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Need a lightweight vacuum? We have researched dozens of stick vacuums since 2017. For this update, we bought the top 12 models on the market and tested them head-to-head to select our award winners. We spent hundreds of hours vacuuming carpet, tile, and hardwood floors, comparing the performance of each product side-by-side. We evaluated each model's convenience, ease of use, and carpet vs. hard floor cleaning performance. In our extensive review, you'll find out which vacuum swept away the competition, which ones are the best for certain specialized uses, and which models best fit a tight budget. We hope this helps you find the right stick vacuum for your home needs.
The world of vacuums is vast, and making the right choice can be overwhelming. We're here to bring you targeted and in-depth information so you can find the right type of vacuum for your needs. We offer complete testing and reviews for the best robot vacuums, the best handheld vacuums, the best cordless wet dry vacuums, and top picks from our review of the best vacuum cleaners with a more traditional design. Check out this list of our favorite kitchen and home appliances if you want to upgrade other areas of your home.
Editor's Note: Our stick vacuum review was updated on December 5, 2023, to list more recommendations in our award section.
Weight: 7.8 pounds | Max Power Runtime (min:sec): 20:37
REASONS TO BUY
Impressive cleaning performance
Great battery life
Extremely easy to use
REASONS TO AVOID
Louder than average
We can't recommend the Shark Rocket Pet Pro highly enough for most people shopping for a top-tier stick vacuum. This vacuum delivered impressive results throughout our entire suite of cleaning tests — even with the more challenging ones. It has one of the longer runtimes for a cordless vacuum and has tons and tons of features that make it exceptionally convenient and user-friendly. On top of that, it is a very versatile option, with different attachments and configurations for cleaning most of your home and storing it in a freestanding way.
We have very minimal complaints about the Pet Pro. We noticed it is a little louder and heavier than average, but not by much. Also, it struggles when cleaning close up to a wall if you vacuum head-on, but this can be easily remedied by running the vacuum parallel to the edge while cleaning. Considering everything, the Pet Pro stands out among the competition and should be on the shortlist of anyone looking for a premium stick vacuum. If you're looking for a lighter and quieter vacuum, check out the Tineco Pure ONE S15 Pet.
Weight: 5.1 pounds | Max Power Runtime (min:sec): 23:12
REASONS TO BUY
Good hard surface cleaning
Good convenience features
Inexpensive
REASONS TO AVOID
Average carpet cleaning
The Eureka RapidClean is a cordless vacuum cleaner that combines power and flexibility to offer effective and convenient cleaning solutions. Its compact and lightweight design enables easy maneuvering and portability, making it effortless for users to clean a wide range of surfaces in their homes. It has good suction power, effectively capturing dirt, dust, and debris from most messes, carpets, hardwood floors, and upholstery.
The Eureka RapidClean is an effective stick vacuum, but it isn't quite as exceptional at cleaning as the top-tier models in our roundup. However, it is half the price of the premium vacuums and provides satisfactory results. Where budget and value are a prime concern, the RapidClean is the model to look at. Just don't expect premium performance from this approachable stick vacuum. If you have wall-to-wall carpet that needs a good cleaning, the Shark Stratos Cordless is up to the task.
Weight: 8.9 pounds | Max Power Runtime (min:sec): 10:28
REASONS TO BUY
Excellent cleaning performance
Long battery life
Super user-friendly
REASONS TO AVOID
Somewhat loud
If you're in search of the ultimate stick vacuum cleaner for your household and budget isn't a concern, the Shark Stratos Cordless will be the best option for you. With its innovative two-brush roll system, this vacuum reaches deep into carpets, effectively lifting debris, and excels in cleaning hard surfaces. It also has incredible reach and is one of the few stick vacs that can bend under hard to reach surfaces. It is undoubtedly one of the top stick vacuums available for your home and the best one our team has tested.
Our test team had very few gripes about the Shark Stratos Cordless. That said, if we really had to narrow it down, the Stratos could do a little better when cleaning against edges. Also, this model is slightly heavier and louder than other contenders and could be a little easier to maneuver. Despite these critiques, the excellent performance, long run times, and convenient features make it easy to look beyond the minor shortcomings and recognize that this is the best high-end model available. If you prefer to reduce the noise level, the Eureka RapidClean is the quietest model we tested and one of the lightest that's also easy to maneuver.
This model is easy to stow away in compact spaces when you are finished cleaning.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
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Many stick vacuums can transform into handhelds.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Why Trust GearLab
Since 2017, we have tested and purchased over 35 stick vacuums. Our extensive testing process subjects each product to 47 individual tests across four strategically selected metrics. Each test and metric informs our comparative testing process. For convenience, we look at each model's attachments, storage system, battery life, and overall versatility. Furthermore, to assess ease of use, we take vacuums through obstacle courses and under furniture to test handling, use decibel meters to monitor noise, and sample each feature. Lastly, for our hard surface and carpet cleaning tests, we take common debris of household messes like cereal, pet hair, rice, and oatmeal and compare the cleaning result.
