15 best handheld vacuum cleaners, tested and reviewed by experts

As soon as we got this out of the packaging, our co-tester’s eyes lit up. Is this the solution to our (embarrassingly epic) car-crumb problem. Yes, yes it is dear reader. It’s super powerful, yet lightweight and teeny tiny. It also comes with a handy bag to store all the accessories in, speaking of which, it comes with a car-charging kit (sooo clever) and an accessory that lets you get to the hardest to reach areas, like behind car seats. There’s an eco mode and a turbo mode – turbo mode is impressively powerful, performing well against other products on this line up. There’s also a wee torch in the vacuum so you can see under the car seats – if you dare to look.

This is a bit of a pocket rocket, and it packs in decent suction, which is why we’ve said it’s best for pet owners. The machine utilises aluminium in the build, to enable it to withstand whatever your pet throws at it. There’s a powerhead for stairs, sofas and car floors, while a crevice tool gets into all those annoying places that never usually see the light of day. And speaking of light, there’s a headlight on the Gtech, which means it helps see what you’re doing and whether you’re going to suck up dirt or your kids’ toys. With a 20-minute run time, the battery in the Gtech makes it suitable for bigger jobs than some of the other vacuums in this round-up.

If you’ve got an issue with crumbs or have a quick job, this lightweight and discreet Shark hand vacuum is ideal. It’s teeny tiny, and designed to be put on kitchen worksurfaces; the footprint is wee and it doesn’t look awful. It comes with a crevice tool and a pet tool, which all tuck into the docking station neatly. The run time is eight minutes though, which we found too short for anything other than a post-dinner clean-up. It’s impressively lightweight and tactile – meaning we could easily hold it above our heads to get light fittings, picture rails et al.

With a battery time of around 10 minutes, this isn’t going to “Hinch” your house in one go. But before you scroll on, we have given it a 4.5 rating for a reason – it’s amazing at dusting. During testing we found it sucked up all the dust in a room in minutes which was a revelation for us. It’s also super-easy to empty and managed to pick up an alarming amount of hair from our deep-pile carpets. Getting the hair off the brushes was a bit of a challenge, but otherwise we were thoroughly impressed. It comes with three accessories, and a docking station. We are so excited at the prospect of never having to get out a duster and the Pledge ever again.

We’ve used Dyson vacuums before and liked them, but the V12 is next level. It’s Dyson’s most powerful, lightweight cordless vacuum for a start, while being notable in its quietness too – even on boost mode, it’s one of the most-quiet vacuums we tried. It comes with a huge range of accessories; you can use it as a handheld, or attach a stick to it for a more upright vacuum.

The hard-floor anti-static attachment has a headlight on it that illuminates the floor green at just the right level so you can see all the dust (gross) and suck it up (satisfying). There’s also a sensor that detects the levels of dust getting sucked up, and alters the suction to suit. We were fascinated by the LCD screen on the head of the vacuum, which shows you the data on what’s being sucked up.

You can also cycle through three power modes – eco, general or turbo boost. The V12 was easily the most powerful vacuum we tried, sucking up everything that came in its path. There’s also a motorhead attachment with detangling technology to stop everything getting trapped in it. But that’s not it – there’s a scratch-free dusting brush for surfaces like class and glossy car interiors, an extension hose and an awkward-gap tool.

Granted, this vacuum is expensive but it’s going to make light work of vacuuming any area – in fact, we were so impressed we chucked our old vacuum away.

This portable vacuum cleaner from Eufy is one of the best-looking handheld vacs we’ve tested. It’s the baby version of the H20, with an even thinner design. Every time we picked up this beauty, it felt like we were about to blow-dry our hair. While it weighs a measly 0.5kg, the H11 is seriously powerful, making quick crumb clean-ups in the kitchen and sweeps of the car a doddle.

It comes with a neat two-in-one crevice tool for carpets and reaching underneath the sofa, but there’s no accessory bag to neatly contain the tool (or the charger), so make sure you don’t lose it, or you might struggle with larger pieces of debris – it’s not so great at picking up bigger bits of dirt and mud when used without the crevice tool. The battery isn’t great either, with a full charge running out in 13 minutes, so you’ll need to keep it plugged in whenever you finish hoovering, and there isn’t a charging cradle. But being so powerful, light and, dare we say, cheap, it’s a really neat, modern handheld vacuum.

This is a beefy old vacuum, and much more comprehensive than some of the other products in this roundup. It has a 45-minute run time, for a start, so you can get around a lot more of the house. It’s also weightier, and comes with loads more attachments. It has an ActiFlex attachment, which folds the stick in half so you can access low, hard-to-reach areas such as under sofas and beds. The icing on the cake is that the floor attachment has headlights, so you can actually see what you’re doing too. What a time to be alive!

We also rated the suction, which tackled hard-wood floors and thick carpets with aplomb. Rather ingeniously, you can stand the vacuum on its own – so if you need to pause the job halfway through to answer the door, say, you don’t have to bother lying it down. A small touch, but one we liked.

If, like us, you live near trees that drop leaves on your garden seemingly all year round, this vacuum could be the answer to your problems. For years we’ve wished we could take our vacuum out to suck up all the leaves, so we were delighted when we came across one that does just that.

