Best Upright & Barrel Vacuums 2023 | CHOICE Reviews

Our tester pre-loads the vacuum cleaners with artificial household dust (a standard test material imported from Germany). We do that because vacuum cleaners are generally used with the bag or bin partly filled. The tester then embeds sand evenly into a section of carpet and vacuums it to a set pattern and speed. The sand collected is weighed and recorded as a percentage of the sand applied. This is repeated twice for each vacuum cleaner and the results averaged. We know exactly how much dirt goes into the test carpet, so we know to within a tenth of a gram just how much dirt the vacuum removed. Our tester rates all models based on the dirt pick-up performance from carpet using the standard cleaning head. We don’t test dirt pick-up from hard floors anymore, because in our experience all vacuums are excellent at this task.