Best vacuum 2024: tested and reviewed for every home

It's more than a gadget; finding the best vacuum cleaner for your home is an essential investment. Effective vacuums will remove dust, dirt, debris and dander from your floors, but they're not all made equal. Making sure you find the right one for your home's needs will keep you cleaning as efficiently as possible.

Across the best cordless vacuums, best robot vacuums, and best upright vacuums, each of the models on this list have excelled in their own way. Our guide covers the best vacuums you can buy, whether you're looking for a cordless model that can tackle pet hair, or a reliable HEPA filter to help with allergies at home. Our expert testers assessed suction power, how useful the features are, noise levels, dust bin capacity, run time (or cord length for upright models) and even how these vacuums impact your allergies. We test them in our dedicated test center and in our homes to get a complete understanding of their abilities.

Right now, the best vacuum cleaner we've ever tested is the Dyson Gen5detect, surpassing all others in every single way. It's closely followed by its predecessor the Dyson V15 Detect, which also happens to be our pick for the best vacuum for pet hair.

While the Shark Vertex Pro isn't quite as effective as these models, it's our top cordless vacuum as it provides an exceptional clean for a fraction of the cost of these Dyson models. The best upright model is the Shark POWERDETECT – which is no surprise as Shark now dominates the upright vacuum market since Dyson pivoted towards cordless models.

Whether you're here to splash out on one of the most premium vacuums available, or to find out the best you can get on a budget, these are the very best vacuums for the home.

The Quick List

Here's a quick overview of the tried-and-tested best vacuum cleaners. You can scroll down or click the navigation links for more in-depth info.

Best vacuum 2024

We've tested every single one in person so we know exactly which are worth your time and money.

The best vacuum cleaner

The Gen5detect is Dyson's top-of-the-line vacuum cleaner. Dyson is at the forefront of vacuum cleaning tech, and the Gen5detect is the best Dyson vacuum we've ever tested, hands down (and we've tested a lot).

Our expert reviewer has tested more than 100 vacuum cleaners and found that the Gen5detect surpassed all of them in terms of power and performance. It certainly aligns with Dyson's claim that it's the most powerful HEPA vacuum in the world. This is thanks to the motor that spins at up to 125,000 RPM - pulling more embedded dirt from deep within the carpets than our tester thought was possible.

The Gen5detect's HEPA filter can capture 99.99% of particles down to 0.1 microns, and has a screen to display just how much it's picked up. It has a 'Fluffy Optic' cleaner head that is able to illuminate dust and dirt that's invisible to the naked eye, and our tester was genuinely surprised by how much exists on our floors without us knowing.

While it detects how many particles it's captured, the Gen5detect also detects how dirt-heavy particular sections of the floor are. This means that, as you're going over your floors, the vacuum will automatically adjust suction power for the most thorough clean possible, while preserving power when it isn't needed. This automatic adjustment can happen in under a second.

On test, the Gen5detect excelled on all floor types. The selection of tools allow you to easily and quickly switch between carpets and hard floors, and the crevice tool was able to tackle any corners and out-of-reach spaces with ease.

It's the best vacuum cleaner you could buy for the home, but it's also one of the most expensive. If you can afford it, you won't find anything better.

There's more in-depth info in our Dyson Gen5detect review.

Best cordless vacuum

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On test, we found superior pick-up, anti-hair wrap, excellent battery runtime, and an easy-to-use design. The DuoClean Powerfins glide across both carpets and hard floors, and the self-cleaning brush roll is a must-have feature for pet owners to prevent clogs from hair. It's not just a bunch of marketing jargon; it genuinely stops hair from wrapping around the brush roll.

Better than that, it does a fantastic job on all floor surfaces and picks up a lot of dirt. We found that the soft head brush roller is perfect for hard floors but it still excels at pulling pet fur and dander out of carpets and rugs.

The Multi-Flex technology makes it super easy to fold down the vacuum for easy storage. However, we didn't find it as useful for actual cleaning, as the design made the vacuum a little bit more difficult to handle, and the slim profile still made it very easy to reach low-profile spaces. You'll also need both hands to unfurl the vacuum back up to full height. Over the years, I've found that this vacuum has a pretty small capacity, so while it's very effective, that means lots of trips to the trash can in the middle of cleaning.