This vacuum can blow leaves into a pile; you’re still going to need to rake and sweep as it’s not perfect, but it gets the bulk of the job done. Or the Flymo can suck leaves up and shreds them – perfect for the compost heap or, in our case, great as it maximised space in our garden-waste bin. We found it coped better with leaves spread out over the garden, rather than clustered into piles. This garden vacuums is mains powered, but has a long flex so you can do a decent area from the plug before needing an extension cord.

Gtech’s lightest ever handheld vacuum cleaner is the ProLite. It’s light, but not that light, weighing at a moderate 1kg. It is powerful, however, featuring two suction settings, so it really earns that Pro portion of its name. We adored the rotating brush head attachment, making it easy to clean carpets, while the light on the head helped brighten the floor of our dark car while vacuuming. It’s a little awkward to hold thanks to its chunky shape, but it’s still a lightweight sucker that cleaned up crumbs and leaves with ease. We just wish the battery life was a little longer, and it’s a fairly pricey gadget by comparison.

The Triflex is a handheld vacuum, yes. But it’s also so much more than that. It can be an upright vacuum too, or held like other cordless models. Miele devotees (there are a lot of you, we know) will be interested to learn this is Miele’s most-power vacuum yet. We found it great on both hard floors and carpets. The capacity in the bin is large enough to cover a decent area before needing to empty it. It also comes with two batteries, so you should never run out of charge. The multi-floor head has headlights so you can see what you’re sucking up even when you push it under the sofa. We rated this for versatility and for how premium it is.

It’s unusual to find a handheld vacuum cleaner that can clean up crumbs off the floor and small spillages, but Beldray has done it with its wet and dry handheld vacuum. Now, this thing might not look like much, with its almost Nineties-looking aesthetic, but looks can be deceiving. In our tests, it sucked up dirt with ease, and it even handled spillages well, though it might take a little longer due to the fairly low suction power.

You’ll need to put on the wet attachment if you want to clean up small spillages otherwise it just won’t work, but once you do, it’ll tackle small accidents in a pinch. Do be wary though, there are max fill lines to tell you when to stop hoovering up liquid. Go beyond this line and you might damage the machine. It wouldn’t usually be problem, but because the liquid capacity is so small, a leak in the fridge is out of the question, but for tiny puddles, it works a dream. And because of its lightweight design, it’s easy to manoeuvre around the car.

Close attention has been paid to ensure this vacuum sucks up all the dust and expels only clean air. That’s why we’ve dubbed it “best for allergy sufferers”.

The intelligent sensor detects the level of dust on any surface and automatically adjusts the suction power. Plus, it comes with a dusting brush, so you can dust shelves and furniture with it – much more efficient at capturing and locking in dust than traditional dusting. There’s also a HEPA filter and a replacement, plus a filter-cleaning tool included. Lastly on the dust-capture front (quite an important front on a vacuum, we reckon), it has LED lights on the floor attachment to illuminate dust as you go – you’ll never miss a bit again.

We were impressed with this vacuum’s array of attachments, which made light work of most cleaning jobs. The upholstery nozzle was great at cleaning all the grim kid-created crumbs on the sofa. We found it flexible to use in lots of different positions – it was easy to flex down under furniture without us needing to get on our hands and knees.

Samsung’s Bespoke line of products all look like works of art, and the Bespoke Jet is no different. In fact, it looks like a work of art just sitting there in our home. Unlike other cordless vacuum cleaners, it sits inside a base that can empty the bin and charge the machine, so you don’t need to drill holes into the wall or repeatedly chuck out the dirt. It’s incredibly lightweight for its Herculean size, and extremely powerful as both a cordless vacuum and a handheld vac.

The unsealed suction means that, even as a handheld, it still sucked up all dirt like there was no tomorrow. There are a whole host of attachments, and we were royally impressed with its performance on both hard floors and carpet. The only downside is the price – if you’re looking for a 2-in-1 cordless vacuum, this is the crème de la crème, but if you just want a cheap handheld device, the Bespoke Jet probably isn’t for you.

Everyone’s favourite little googly-eyed anthropomorphised gizmo has cut the pounds and has grown a couple of inches. This is the Henry Quick, an affordable 2-in-1 cordless stick that transforms into a handheld vacuum for, well, Quick clean-ups.

As you’d expect, it’s bright red with a cute design, and features a disposable bag system instead of a bagless system like most cordless vacuums. That does make it easier to dispose of dirt and dust with one click of a button, but makes it less environmentally friendly. You get 26 disposable bags inside the box, which is said to last a year, and also means that the bin capacity is larger – so do with that information what you will.

While the suction is pretty powerful in stick mode, it’s a little lacklustre in handheld mode, but does a decent job. It comes with a nifty handle extension attachment to help with cleaning in higher-up places, but this is a heavy vacuum, even in handheld mode, so your hand is going to get tired. Our favourite feature of the Henry quick has to be the scent pods (£9.99, Myhenry.com) which sit under the motor, pushing air through the pod and filling your home or car with a lovely smell as you vacuum.

You might know the brand Ryobi for its selection of power tools, but the brand also has this handheld vacuum in its toolkit too. We think it would work in a workshop or garage to clear up DIY messes. It’s easy to use, with a sliding power button you can flick on with your thumb and the suction is decent – we tried it in a home setting and it got plenty of debris out of carpets and off hard surfaces too. Emptying the dust bin is easy, the front slides off and you can tip out the dirt and clean the HEPA filter at the same time.