Are cheap vacuum cleaners worth the price? The short answer is, not always, but a few are. Some cheap vacuum cleaners perform better than much more expensive rivals. And some cheap vacuum cleaners do better than their more expensive siblings, while other vacuum cleaners see significant differences in quality as the price goes up.
Which cheap vacuums under a hundred dollars are as good as their more expensive rivals? And which cheap vacuums do about as well as their rivals, whether a competing brand or within the same product family?
The Bissell Cleanview Plus with One Pass costs under a hundred dollars. In 2016, Consumer Reports rated it 23rd in the bagless upright vacuum cleaner category. It scored higher than $450 vacuums by Samsung and a $450 Dyson Ball compact animal vacuum cleaner. However, not all cheap vacuum cleaners are worth it. For example, the Dirt Devil Total Power Cyclonic cost $80 in 2015. It rated 33rd in the same Consumer Reports rankings of bagless upright vacuum cleaners, scoring far worse due to its tendency to pick up dirt and leave a fine trail of dust behind it. Nor was there much difference between the brands as to reliability. Bissell upright vacuum cleaners had a 9% repair rate, while Dirt Devil had an 8% repair rate.
Some brand that make high quality vacuums don’t translate that into their cheaper vacuum cleaners, or they make quality canister vacuums but fail to carry it over to their bagless or upright vacuums. The Bissell Powerlifter Pet, a bagless upright vacuum cleaner, cost a hundred dollars, and it had problems with emissions and a 41st place ranking. The $200 Bissell Power Clean came in 20th place with average to above average scores in all categories except noise. With regard to bagless upright vacuums, paying more yields a better performing Bissell vacuum cleaner. However, paying more doesn’t yield better performance with brands like Dyson and Samsung. And in the case of expensive but mediocre performing brands like Rainbow and Sebo, you see middling results even with their expensive models.
A few vacuum cleaner manufacturers actually have cheap vacuum cleaners that perform better than their more expensive siblings. Hoover’s top rated bagless upright vacuum cleaner, the Hoover Windtunnel T-Series with rewind, came in first in the category according to Consumer Reports. It cost $130, a very reasonable price. The surprise is that this model scored so much better than Hoover’s $150 Wind Tunnel Max (11th place) and $220 Hoover Wind Tunnel Max plus Multicyclonic (13th place). Sebo’s Automatic X5 $700 vacuum performed worse than its cheaper sibling, the $600 Sebo Felix Premium vacuum.
Hoover’s $400 Air Cordless was near the bottom of the list for bagless upright vacuums, while the $230 Air Pro by Hoover came in 22nd place. The $300 Hoover Quiet Force, a bagged canister vacuum, came in 17th place, while the $250 Hoover Wind Tunnel ranked 9th. You don’t get better performance for the money with Hoover.
Some companies make decent cheap vacuums but have significant variation in quality between models. The Eureka Airspeed Ultra cost $100 and ranked 46th in the 2016 Consumer Reports list for bagless upright vacuum cleaners. Eureka’s Air Speed All Floors cost a hundred dollars, as well, but it came in 31st. It had issues with emissions and noise, but it had very good suction given its price.
In summary, you can find cheap vacuums for a hundred dollars or less that perform about as well as vacuum cleaners that cost two and three times as much, though there are cheap vacuums that are responsible for the poor reputation cheap vacuums have. The solution to this is doing your research to find out if the brand you’re interested in makes high quality affordable vacuum cleaners, instead of assuming paying more money will yield a better product.
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