we've tested a lot of cordless vacuums
in 2019 and it's time for our second
annual best cordless vacuum competition
2019 edition in addition to the eight
cordless vacuums from last year we added
14 more this year for a total of 22
cordless vacuums tested I broke up the
competition into three categories the
budget category for vacuums $200 or less
the mid level from 200 to $500 and the
premium vacuums from 500 dollars and up
you can check the links in the
description for timestamps to each
category if you want to skip to the
section that interests you the most and
be sure to subscribe to vacuum ores
while you're there I tested things like
their power specifically their suction
and air flow numbers their battery life
their pickup ability on hard floors and
carpet their ability to deep clean
carpets their filtration systems their
ability to resist pet hair tangles their
weight and ease of use their attachment
set their price and a few other things I
then gave them scores making sure to
weigh certain categories more than
others and I think we came up with some
pretty solid picks for the best cordless
vacuums this year in each category I
should mention that four out of the 22
cordless vacuums here were sent to me
for free to do reviews on in the past
and while three of those placed in the
top three in their category none of them
are my pick for best cordless vacuum in
their price range so you can be
reasonably confident that our picks are
our honest opinions okay so let's get
started with the budget category
starting off with power
I took their suction power numbers on
high power and added them to their air
flow numbers measured at the cleaner
head on high power to get a combined
power score for each and we see that the
Jimmy J V 51 was by far the most
powerful followed by the MU sook a 17
and the two other mooses and in case
you're wondering this is the somewhat
complicated way I scored this
competition next up is battery life and
it's important to know that it's not
enough to say that this cordless vacuum
can go for 30 minutes on low power and
this one over here for only 25 minutes
because you also need to know how much
suction and air flow power is happening
on each power setting in order to see
how good or efficient the battery
actually is for example the Dyson V 11
can only go eight minutes on its high
power setting but that's because it's
super powerful on its high power setting
but it's actually the most efficient
battery and
this competition so he made a formula
that took all this into account and
found that the Jimmy and the Moose who
618 B were tied for first place with
decent battery numbers with the other
two mooses and the Hoover react placed
here as well next up is the carpet deep
clean test this is where we take 100
grams of sand and embed it into medium
pile carpet and weigh the dustbins
before and after to see how much they
picked up after 16 passes and all of
these were pretty close with the new
Hoover one power blade plus just barely
taking the top spot a few notable things
here is that the Jimmy did worse than
any vacuum I've ever tested here and
that's because it only comes with a soft
roller head which is amazing for hard
floors but is not really meant for
carpet cleaning which will come up later
probably one of the most important
categories is how well they pick up
debris on the surface of carpets and
hard floors and with hard floors the
Jimmy and the Eureka power plush were
the best since they had those soft
rollers which are so good with
everything from fine debris to super
extra large piles of debris as well as
pet hair with a four-way tie for a
second place with a lot of the losers
here being vacuums that tended to
snowplow larger debris which is common
on hard floors on carpets I also take
snow plowing into account but in general
they all did much better here with a
three-way tie going to the Hoover the
Dirt Devil reach max plus and the
Bissell multi rate one of the biggest
differences between a budget vacuum and
the more expensive vacuums is that
budget vacuums are typically not sealed
systems with hepa filters and don't
really trap a lot of the microscopic
debris in the vacuum which I've become a
bit of a snob about recently and all of
these budget cordless vacuums failed
either our fog test or our dry particle
test where we use a special kind of
testing dust and a particle counter the
Jimmy JB 51 was the only quote-unquote
winner here though because while it also
failed the test and there was a little
bit of visible fog seen it does actually
have a HEPA filter and it didn't fail
nearly as badly as the others we tested
their ability to resist hair tangles
with one gram of seven inch human hair
and there was a two-way tie the musu k17
because it has a fairly large diameter
brush which is good for resisting
tangles and the Jimmy because of its
soft roller and because it has these
small combs built into the housing which
pulls hair off the brush as you vacuum
in the interest of time I will quickly
mention that we looked at the
eight the attachment set giving extra
points if they had handheld turbo
brushes with a preference to motorized
turbo brushes we charted how well they
did on our crevice pickup test which
shows if they have a good seal on hard
floors we gave them extra points if they
had a removable battery and if those
batteries were available for sale if you
wanted to buy an extra one and finally
we took their current prices into
account and gave them corresponding
points and the budget category winners
were the Jimmy JV 51 followed by the MU
sook a 17 and really quickly I want to
add that I really can only recommend the
Jimmy JV 51 if you have almost all hard
floors in your home the lack of a
standard brush that can deep clean
carpets is a major drawback for the
Jimmy so in many ways my real pick for
the best budget cordless vacuum is the
MU sook a 17 you can see the individual
reviews of each in the description and
let's move on to the mid-range category
I much prefer vacuums in this price
range over anything in the budget
category because the quality performance
and features get significantly better
with the power specs we saw a 4-way tie
