Cordless stick vacuums, scored on five axes

Buy it if

• Long hair and pet hair, where the brushroll design does real work
• Getting under a sofa without lying on the floor
• You want a spare battery rather than a fixed one

Skip it if

• You want the filtration and suction ceiling of the category leader
• Plastic latches and clips need to survive years of daily use

Buy it if

• A flat or a small house rather than a whole floor of carpet
• You want Dyson's build without the current pricing
• Lighter weight matters for overhead and stair work

Skip it if

• Thick carpet across a large area
• A fixed battery you cannot swap mid-clean

Buy it if

• Hard floors, where the laser reveals what other vacuums leave behind
• Allergies, where sealed filtration matters more than suction figures
• You want the strongest cordless suction available

Skip it if

• Consumables and batteries priced entirely at Dyson's discretion
• Noise matters — this is the loudest machine on the list
• Boost mode runtime measured in single-digit minutes

Buy it if

• You would rather not think about power modes at all
• Runtime matters and you want the machine to conserve it
• A removable battery you can buy a second of

Skip it if

• App and firmware polish are part of what you are paying for
• You want a service network rather than a mail-in RMA

Buy it if

• Pet hair is ninety percent of what you are cleaning up
• A second vacuum for upstairs rather than the only one
• Replacement parts you can buy at a general store

Skip it if

• Deep carpet cleaning, where the motor runs out of authority
• You want a machine that feels solid in the hand