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Best cordless vacuum cleaner 2019: easier cleaners for your car, shelves, hard floors and carpets

With home living spaces getting smaller, carpets getting less deep pile and cordless vacuum cleaner tech improving beyond all recognition in recent years, the best cordless vacuum cleaners are now easily as effective as traditional vacs, and much more versatile.

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Even the best cordless vacuums used to be a bit crap, just a few years ago. You had your Dysons, which weren't bad, but felt overpriced, and then you had a chasing pack of wannabe products. They were for cleaning up little spills, and using on shelves, surfaces and in your car, but cordless vacuum cleaners couldn't really do floors.

That all changed with the arrival of the Dyson V8, which was the first cordless that could really take on a corded vac for floor cleaning. Since then, plenty of other brands have raised their game, and the result is a huge boom in sales of cordless vacuum cleaners.

For traditionalists: Best corded vacuum cleaners For futurists: Best robot vacuum cleaners Best steam cleaners WHAT IS THE BEST CORDLESS VACUUM? Our top choices come from Vax and Dyson (twice).

The Dyson Cyclone V10 was the brand's latest and most powerful cordless vacuum, but I'm not entirely convinced it's their best. It's been designed and marketed as a corded vac replacement, able to clean carpets and hard floors to a high standard. And it does… but so did the older Dyson V8 and that, being more compact, works better when it come to handheld use. UPDATE: the Dyson V11 Absolute just appeared and offers slightly improved cleaning power and battery efficiency than the V10. We'll have a review soon.

It feels more manoeuvrable than the V10, and hence better able to switch between a dust-busting, spill-clearing, shelf-cleaning handheld, and a full-on corded vac replacement for your floor. Arguably, the V10's greater suction, larger bin and lower price make it a better choice, on paper, for carpet owners, but I'm not sure that in real-world use there's much to choose between them.

Bosch's BCS122GB Unlimited is the very best of the new breed of Dyson rivals and is arguably better than the V8 in certain respects. However it's also even more expensive than Dyson's vac and its dusting brush – an all-important part of a cordless, for us – is not very well designed.

However, when it comes to VFM, there is a new cordless champ in town and it's the Vax Blade 2 Max. This matches the Dysons when it comes to floor cleaning. It's not as good as the V8 for handheld use, but it does a stand-up job in that department. Add battery life that's as good or better than the Dysons, and a bloody great LED headlight, then take into account that Vax's model is significantly cheaper, and you have a winning cordless package.

Best cordless vacuum cleaner

Best window vacs Best car vacuum HOW TO BUY THE BEST CORDLESS VAC FOR YOU The best cordless vacuums come with one obvious advantage: no cord. This makes them so much easier to push around than their corded brethren and they're also light enough to clean everywhere from the ceiling to the skirting board, as well as sucking up kitchen spills from worktops, dust from shelves (high and low), and so on.

Because of the way they've developed since Dyson made them a more premium, versatile product, they're good for everything from traditional uses, such as cleaning out the footwell of your car, to properly vacuuming large expanses of carpet.

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Cordless vacs do come with disadvantages. In order to keep the weight low enough to make them useful, the lithium-ion batteries they use can't be all that big and heavy, and so their battery  life is invariably quite short – usually no more than 20 minutes at full power, up to 40 or so at the lower power settings (that nobody uses). Dyson has addressed this by gradually improving its batteries over the years, but now some other brands are taking a rather simpler approach to the problem and including two batteries.

A lot of homes' floors can be given a good enough clean in 20 minutes, especially if you're using your handheld daily to maintain a dust-free domicile. Your other option, of course, is to buy a corded vac for the weekly/monthly/annual Big Vacuuming and use the handheld for smaller tasks.

If you live in a house with lots of carpets and two or more bedrooms, a cordless vac is still a great supplement to your mains one. If you have a flat with mainly hard floors, you can probably forget about a cylinder or standup.

Nearly all cordless vacs are bagless, which seems like a great feature initially. Then, when you come to empty their often small, usually translucent dust bins, you may initially find yourself cursing the day you ever bought one. With practice, if the vac is sufficiently well designed, this will become less of a problem, but the only one we'd unreservedly recommend in this department is the Dyson V8. Its bin emptying mechanism is sheer poetry in motion.

Finally, most stick vacs come with a range of heads for different surfaces, crevices, pet hair and so on. You can usually also buy cheaper versions of the vacs with just one or two basic heads, but, as the old saying goes, more heads are better than some.