Each test is associated with one of the following weighted metrics:
Convenience (35% of overall score weighting)
Hard Surface Cleaning (30% weighting)
Ease of Use (20% weighting)
Carpet Cleaning (15% weighting)
Our lead stick vacuum reviewer, Jessica Riconscente, has vast experience testing and evaluating a wide range of vacuums, such as the best canister vacuums, uprights, robot vacuums, and handhelds. The entire test team has been continuously comparing and testing stick vacuums for years now, continuously updating their testing plans and procedures as these products have evolved.
From pet hair and flour to oats, rice, and dirt, we sucked it all up and away to reveal which models are the best.
Here we look for that perfect balance of price and performance. The top performing vacuums in our review, without exorbitantly high price points, are the Shark Rocket Pet Pro and Shark Stratos Cordless. However, the Pet Pro costs substantially less and is a higher-value product in our mind. If you're on a lower budget, the Eureka RapidClean should be considered. It offers above average hard surface cleaning performance, great convenience and ease of use, satisfactory carpet cleaning, and can be acquired at about a third of the price of the most premium models.
The incredible hard surface cleaning performance seen from underneath the brush head of the Shark Stratos.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Convenience
The main advantage of these products over a traditional canister or upright vacuum is the substantially superior convenience — hence the heavier weight of this metric in each vacuum's overall score. After all, what good is a stick vacuum if it is too cumbersome to use in the first place? Consequently, this metric accounts for 35% of the overall score for each product. We tested how well each vacuum cleaned non-floor areas, the cordless models' battery life, the reach of the corded models, each product's weight, and its storage method.
Claiming one of the top spots overall in this metric, we found the Shark Stratos Cordless to be incredibly convenient to use. We love how versatile this vacuum is. It can transform into a handheld vacuum and includes tools for cleaning all sorts of different areas around your home. It also has an impressive run time of about 49 minutes in economy mode and 11 minutes in boost mode.
The Rocket Pet Pro is a very versatile vacuum.
Credit: Laura Casner
The Shark Rocket Pet Pro also offers similar conveniences to the Stratos, and like its sister model can transform into a handheld vacuum. It has one of the longest battery runtimes of the entire group, vacuuming for almost 21 minutes on a single charge in its economical power mode and close to 13 minutes when running the high-power Boost mode. The battery is swappable, and it charges in about two and a half hours in our experience — much faster than the four-hour charge time claimed by the manufacturer. The Pet Pro is about average when it comes to weight, and we love that it can be stored in a freestanding configuration when bent over.
Right behind the two Sharks, the Eureka RapidClean surprises with some incredibly convenient features. The stick section of the vacuum can be removed so that the brush head attaches directly to the vacuum, making it a powerful handheld device. Combined with its lighter weight, it becomes a great tool for stairs. A runtime of just over 23 minutes gives you enough time to complete most tasks, and the included crevice and brush tools let you clean hard-to-reach places.
The Dyson V8 Absolute, Dyson V10, Dyson V15 Detect, and Tineco Pure ONE Pet S15 all fall in the middle of the pack when it comes to convenience. These vacuums are all cordless, and the Dyson models have a wall-mounted storage system to keep them out of the way when not in use. The Tineco utilizes a floor-based docking station with ports to store the attachments. We would appreciate it if these vacuums could stand freely on their own, but sadly that is not the case; if they aren't in their respective mounts, they all need to be propped against something so as not to tip over. We like that the RapidClean has an Easy Rest feature — a purpose-built ledge/notch to make it easier to prop against a counter or chair if you need to set it down while cleaning.
The Dyson V8 in handheld mode.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman
We didn't find the Dyson models' battery life to be all that impressive when using the highest power setting. The V15, V10, and V8 all lasted for less than 10 minutes on the high power setting. However, when run on a lower power cleaning setting, the runtime of the Dyson can be significantly extended. The V15 ran for an incredible 56 minutes on ECO mode. These modes were more than enough time to clean up most messes, especially in the case of the V10 and V15. The suction is so powerful that we had difficulty pushing the V10 on a low-pile carpet in full power mode.
The Dyson models V10 and V8 come in between 5-6 pounds, a bit below average in terms of weight. The Eureka RapidClean tips the scale at just over five pounds, making it a solid choice if you cannot lift heavy items or have stairs in your home.
