Performance

Dyson revolutionized vacuum design with their cyclone technology. But that was a good few years ago and since then other manufacturers have caught up and developed their own form of high suction technology.

So, is Dyson still No1 for suction? You bet. When it comes to pure suction power there is still nothing that can beat a Dyson Vacuum! To be honest for some people the suction power is too good and makes it very hard to push the vacuum over very deep pile (like shag pile) carpets – unless you're built like a WWE wrestler!

The brushroll on this cleaner has been designed with pet hair in mind and does a very good job of ensuring hairs end up in the dust cylinder with few if any getting tangled on the roller.

This is combined with what is the stand out feature of this vacuum for us pet owners - the tangle free turbine brush. This cleverly designed extension tool is brilliant for clearing dog hair from furniture and is ideal for using on stairs. This is the best tool of its type on the market.

The Animal 2 can hold a better than average 0.55 gallons of dust and debris and the vacuum also has what Dyson call ‘Whole machine HEPA filtration’ which means that none of the air, dust etc that is sucked into the machine leaks out until it has been filtered through the HEPA filter. This makes the Dyson Ball Animal 2 a very good choice for those who are keen to reduce the amount of pet dander and other airborne allergens in their home. It has been approved by the American Asthma and Allergy Association and some people even claim they can smell the fresher air in their home after they’ve used the cleaner.

Verdict

This cleaner has cleaning power to spare. The Dyson Ball Animal 2 is a premium product but worth every penny and will probably get more pet hair out of your home than any other similar sized vacuum on the market. But if you have wall to wall shag pile carpets or lots of light scatter rugs then you may find the incredible suction too much – even on the lowest setting. For everyone else this cleaner is guaranteed to keep your carpets and furniture pet hair free.

Performance

This compact, lightweight little powerhouse from Eureka is a great budget cleaner, particularly for pet owners with bare or hardwood floors and limited storage space.

For a start this vacuum has a slightly wider cleaning path (11 inches, the 3670G is 10 inches) and it also has the ‘Pet Power Paw’ attachment. This great little tool has a motorized beater brush to help extract hair from upholstery and carpets. This works very well although we did notice longer hairs can get tangled.

The main cleaning tool works very well on tiles or wooden floors. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have any brushroll and relies on suction alone to pick up the dirt. As a result, the Mighty Mite struggles on carpets and unfortunately you won’t get the best clean on anything other than the thinnest pile carpets.

Now you might be thinking ‘I could use the ‘Pet Power Paw’ attachment for my carpets’. You could but this tool is only a few inches wide so if you’ve got a large carpeted area it would take an awful long time to clean.

Verdict

This is a powerful budget canister - easy to move around and easy to store. It isn’t perfect and the performance of the main cleaner head on carpeted areas does let it down. The Pet Power Paw tool is great but too small to realistically clean large areas of carpet. Even fully carpeted stairs would probably get very frustrating.

For anyone living in a small home or apartment with minimal space and mainly hardwood or tiled floors the Eureka Mighty Mite 3684F Mighty Mite Pet Lover comes highly recommended.

Performance

If you’ve decided against the Eureka 3684F because of its poor performance on carpets you might want to up your budget a bit and consider this great offering from Kenmore. The Progressive 21614 canister is a bagged canister that works extremely well on carpet. In fact, the thicker the carpet, the more this vacuum comes into its own.

The first thing I will say about the Kenmore Progressive is that I love the color! (Okay, that’s not the most important thing in a vacuum review but it is a lovely color).

In addition to the Pet PowerMate you also get a Pet Upholstery Tool. This clips onto the front of the dusting tool and is designed to help you clean pet hair from more delicate surfaces and fabrics.

You can adjust the height of the cleaning head to suit the floor surface you’re vacuuming, which is great and it will clean up to the edge of the room. It also has a stair grip feature, which keeps the cleaner in place when you are cleaning the stairs.

This is a substantial cleaner, weighing in at 23 pounds, so it is not for the faint hearted or less physically able. The machine and the cleaning hose are quite bulky and you need to give it a good tug to pull it along behind you. On top of that the strong suction means it can sometimes take a bit of effort to move the cleaning head back and forth over the floor.