THE BEST CORDLESS VACUUM CLEANERS IN ORDER Best vacuum cleaner: Vax Blade 2

1. VAX BLADE 2 MAX Best affordable cordless vacuum cleaner SPECIFICATIONS Power: 40vPower boost: YesWeight: 3.1kgMaximum run time: About 15-40 mins depending on power setting REASONS TO BUY +Excellent floor cleaning +Cheaper than a Dyson +Easy to empty bin +Solid battery life REASONS TO AVOID -Not as good for handheld use as a Dyson -Emits horrendous racket TODAY'S BEST DEALS CHECK AMAZON INDIA This new cordless Blade from Vax is generally about £40-£50 cheaper than a Dyson V8 and over £100 cheaper than a V10. That's a handy saving when you consider that it comes to cleaning floors, it seems at least as good.

It's a similar story with battery life, which again seems at least as good as the V10. It's hard to declare a precise battery life for cordless vacs because of the varying real-world ways they get used, but the Blade 2 generally seems to last longer than the Dyson in both Max Power and standard modes.

On both hard and carpeted floors, in my view, the Blade 2 outperforms any Dyson. Its spinning brush bar is highly effective, apart from a few occasions when it sprays stuff around rather than diverting it down the Vax's suction tube, and suction is very good even if you turn it off. Perhaps the Blade 2 Max's real pièce de résistance is its headlight, which activates alongside the brush bar and really helps with cleaning in dimly lit areas. The bin mechanism isn't as ingenious as Dyson's but it's easy enough to empty.

The main drawback of the Vax Blade 2 compared to Dysons (the V8 in particular) is that it's much less fun to use as a handheld, when cleaning surfaces other than your flooring.

Also, the Blade 2 is clearly not as chic as a Dyson. It's not hideous, though, and I dare say most people probably aren't that bothered what their vac looks like anyway. It does make a much more horrible racket, though.

That aside, the Blade 2 comes highly recommended.

2. DYSON V8 ABSOLUTE The ultimate 'old style' cordless vac, as good on tables and in cars as it is on floors SPECIFICATIONS Power: 21.6vPower boost: YesWeight: 2.6kgsMaximum run time: About 10-40 mins depending on power setting REASONS TO BUY +Genuinely works as both handheld and 'proper' vac +Solid battery life +Compact and stylish REASONS TO AVOID -The V10 has even more POWER TODAY'S BEST DEALS CHECK AMAZON INDIA Dyson has been making cordless vacs for quite some time now, but 2016's V8 was where it finally really cracked it. Since then the V10 has come along, and wants to be the cordless vacuum that really kills corded vacs, but the V8 is still a better option, IMO.

This is a battery-powered vacuum that can work as a pure handheld, compact vac – cleaning your car, taking crumbs off worktops, dust off shelves and, with its longer tube, cobwebs off your ceiling. But it can also genuinely replace a corded vac when it comes to both carpets and hard floors.

Moreover, it's sufficiently attractive – okay, I'm talking only just, rather than 'it's a gorgeous, dust-sucking objet d'art' – to just leave lying around in the kitchen or hallway (or attached to the wall with its well-made mount). So when a spill occurs or you notice a messy bit of floor, you don't have to go and retrieve it from 'the special cupboard'. It is the ultimate 'clean a little, but often' vac.

As ever with cordless vacs there are big caveats for those with large houses or a more 'traditional' attitude to cleaning. The number of extra tools required to make it as versatile as it it can initially leave you scratching your head figuring out which one to use for what (although, in my experience, the 'main' head is just as good as the 'spongey' one for hard floors, and the pet hair sucking one is probably overkill if you don't have allergies or a near pathological aversion to pet hair (remind me, why did you buy that golden retriever, then?)

Aside from the aforementioned large, powered brushes – one with spinning bristles for carpets and the hardfloor-only one, which is a revolving cylindrical 'sponge' that polishes while it sweeps, while it sucks – there are also titchier hand brushes and nozzles in the Absolute package, including a mini motorised hand tool for sofas and cars.

So yes, you do need to chop and change heads, but whatever is attached to it, the V8 collects a commendable amount of detritus on both hard and carpeted floors. It's a breeze to use in all areas, including under cupboards with just three inches of clearance.

But the reason I say the V8 is the 'ultimate' cordless vac is that it does finally correct some long-standing flaws with Dyson's handhelds.

