Love it or hate it, the truth is that someone will eventually have to push the vacuum cleaner - or similar - around your home to make sure you don’t disappear under the dust bunnies. But which to choose? While you may be dying on the inside at even a hint of caring about what vacuum cleaner you need to buy, the truth is choosing well will mean less time spent on the task. Get it right and you won’t have to re-do rooms, and you’ll be back to lining up the next Christmas movie before you know where you are.
But maybe you don’t want to spend the bulk of a mortgage payment on a cordless vacuum cleaner either. The Sweepovac 18K StickVac could be the compromise.
In the box, you get the StickVac, a number of tools including the crevice tool and a rotating cleaning head, a flexible hose and a freestanding docking station. I wasn’t a big fan of the latter, as it took up too much room in a small utility room compared with some of its rivals.
Still, it provides somewhere handy to hang the StickVac when you aren’t using it. Charge up the device and you are ready to go; the cleaner operates with one touch and you can increase or decrease the suction with another button.
The StickVac has an infrared dust sensor that automatically ups the suction if it detects more dirt, then drops it back to a more normal level when that has been dealt with. The dust container is on the small side but it easily detaches from the body for emptying so you can keep going.
The StickVac also includes the dog grooming tool as a standard, which is great if you have pets
If there is one thing that helps make the Sweepovac worth the investment, it’s the LED light on the front of the main cleaning head. Use it to illuminate your floor and see precisely what dirt is there, making it both useful and terrifying at the same time. As an added bonus, you can also use it to locate lost items under the sofa.
Unlike the Dyson, there is a flexible hose too, which can be useful for getting in and around the sofa or car. It was a little more manoeuvrable as a result.
The StickVac also includes the dog grooming tool as a standard, which is great if you have pets. However, as there are only people (plus two fish) in my house, and none of them was keen to volunteer to test the grooming tool, I can’t comment on its efficacy.
Overall, does the Sweepovac StickVac clean as well as some more expensive vacuum cleaners? Not quite, but it does a good job, especially on hard floors, and the price difference may be enough to overlook the fact that it doesn’t pull seven years’ worth of dust from your carpet in one go.
