If you’re ready to cut the cord on your vacuum, you may want to take a look at Hoover’s upcoming machines. Last year, the company introduced its Air Cordless, and this spring it’s releasing several additions to the line.
The Cordless FloorMate and the Air Cordless 2-in-1 each come with a LithiumLife battery, while the Air Cordless Lift comes with two. The runtime for the batteries is still being finalized, but the Air Cordless batteries last 25 minutes each. The nice thing about them is that they fit all the Hoover Cordless models, so you can swap the batteries around if you have more than one type. Thanks to their high-powered chargers, the Lift’s and the FloorMate’s batteries get back up to full power in three hours. It takes nine hours for the 2-in-1, but it works with the other models’ souped-up charger, which cuts that time down to an hour and a half.
Without their batteries, the Lift is 10.7 pounds, the FloorMate is 12.6 pounds, and the 2-in-1 is 5.9 pounds. Even with the batteries, the models are all pretty light. We got spend a few minutes testing out each model at CES 2015.
Take the Air Cordless Lift, $399. When you release the canister from its upright stick trappings, the vacuum takes on a bit of a Ghostbusters-proton-pack feel. The canister is the heart of the vacuum, with the base acting as more of an attachment, says Hoover’s Public Relations Manager Patrick Coleman. It’s meant to be portable, so you can take it up and down stairs, cleaning them on the way. We saw its WindTunnel technology in action at CES. Glitterbomb victims take note: a gush of air first blew glitter up from the carpet, making it pretty effective in then suctioning the sparkly debris up.
Like the already released Hoover FloorMate, the cordless version, $249, has two tanks: one for clean water, the other for the scuzzy remnants it sucks back up. The suction is pretty powerful, and the floor was nearly dry just a few seconds after we sprayed the clean water, then vacuumed it back up into the second reservoir.
For lighter jobs or daily pet hair maintenance, there’s the Air Cordless 2-in-1, $149. The stick vac doubles as a handheld model, which made it pretty easy to clean the synthetic, pet-hair substitute off the armchair.
Hoover seems pretty committed to offering more and more cordless versions of its vacuums. “This is the future,” says Mo Irfan Director of Industrial Design at Hoover. Customers don’t want to be tripped up by cords, no matter what they demand from their vacuums.
We put each model through an obstacle course of tests at CES, but we’ll have a better idea of how these machines function in the real world (and with real pet hair) when we get the review units.
Update 3/27/2015: Updated to reflect new pricing.