Firstly, emptying the bin. This used to involve digging around it with a chopstick, which just doesn't feel that premium. With the V8, you just pull up a red latch and the entire motor and filter arrangement lifts out, as the bottom hatch opens, emptying everything into the bin, with nothing stuck to the filter. Push the filter and motor back into place and anything stuck to it is squeegeed off by its housing. Then just flip the lid shut.

The other V8 improvement is to the battery. It will now go for 40 minutes as a handheld (with the basic but well designed brush and crevice tools) and 20 or so with the powered floor brushes. That's on the standard power setting. With the turbo setting on, it would seem that the V8 lasts about 10 minutes or so.

Mine's on charge when I am not using it, and I have never ever run out of battery whilst cleaning. However, if you really want to use it as a straight replacement for something like a Miele or Henry, and your habit is to spend half an hour or more doing your entire place in one go, the V8 may not work for you as you wish.

3. DYSON CYCLONE V10 ABSOLUTE Updated cordless vac can do everything a corded one can, and a whole lot more SPECIFICATIONS Power: 28AW-125AWPower boost: YesWeight: 2.68kgMaximum run time: About 20-60 mins depending on power setting REASONS TO BUY +Sucks like a high quality corded vac +Doubles niftily as a handheld +More powerful, longer battery and bigger bin than the V8 REASONS TO AVOID -Bulk and weight make it less versatile and fun to use than the V8 TODAY'S BEST DEALS CHECK AMAZON INDIA The Cyclone V10 is a slightly odd device in that it successfully addresses many key issues that users have had with previous Dyson cordless vacs, yet ends up being only just better than its predecessor.

Should you buy a Dyson Cyclone V10? If you have loadsa carpets, and want a cordless… definitely, yes. It's noticeably more powerful and has a better carpet-cleaning head than the V8, which was itself head and shoulders above all the other battery-powered vacs.

The bin is much bigger, in order to hold all the extra fluff and gunk yanked out of your rugs and carpets by the stronger motor. It's grown by 'up to 40%' (I'm not sure why the 'up to' bit is in there) says Dyson. It's also still easy to open and empty into the trash, without dispensing the dust back onto your floor.

My slight issue with the V10 is that its added bulk and weight makes it a bit more of a chore to use than the V8, and cleaning is not noticeably better on hard floors and other non-furry surfaces.

The increased size makes it more problematic to keep the Cyclone V10 to hand in your kitchen, a little more difficult to manoeuvre when dealing with spills and dusting shelves and surfaces, and less comfortable when doing floors.

On the other hand, with three power settings instead of two, and an improved battery, you don't need to charge the V10 as often – though please note that the quoted 1 hour is only when you use the lowest power setting and a non-mechanised head.

The Dyson Cyclone V10 is also generally cheaper than the V8, which is hard to argue with as a selling point.

Bosch BCS122GB Unlimited

4. BOSCH BCS122GB UNLIMITED Superb Dyson clone with two batteries SPECIFICATIONS Power: 18vPower boost: YesWeight: 3.5kgMaximum run time: About 15-25 mins per battery depending on power setting REASONS TO BUY +Two batteries make running out of juice unlikely +Excellent cleaning performance +Awesome 'big crevice' tool REASONS TO AVOID -Actually manages to be more pricey than a Dyson -Crappy dusting brush TODAY'S BEST DEALS CHECK AMAZON INDIA • Buy Bosch BCS122GB Unlimited from Amazon

Previous Bosch cordless vacs have been a bit iffy in terms of heft and looks. To be brutally frank, they were fatty boom booms. Not so the BCS122GB Unlimited, which is, if I may again speak frankly, a Dyson clone. But a very, very good one.

There are three absolutely fantastic things about the BCS122GB Unlimited and only one egregiously crap one. Firstly, although its battery life is fairly pitiful, Bosch gets around this by the ingenious means of… including a second battery.

As they charge fully in about an hour, these 18v cells should keep you vacuuming indefinitely, so long as you're judicious about charging one while using the other. Interestingly (or not, perhaps), they are also the exact same batteries and charger used in all Bosch's 18v power tool range, so you could use the same cell to drill a hole in a wall, and then suck up the debris.

The other selling points are that cleaning performance on carpet and hard floor is excellent, and well up to Dyson standard in real-life, day-to-day use (I try not to get too bogged down in seeing which vac can suck up one square metre of rice crispies or flour the best.) It's even pretty passable without the turbo mode engaged.

Oh, and the long crevice tool. This looks absolutely ridiculous, turning the vac into a sort of robot anteater, but it is fantastically useful for cleaning skirting boards, footwells, down the back of the washing machine and so on. But seriously, just look at it.