The Shark Rocket in handheld mode.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman
Hard Surface Cleaning
Each vacuum's hard floor cleaning performance accounted for 30% of its total score. We used flour, rice, oats, cereal, and pet hair to evaluate each model's performance. We also compared the floor's appearance before and after and the actual percentage of debris collected to determine the final score in this metric.
The Shark Stratos Cordless is easily the hard surface champion of the entire testing lineup. It handily cleaned rice, flour, and cereal in our tests with a single pass and lifted 99% of oatmeal, only requiring a second pass to clean the remaining 1%. Its performance is impressive, and not just for a stick vacuum, as many full-sized and corded options struggle to perform nearly as well.
Impressive hard surface cleaning performance sets this model apart from many others.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Trailing the Stratos, the Dyson V10 also offers great hard surface cleaning performance, with impressive results picking up rice, taking only a single pass when in bare floor mode. Its great performance continued in our flour test, cleaning up the majority of the flour with a single pass and then taking just one additional pass to get any residual flour that had fallen into the cracks between the boards of the laminate floor.
The Rocket even extracted flour from the cracks between boards.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman
The V10 also only needed a single pass to clean all of the oatmeal and cereal used in our tests.
The Rocket making short work of oats on the hardwood floor.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman
The Shark Rocket Pet Pro, Dyson V8 Absolute, and Dyson V15 Detect followed with very impressive results cleaning hard floors. The V15 and V8 Absolute took two full passes to clean up the entirety of the mess and remove the flour from between the boards.
The V8 delivered an excellent performance in this test.
Credit: Austin Palmer
The V8 also delivered an essentially perfect performance in our cereal and pet hair passes, collecting all of the mess that we laid out without any issues. It finished out this metric with a strong showing in our oat test, getting almost all oats in a single pass, though a tiny portion of oats flung to the side. Unfortunately, the V8's performance dropped in our rice test, doing a mediocre job overall. It cleaned up a decent amount of rice, but the brush flung a non-trivial number of grains far from the path of the vacuum.
The Dyson V8 collected oats with ease.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman
The V15 performed very well across the rice, pet hair, and oatmeal, as it sucked up the debris with limited redistribution of material and zero tangles or clogs. However, it struggled when collecting cereal as it tended to clog.
The Pet Pro obliterated all of the rice we laid out with only a single cleaning pass. Even better, it didn't fling any grains off to the side out of the cleaning path while doing so. After two passes, the Pet Pro continued to do exceptionally well in the flour test, thoroughly cleaning the floor. It did start to leave a few streaks from the wheels but then sucked up the remaining bit of flour on the return pass. We also appreciate that it does a good job of pulling flour out of the cracks between the boards.
As the name would suggest, the Rocket Pet Pro also did a fine job cleaning up stray pet hair from a laminate floor, easily eliminating the mess. It finished up with two more top-tier performances in our cereal and oat collecting tests, sucking up all the debris without any being flung to the side or pushed around too much.
The Eureka RapidClean and the Shark Navigator Freestyle Cordless both performed respectably but could not keep up with the most premium models above.
The Rocket Pet Pro does a great job of getting all the pet hair into the collection bin compared to tangled up on the brushroll.
Credit: Laura Casner
Ease of Use
This metric accounts for 20% of the total score and is based on the available cleaning power levels, noise level, maneuverability, and how well each vacuum cleans under furniture and close to edges.
The Black+Decker Powerseries+ 20V stood out as the best model we tested for its exceptional edging, incredible under furniture reach, lighter weight, and great maneuverability. It is a bit louder than other models at 80 decibels, but it still stands ahead of the rest in terms of ease of use.
The Powerseries has great reach and excellent maneuverability.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
The Dyson V8, Shark Rocket Pet Pro, Bissell Airram, Shark Stratos Cordless, and Tineco Pure ONE S15 Pet are also all top competitors within the ease of use metric. These models have both a low and high-power cleaning mode, with the Stratos and the Rocket Pet Pro having the added benefit of lowering the speed of the rotating brush for hard floor types. Many of these models also offer a boost mode for stubborn messes. Rather than having a different mode for hard floors, the V8 and the V10 accomplish this by using a different brush head that you must change manually.
The V10 does an excellent job of cleaning up messes from hard floors using the dedicated hard floor brush.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman
The V8, Pet Pro, V15, Black+Decker, and Stratos also did an excellent job in our test cleaning under furniture, reaching a total distance of about 37" under our test sofa. All of these top-tier models are agile and nimble, with swivel steering making maneuverability a breeze.
The Dyson V8 easily cleans under most furniture.
Credit: Austin Palmer
The Tineco S15 Pet is a user-friendly model that is quiet and utilizes swivel steering for impressive handling, and maintains a full range of motion to reach fully under our test couch. Its feature set is designed to make cleaning your house easier. It utilizes a smart suction system that automatically adjusts the amount of suction needed for the detected mess. Additionally, the model uses a one-touch trigger to clean the dustbin by scraping it into the trash with little to no assistance from the user.
