The 6 Top Vacuum Cleaners in 2024

As the name suggests, bare floor performance references how well a vacuum does when it’s cleaning up tiles, vinyl planks, or hardwood flooring. Debris comes in a variety of sizes of course, and much of the testing revolves around picking up debris that ranges in size from cereal to bits of dirt to sand to a mix of everything above and more.

We recommend that a vacuum be able to pick up at least 95% of debris from a bare floor to ensure you end up with clean floors. Hitting a perfect score is obviously ideal, but the worse a vacuum performs here, the more work you need to do sweeping up or re-vacuuming. Missing debris is frustrating and can invite pests if you miss bits of food or annoyance if you step on something barefoot and hurt yourself.

Carpet cleaning ability is another important part of how your vacuum performs. Whether you have low-pile, high-pile, or rugs, how effectively a vacuum cleans up the dirt and debris left behind on the carpet is enormously important to keeping your carpet comfortable.

Generally speaking, we recommend a carpet cleaning performance of at least 75%. You might notice this is much lower than bare floors, and that’s because carpet is harder to clean. Short of devoting the time to actually shampoo and dry out a carpet, thoroughly cleaning out a carpet is very difficult, and good vacuums will reach deep between fibers and pull out long-forgotten crumbs.

If you own pets, the ability of a vacuum to suck up pet hair, be it with attachments or the brush itself is extremely important. Pet hair can stick to furniture, dig itself into the carpet, and clump together under beds and in corners. If you have allergies and need to keep pet hair out of your home as best as you can, you’ll need a vacuum that gets rid of as much pet hair a possible when cleaning.

We recommend that a vacuum has a pet hair cleaning performance of at least 95%. Higher is always better, but if you can get rid of most of the pet hair, you’ll have an easier time breathing and less dander flying away and sticking to clothes and furniture. Poor pet hair cleaning performance can invite repeated vacuuming and more annoyance for anyone who suffers from allergies.

Every vacuum will make noise, but some make less than others. If you have to deal with thin walls or skittish pets and very young children, lower levels of noise are going to be more attractive. There is, however, a limit to how quiet vacuums can get, and at some point, lower noise levels are going to come at the cost of suction.

Aiming for a noise level of 72 dB or less is generally ideal, as this puts the vacuum cleaner right around the noise of a washing machine, which isn’t terribly disruptive. Lower is good if it doesn’t come at the cost of performance, and higher volume isn’t terrible if the noise won’t bother you or anyone else. For reference, 60 dB is the noise level of a typical conversation, while 80 dB is around the sound level of a lawnmower.