Verdict

This is a beautiful blueberry beast of a machine that is well equipped to take on the pet hair challenge. We particularly recommend this vacuum for its exceptional performance on deep pile carpets – in fact it is one of the best you can buy for that job. With it’s HEPA filter system I would recommend this canister vacuum to any pet owners, but particularly those struggling to keep those deep pile carpets pet hair free.

Performance

There is no doubt Dyson lead the way when it comes to thinking outside the box (or should that be bag?) of vacuum cleaning technology.

While other manufacturers are busy working on making their HEPA filters as efficient as possible, Dyson decided the Cinetic Big Ball Animal canister could do without one – and instead they turned the entire vacuum into one big HEPA filter.

The issue with any filter is that the more dust particles it collects the less air can easily flow through it and the less suction that can be achieved. So, for this cleaner, Dyson decided to create a vacuum that was so air tight that once sucked into the vacuum dust particles and allergens would stay there. This whole machine filtration system means no filters to clean and no loss of suction power.

I must say that in addition to being an amazing piece of technology this is also agreat, user-friendly machine to clean with. The ball design means you can pull it in any direction and it will never fall over, the tools are a pleasure to use and emptying the canister is a simple, hassle free process.

Verdict

This is an amazing vacuum cleaner - powerful, versatile and great at clearing up pet hair. This is an innovative, well made, vacuum cleaner for people who want the best deep clean they can. Of course, this kind of cutting edge technology inevitably comes at a price, which may put it out of reach for some people. But this machine will provide many years of excellent service and for those who can stretch to it.

Performance

If we were to compare vacuums to cars the Miele C3 Complete Cat and Dog would be the Rolls Royce of canister vacuums made specifically for pet hair. The price tag is fairly steep, but if you have high quality flooring you want to protect or just appreciate the finer things this is a premium product that is worth every penny.

At 73 decibels the C3 is one of the quietest vacuums on the market and is an excellent choice if you have light sleepers or skittish pets in the house. I have both, so I really appreciate just how quietly the Miele runs. The ‘pet’ de résistance is the STB 101 handheld TurboBrush that allows you to control the force you’re using when removing those stubborn pet hairs from carpets and corners.

The vacuum weighs around 10.8lbs and is a manageable weight to carry up stairs or from room to room while the telescopic wand means you can easily adjust the length. In terms of maneuvarbility,there are castor wheels that rotate and pivot as you move, the wheels are gentle on your surfaces and there is also the Parquet Twister. Easy accessibility means no more dust bunnies around the house.

The vacuum can holda huge 1.18 gallons of dry material and there is a strip on the canister that changes color when the bag is full. It’s easy to empty and the self-sealing HyClean bags mean no mess and dust clouds. The Miele HEPA Active AirClean filter has activated charcoal which works to eliminate all sorts of odors and the high-quality filter removes and captures 99.99% harmful particles and allergens.

There are loads of attachments and tools and most can be stored inside the canister, saving you space and keeping everything together in one place.

Verdict

Obviously this particular vacuum isn’t in everyone’s budget, but if you have high quality flooring that you want to protect the money, appreciate quality and have the budget then the Miele C3 is the vacuum for you. It’s versatile and works extremely well on different surfaces inside your home. It’s built to last so you’ll have it for years and you won’t have to keep buying additional bits and pieces. If you’re thinking about upgrading and have the means you’re not going to get any better than this.

Performance

Shark are rapidly becoming one of the world's best vacuum brand. The Navigator Freestyle Cordless Stick Vacuum is a cordless, bagless stick vacuum at a very good price. There are no bells and whistle on this model but it is ideal if you are looking for a vacuum that can clean quickly and effectively.

For such a small vacuum, the Shark Navigator has a strong suction that cleans up small particles and pet dander while the cleaning head with the motorized brush catches onto fine pet hair. There are 2 speeds; one for hard floors and the other to handle carpets.

The dust cup is a generous size ay 0.29 gallons), given the size of the vacuum itself and you should easily be able to do quite a bit of cleaning before having to empty it out. It is easy to release and replace with minimal mess or fuss.