The blue ring pictured here scrapes the sides of the dustbin to help aid the debris into the trash.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
The Bissell AirRam is relatively quiet and has swivel steering, though it isn't as nimble as the Black+Decker, Shark, and Dyson models. Still, the AirRam reached completely under our simulated sofa and only left a little debris when cleaning in tight corners; however, it lost a few points because it only has a single cleaning mode.
Many stick vacuums offer an easy-to-empty canister, but we found the canister of the Shark Stratos to be one of the easiest models to empty.
Look for a canister that is easily emptied when you are finished cleaning.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Carpet Cleaning
For the remaining 15% of each vacuum's total score, we lump together all of our carpet cleaning test results. We again used rice, cereal, oats, flour, and pet hair as our sample debris. We kept track of how many passes it took to clean up the messes and ranked each vacuum accordingly. We also noted how much residual debris each left behind. We tested on a flat, low-pile carpet and a fluffier, medium-pile carpet.
The Shark Stratos Cordless blew away the competition for its exceptional performance across all of our carpet cleaning tests, and by a significant margin. It managed to clean almost every mess, on both high and low-pile carpets in a single pass, with only a couple of exceptions.
The Stratos required a couple of additional passes to completely lift flour residue from carpet and offered a similar performance when tasked with cleaning oatmeal. While the Stratos also lifted all the pet hair in our test, 1.32 grams ended up lodged in the brushes, versus making it all the way to the canister — keeping it from earning a perfect score for pet hair cleaning performance.
A dual brush roll system enables this model to expertly handle a wide range of
Credit: Abriah Wofford
The Rocket Pet Pro, Dyson's V10, and V8 models all earned high scores for the metric. The Dysons both did very well in our rice collection challenge, collecting all of the debris from the flat carpet with only two passes. They also did the best with the fluffier medium-pile carpet.
The V10 and the V8 main extractors, side-by-side.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman
The Dyson V8 and V10 did exceptionally well at cleaning flour from a flatter, low-pile carpet, getting the vast majority in a single cleaning pass and showing one of the best cleaning performances we have seen to date. The V8 delivered stellar performance cleaning up cereal, slightly outperforming the V10.
The Dyson V8 is one of the best when it comes to cleaning carpets.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman
While we felt that the V10 had far superior suction to the V8, given the distance between the head and the floor, there isn't much space for larger debris items, leading it to push things like cereal around for a while before it collects them. However, the V10 has more than enough clearance to easily collect debris like pet hair and oats. The V8 left just a few more strands of pet hair behind, but the amount was barely noticeable.
The Pet Pro got off to a great start with rice on a flat carpet, cleaning up the vast majority of all the rice in the first pass, only requiring a light follow-up to grab the remaining fragments. It performed equally well with fluffy carpet, with only 1-2 broken rice grains eluding its suction. It also easily handled the flour, especially when using the turbo Boost function to increase airflow. There was only a small amount of flour deep in the carpet that it didn't reach.
The Rocket Pet Pro did an excellent job at cleaning flour from carpet.
Credit: Austin Palmer
Continuing to back up its name, the Rocket Pet Pro did very well at cleaning up pet hair. It got the bulk of the hair with a single forward and back cleaning pass without the brush roll getting tangled. However, upon close inspection, we found just a few more stray hairs than some of the other top-scoring models.
As the name would suggest, the Rocket Pet Pro handled pet hair with ease.
Credit: Austin Palmer
The Pet Pro finished with a practically perfect score when it came to cleaning up oats from both types of carpet. We would estimate it easily got over 99% of the mess with just two passes, leaving only the smallest fragments behind. It pushed around Cheerios a bit — particularly on the fluffier, medium-pile carpet — but it eventually cleaned up everything.
The Powerseries+ 20V proved to be an above average performer on carpets.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
The Black+Decker Powerseries+ 20V earned an above-average carpet cleaning score, in contrast to a below average performance on hard surfaces, and is a good consideration if you need a lower-budget model with carpeted spaces in mind.
Some of the impressive stick vacuums we've tested over the years.
Credit: Jenna Ammerman
Conclusion
Stick vacuums offer a level of convenience not usually found in traditional vacuums. They are lighter, stow away small, and are easier to maneuver. Whether you seek a top-tier product that can go toe-to-toe with a conventional vacuum or a budget option for a convenient way to clean up small messes, we included a wide range of options to ensure there is something for everyone in this review. We hope to help make your purchasing decision as easy as vacuuming up a dusty carpet with your new cleaning tool.
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David Wise, Austin Palmer, Isaac Laredo, and Jessica Riconscente