Full disclosure: the Shark Vertex Pro is our pick of the best cordless vacuum because of the price factor. The Dyson Gen5detect, V15 Detect and V12 Detect Slim all perform better than it, but they sell for hundreds more (the Gen5detect retails at more than $1,000!). I recommend the Shark over the Dyson for the sake of money, but if the price isn't an issue, the Dysons are better.

Our Shark Vertex Pro Lightweight Cordless Vacuum review goes into more detail.

Best upright vacuum

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The best upright vacuum from our tests was once the Shark Stratos, but the newer Shark POWERDETECT is an upgrade in virtually all aspects – and they both cost the same.

It's the best upright vacuum for a number of reasons but, most importantly, it's an absolute powerhouse. Our tester James Holland found that, regardless of the debris or floor type, it had no problem cleaning up whatsoever. 'It’s able to suck everything up in its path efficiently and proficiently, no matter the debris. And, it’s equally capable regardless of the surface I used it on,' he noted.

Thanks to his cat's heavy shedding, James was also able to find out just how effective the POWERDETECT can clean pet hair. 'With one pass, the Shark POWERDETECT had basically picked up every visible piece of hair (as well as litter near the litter box) from the carpet, filling the dust bin with an amount of hair equal to a second cat. The carpet itself was left spotless and smelling ever-so-slightly fresh thanks to the odor neutralizer cartridge.'

So, as well as being able to clean pet hair from the most difficult floor type, the POWERDETECT goes a step above what most vacuums offer: it uses an anti-odor cartridge to actually leave the room smelling fresher than before.

To make things easier too, the POWERDETECT can be lifted from its main, heavier component whenever you need more mobility, like on the stairs or when reaching above. This feature is paired with a hose (an albeit limited one at only two feet long), to help make the most of the attachments for any non-floorcare related cleaning.

It also matches the detection tech we've come to love from Dyson's vacuums. This upright vacuum can detect floor type, dust volume and the floor's edges so that it can automatically adjust suction power when it's needed. So, when you move from hard floor to carpet, or from a clean area to a dirty area, the vacuum will up the power to make sure everything's picked up.

It is a little on the heavy side at 17.57 lbs, but that's not too far from what we expect from upright vacuums (the Shark Stratos weighs in at 16.71 lbs). It's available for around $400-500 which, in my view, is more than reasonable considering the cleaning power on offer.

Read our full Shark POWERDETECT review for more info.

Best vacuum for pet hair

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Before the Gen5detect came out, the Dyson V15 Detect lead the line up of best vacuums. Along with its market-leading suction power, this is thanks to its unique dust-hunting feature; a green diode laser that reveals what the human eye can't see.

This couples with a Piezo sensor which measures microscopic dust particles in real time, giving clear proof of a deep and effective clean. It sounds like a gimmick, but our tests found that it's incredibly effective, as the vacuum automatically adjusts its suction according to how much dust is detected. This is not only the best vacuum for pet hair we've tested, but also one of the best vacuums and best cordless vacuums in the market right now.

It has an an effective anti-tangle brushbar that will save you the horrible job of picking hair out of the vacuum to clean it, and a bright LCD screen that makes it easy to use, demonstrating runtime and if the bin is too full. This is what puts it at the top of our list of the best vacuums for pet hair.

'I took the Anti-Tangle Hair Screw tool to task on my dog's lounge mat, and it is one of the only vacuum tools I've tried that not only revived the faux-sherpa bottom that is an absolute magnet for dirt but brightened the fleece top from a dusty blue back to its original turquoise,' our expert tester Jaclyn Turner noted.

Like most Dyson products, this quality comes at a cost. This is one of the best vacuums you can possibly buy, but it will set you back more than $700. We also aren't fans of the fact that dust occasionally gets stuck in the dust bin, and that you have to hold down the trigger to keep it running, which might become uncomfortable if you have mobility issues with your hands.

Our Dyson V15 Detect cordless vacuum review goes into more detail.

Best value Dyson vacuum

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Testing the Dyson Cyclone V10 Absolute on pet hair