma, or if you’re concerned about the quality of your indoor air, a vacuum with a dustbag generally is the better choice.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with bagless vacuums. The better ones do an excellent job of cleaning. But allergy and asthma sufferers need to consider all the dust they will be exposed to when maintaining the bagless vacuum.

No matter which bagless vacuum cleaner you use, it still comes down to removing a container of dust and allergens and crud that you so carefully removed from your home, and dumping it into something so you can throw it away. That can release a cloud of dust and allergens into the air you breathe as you throw it out, and as the cloud disperses and drifts into the rest of your home.

In addition, many bagless vacuums use filters that you need to brush or wash to remove trapped particles. This also can put back into your home the allergens and dirt you just removed.

It’s also important to remember that dirt travels through the whole vacuum cleaner system. The nature of bagless design makes it nearly impossible to seal a bagless vacuum so that there is no dirty air leakage through non-filtered openings. That’s in addition to the difficulties of creating an air tight seal on a collection bin while still making it easy to remove and replace.