The stick vacuum is able to clean hard floors and carpet although it battled a little with,particularly shaggy carpets. Switching between the different surfaces is easy to do, without having to bend down or fiddle with buttons.

As far as filtration goes this model doesn’t have an HEPA filter. If asthma and allergies are a concern then it’s better to spend a bit more and get a vacuum with a more sophisticated filter system.

Verdict

If you’re looking for a budget price cordless cleaner that can cope with pet hair on various floor surfaces then this is the vacuum we’d recommend. It’s easy to use, to store and with it’s replaceable battery it should give you years of great service.Unfortunately it’s not ideal for people with allergies or asthma as there is no HEPA filter.

Performance

Shark is a well-respected brand of vacuum and their Shark Rocket with DuoClean is a hugely popular ultra-light upright vacuum – in fact the HV382 ‘TruePet’ is the bestselling vacuum with ‘pet’ in the name on Amazon right now. Whether it should be classified as an upright or a stick vacuum cleaner is something only us vacuum geeks will argue about. The only thing that matters to everyone else is how well it works!

The main cleaning head has 2 brush rollers (that’s why it’s DuoClean!). There’s a soft brush roller in front of a stiff bristle roller which is designed to ensure the cleaner picks up a wider range of particle sizes. They’ve even given us a handy graphic to show how it works.

While we’ve found this brush head system is very good it isn’t specifically designed with pet hair in mind. It’s very good at picking up short hairs but if you have a long-haired dog (or child for that matter) you will probably find those longer hairs get tangled around the brushroll. But, if you do need to de-tangle hairs Shark have added their very useful ‘brushroll garage’, a ‘door’ that gives you access to the brushroll without having to turn the cleaner upside down.

This is a very versatile cleaner. The handle detaches to become a powerful handheld Dust-buster so you can use it to clean anywhere. And as a handheld it works well. The motor is in the handle so unlike some cleaners you get the same suction power whether you use it as an upright or handheld. Of course, having the motor in the handle does mean that when you’re using it as an upright the cleaner can feel a little top-heavy. This is not an issue for most people but if you have weakness or pain in your wrist or arms this would not be a great vacuum.

Verdict

The Shark Rocket TruePet with DuoClean is a versatile, powerful, lightweight vacuum cleaner. It is a shame that longer hairs get tangled around the brushroll and while the ‘brushroll garage’ makes clearing the tangles more convenient if you have a dog with long hair you may want to look elsewhere.

That said many owners of short hair dogs will love this cleaner. Most people will find it easy to maneuver and will love the versatility and suction power of the handheld unit and the cleaning power of the TruePet Motorized Brush Tool.

Performance

As you'd expect from Dyson the V6 Animal Cord-Free Vacuum is sleek and stylish with a slender wand, compact handle, an easy to access dust cup and a transparent cleaning head at the bottom.

The V6 is a powerful and versatile stick cleaner. It has an extreme suction function for long, shaggy carpets. And the “Direct-Drive” cleaner head drives the bristles deep into the carpet fibers for hidden dirt and pet-hair. The “brushroll” design on the cleaning head is suited to hardwood floors.

Not only is the Dyson V6 Animal Cord-Free Vacuum cordless, it’s also very light, which means it is easy to carry around. Instead of an on/off switch the vacuum has a trigger which means the battery is only ever in use when the vacuum is actually in cleaning mode.

It’s a great vacuum for hardwood floors and carpets because of the Direct-Drive cleaner, super suction, and bristle layers. There’s no place for dust bunnies to hide and pet dander doesn’t stand a chance.

The Dyson V6 is a high quality, premium product with a lot of attachments and tools for expert cleaning. The V6 has an asthma and allergy-friendly filtration system and is ideal for homes with a lot of pets.

Verdict

The Dyson V6 Animal Cord-Free Vacuum is a great investment for dusting, upholstery cleaning and pet-hair removal but its small dirt cup makes it less than ideal for larger homes.

On the other hand, if you’re in an apartment or medium-small home, you’ll appreciate its compact size and wall-mounted docking station. You can reach for it whenever you need and it’s always charged.