Independent buying guides
For households choosing between a robot, a cordless stick and a plug-in cylinder. Each guide answers one question, quotes manufacturer and energy-label figures with check dates, and shows the formula inside the running-cost calculator.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
Four measurements decide which vacuum type fits a home: dock clearance, carpet pile depth, stairs, and how much floor one battery charge has to cover.
Photo: ajay_suresh · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
The purchase price is rarely the biggest number. Filters, brush rolls, bags, a mid-life battery and electricity, added up over five years with the sums shown.
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Performance
Pascals, air watts, HEPA and run-time claims measure different things. How to read a vacuum spec sheet so the numbers mean something on your own floor.
Photo: TiHa · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Spreads purchase price, consumables and repairs over the years you expect to keep it.
cost per year = (purchase price - expected resale value + consumables per year x years + expected repairs) / years
Annual electricity cost from rated power, hours of use and your own tariff.
annual cost = power (W) / 1000 x hours per day x days per year x price per kWh, plus standby power (W) / 1000 x standby hours x days x price per kWh
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
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Photo: Jacek Halicki · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Like-for-like comparisons on the specifications that matter.
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Photo: Jacek Halicki · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
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Photo: Ryan McBride · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Getting it working properly the first time.
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Photo: 池田正樹 - Masaki Ikeda · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
What the numbers mean in day-to-day use.
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Photo: ajay_suresh · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The expensive errors that are easy to avoid.
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Photo: TiHa · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
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