with the duo clean sharks like the F 80
and the P 50 as well as the Dyson v8
taking the first spot I should also
mention at this point that though I have
tested the shark I on flex before I
didn't include it in this competition
because it seems that shark has replaced
the iron flex 2x with the shark F 80
which is basically an upgraded version
of the iron flex 2 X but cheaper with
battery life it depends on how you look
at it because two of these vacuums the
teen koay 11 master and the shark F 80
comes standard with two batteries so if
you take the combined numbers for two
batteries they would clearly take the
top spots with an edge to the shark F 80
however if you want to show which vacuum
has the best battery efficiency that is
the most time for the most power the
scores look like this with the shark ion
p50 over the Dyson v8 and the Bissell
icon Pet moving on to the carpet deep
clean test here the simplicity s 65 did
the best with its carpet floor head
which has an excellent seal and good
agitation followed by the ting co a 11
and the Sharks and the Dyson v8 tied for
third place with carpet and hard floor
pickup ability it got a little more
complicated as many of the vacuums in
this price range come with two cleaner
heads the soft roller head for hard
floors and the
standard cleaner head which can do both
carpet and hard floors but are much
better for carpets the net result is
that you have excellent pickup scores
for all of these on both hard floors and
carpets assuming you switch the heads
out since I'm not a huge fan of having
to switch out the floor heads for
optimal performance I gave a half a
point advantage to the shark duo clean
rollers here for having essentially a
soft roller and a standard roller
combined into the same head basically
you only have to flip a switch on the
handle to change the brush speed to
transition from hard floors to carpet
and it's a much more convenient system
as I've said many times I think the duo
clean rollers from shark are amazing so
sharks did really well with the debris
pickup scores ironically some of the
vacuums in this price range like the
shark rocket Pet Pro and the Bissell
Ikon pet were better than any vacuum at
any price at resisting pet hair tangles
as both of them have separate
technologies to prevent tangles and took
the top spots in this category with
filtration we started to see a lot more
sealed hepa systems with this middle
category but a few of them especially
the slightly cheaper ones weren't sealed
and they lost points here moving quickly
forward I gave the best weight and
ease-of-use category to the shark ion
p50 even though it's technically not the
lightest vacuum here it's because its
handle weight is so much lighter than
the others so it's the easiest on the
arm to vacuum with by a long shot
after taking price into account the
winners for the mid-level category were
the shark ion p50 followed very closely
by the shark f80 and a three-way tie for
third place including the team ko a 11
and the simplicity s65 both of which
were one of those free units I received
that I mentioned earlier moving on to
the main event
the super premium category featuring the
Dyson v10 absolute the Dyson V 11 torque
drive and the ting co s12 plus so these
are between 500 and 700 dollars and
really there are only a handful of
vacuums in this price range at all but
these represent the best of the best in
my opinion so in terms of power there
really is no question the Dyson via
Levin is the most powerful cordless
vacuum I know of
now the v10 and the s12 are also really
powerful and are actually very evenly
matched battery life was really hard to
judge because on the one hand the tink
os-12 is one of those cordless vacuums
that comes with two batteries
which makes its battery numbers look
really good but on the other hand the
Dyson V 11 has the most efficient
battery on the market right now in my
opinion with incredibly high power -
battery life numbers so I decided to
call it a tie for first place even
though I know it's not exactly accurate
the Dyson V 11 also won the carpet
deep-clean competition though it was
amazingly close and all of these are
superior carpet deep cleaners on the
hard floor and carpet pick up tests it
should be noted that the Tenko s12 and
the Dyson v10 absolute have both a soft
roller and a regular head though the V
11 in America only comes with a regular
head which made it lose a half a point
on the hard floor tests don't get me
wrong it's regular head does great on
hard floors as long as you keep the
adjustment gates all the way open for
larger debris but it's nowhere near as
good as having a soft roller the tink OS
12 Plus did slightly better with hair
wrap than the Dyson's but the Dyson's
were much better than average just not
as good as the tink OS 12 they all had
perfect filtration as they all had
sealed systems with HEPA filters with
price the advantage really went to the
Dyson v10 which in many ways is so
similar to the V 11 but after a recent
price drop is drastically cheaper than
the other two which tend to mirror each
other with their price he was so drastic
that I gave the v10 two extra points
here for value again the tink OS 12 gets
a big boost for its crazy amount of
attachments and there's one final thing
to consider here both the tink OS 12 and
the Dyson V 11 have an automatic suction
adjustment feature built-in which
adjusts the power of the vacuum based on
the floor type with the V 11 or how
dirty the floor is with the S 12 so I
gave them both a point for this really
cool feature which really helps to
optimize their already great battery
life numbers so after counting it all up
the super premium winner is the Dyson
v10 absolute and it may be the older
version but the cheaper price helped to
push it over the edge it should be said
here that this was by far the closest
competition yet and all three of these
are excellent choices if you don't mind
the price links in the description to
all the winners and be sure to subscribe
to vacuum ores to see our best robot
vacuum competition coming up in a couple
weeks thanks for watching
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